Lafferton is an English cathedral town, where at first sight only the ordinary urban things seem to be wrong: a diagnosis of cancer, drugs being sold under the overpass, a few too many con artists among the “faith healers” and “psychic surgeons” and crystal-readers. But then an ordinary, middle-aged woman goes missing without a trace [...]
Archive for March, 2009
The Various Haunts of Men
Posted in Contemporary, Fiction, Mysteries on March 30, 2009 | 4 Comments »
The Tale of Despereaux
Posted in Bookish films, Children's / YA Lit, Speculative Fiction on March 29, 2009 | 10 Comments »
I got out of the habit of reading children’s books years ago, not because I decided I outgrew them or lost interest, but mostly because they weren’t on my radar. A children’s book would have to become a phenomenon for me to notice it. So even though Kate DiCamillo’s novel The Tale of Despereaux won [...]
The Monsters of Templeton
Posted in Contemporary, Fiction, Historical Fiction on March 28, 2009 | 5 Comments »
When Willie Upton suddenly returns to her hometown of Templeton, New York, a dead monster rises to the surface of the lake. That’s how Lauren Groff’s debut novel, The Monsters of Templeton, begins. As the story continues, we learn that a monster isn’t all that has been hiding under the surface of the town. There are also secrets hidden [...]
Blankets
Posted in Graphic novels, Memoir on March 26, 2009 | 3 Comments »
A lot of variety seems to be gathered under the term “graphic novel.” There are storytelling comic series, like the Sandman series; there are actual fictional novels, like Gemma Bovery or Pride of Baghdad, there are lots of memoirs, like Persepolis and American Born Chinese, and there are genres that fall in between, like the [...]
The Lighthouse
Posted in Contemporary, Fiction, Mysteries on March 25, 2009 | 4 Comments »
I seem to be on a bit of a mystery-reading binge lately. I’m not sure why — maybe just because I was browsing the mystery section for Kate Atkinson’s books, and found myself pulling a couple of others off the shelves as well. Mysteries used to be my most reliable entertainment, and P.D. James is [...]
The Easter Parade
Posted in Fiction, tagged Review Copy on March 25, 2009 | 6 Comments »
Until the release of the film Revolutionary Road last year, I hadn’t heard of Richard Yates. The many reviews of the book and the film got me curious about him, so when his later novel, The Easter Parade, was offered through Library Thing’s Early Reviewer program, I put my name in the hat and won [...]
When Will There Be Good News?
Posted in Contemporary, Fiction, Mysteries on March 24, 2009 | 4 Comments »
In the comments to my review of One Good Turn, Steph said that Kate Atkinson is not really a mystery writer — she’s written several straight literary novels and a book of short stories, and the mystery series is something of a departure for her. I said that I thought that anyone who writes mysteries [...]
Pardonable Lies (Audio)
Posted in Audiobooks, Fiction, Historical Fiction, Mysteries on March 23, 2009 | 4 Comments »
Last spring, I read the first two books in Jacqueline Winspear’s Maisie Dobbs series in quick succession. They seemed like they should be great reads. The setting, England just after World War I, is fascinating. Maisie, the detective heroine, is independent, intelligent, and haunted by her own experiences in the war. And I had the [...]
The Universe in a Nutshell
Posted in Nonfiction on March 23, 2009 | 3 Comments »
Here is an abbreviated list of Things I Will Very Likely Never Understand:
1) Time
2) Quantum mechanics
3) String theory
4) Branes
5) Those personal ads where men take pictures of intimate parts of their bodies and expect to be mobbed by enthusiastic responses.
I read Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time almost ten years ago. I struggled with [...]
Just After Sunset
Posted in Contemporary, Fiction, Speculative Fiction on March 22, 2009 | 3 Comments »
Here’s the thing: I’m a Stephen King fan. Maybe not his number one fan (I presume that no one who has read Misery would want to call herself that), but I am pretty sure I’ve read all his novels (including the Bachman ones), all the anthologized short stories, his screenplay, the stories he put only [...]
