After a short Christmas hiatus (during which I visited family, enjoyed some time off from shoveling snow, and got several wonderful books I can’t wait to read and review!), I was delighted by Thirteen Steps Down, a novel of suspense and obsession by Ruth Rendell. (By the way, have any of you ever figured out [...]
Archive for December, 2008
Thirteen Steps Down
Posted in Fiction, Mysteries on December 30, 2008 | 3 Comments »
The Sister (aka The Behaviour of Moths)
Posted in Contemporary, Fiction on December 22, 2008 | 6 Comments »
Here are a few common literary themes I’m a sucker for: family secrets, faulty memory, different perspectives on single events, isolated eccentrics, and possibly unreliable narrators. And Poppy Adams’s The Sister, originally published in the UK with the title The Behaviour of Moths, includes all of these themes. Ginny, the narrator, has lived alone for years [...]
Exploration: Your Recommendations Needed
Posted in Travel/ Exploration on December 21, 2008 | 6 Comments »
As some of you may know, I am an absolute sucker for Arctic and Antarctic literature. However, I’ve been feeling the urge lately to read about other kinds of exploration. The source of the Nile! Opening the pyramids! South American sites! Tibet! Marco Polo! Anything will do as long as it has that taste of [...]
Invisible Cities
Posted in Fiction on December 21, 2008 | 1 Comment »
In the twilight of a vast empire, Kublai Khan sits in his fragrant hanging garden with a foreigner, a traveler, a merchant: Marco Polo. The traveler tells the emperor stories of the cities of his far-flung empire, cities the emperor will now never see himself. But Marco Polo doesn’t just tell of what the cities [...]
The Bounty: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty
Posted in History, Nonfiction on December 21, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
What do you think of when you hear the name William Bligh? A hot-tempered tyrant ready to punish the men of his ship for the slightest offense? When you hear of the mutiny on the Bounty, do you imagine a group of young romantics trying to break free from a dictatorial rule to live freely [...]
On Chesil Beach (Audio)
Posted in Audiobooks, Fiction on December 20, 2008 | 6 Comments »
I know that what I’m about to say goes against the general consensus about Ian McEwan, but having sat in my car last night crying for a good long while after finishing this audiobook, I must confess that this is my favorite of the three Ian McEwan novels I’ve read. I liked Atonement quite a lot, but, [...]
What Should I Read in January? Giveaway
Posted in Giveaways on December 19, 2008 | 24 Comments »
It’s the holiday season, and I’m not going to miss the chance to give away a book! So, once again, it’s time for you to choose a prize from my overflowing bookshelves. Here’s how to enter:
Visit my TBR list and choose one book you’d like to have. (Books on my wish list or upcoming book club [...]
In Defense of Food (Audio)
Posted in Audiobooks, Food, Nonfiction on December 16, 2008 | 6 Comments »
Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food is often mentioned as a good, practical follow-up to his excellent The Omnivore’s Dilemma, which Jenny and I have both reviewed. In The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Pollan looks at the process of food production, opening readers’ eyes to the problems with the industrial food chain that prevails in 21st-century America. It’s [...]
Black Like Me
Posted in History, Memoir, Nonfiction on December 15, 2008 | 4 Comments »
In 1959, John Howard Griffin, a white reporter for Sepia Magazine, took medication that darkened his skin to a deep brown. Starting in New Orleans, he traveled for a month through Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia, passing as a black man. Black Like Me, whose title comes from the last lines of a poem by [...]
Offshore
Posted in Fiction, Uncategorized on December 14, 2008 | 5 Comments »
The characters in Penelope Fitzgerald’s Offshore live in a world in between, on a colony of barges in the Battersea Reach on the Thames. For one reason or another, they don’t quite fit into the community on land, but they aren’t quite able to strike out and cut themselves off completely. So they create an unlikely little [...]
