If you’ve seen 28 Days Later or read Jose Saramago’s Blindness or Stephen King’s The Stand, you’ll no doubt see something familiar in John Wyndham’s 1951 novel The Day of the Triffids.
The novel begins with a man waking up in a London hospital and discovering that there are no longer any doctors and nurses around. [...]
Archive for April, 2009
The Day of the Triffids
Posted in Classics, Fiction, Speculative Fiction on April 30, 2009 | 5 Comments »
Bel Canto
Posted in Contemporary, Fiction on April 29, 2009 | 10 Comments »
On Japanese businessman Mr. Hosokawa’s fifty-third birthday, an unnamed South American country has decided to host a special birthday party for him. Their hope is that they can entice him to build a plant there, to boost their economy. To draw him in, they have paid an astronomical sum for Roxane Coss, the famous soprano, to [...]
Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature
Posted in Biography, Nonfiction on April 27, 2009 | 5 Comments »
Above all, Beatrix Potter is known for her perfect, tiny books for children. There is Peter Rabbit, of course, and Benjamin Bunny, but her talent went beyond rabbits: Jemima Puddle-Duck and Two Bad Mice and Jeremy Fisher and Tom Kitten and dozens of others sprang from her imagination and her pen over the years. The stories strike [...]
Asylum
Posted in Contemporary, Fiction on April 27, 2009 | 6 Comments »
Back in February, Teresa reviewed Patrick McGrath’s splendidly dark little psychological thriller, Asylum. At the time, I was looking for a free copy of it on Bookmooch, and it’s only now that I’m getting around to reading it myself, so I’m not going to repeat Teresa’s good work: if you’d like the plot summary and [...]
The Lady and the Unicorn
Posted in Fiction, Historical Fiction on April 23, 2009 | 6 Comments »
One of my favorite topics to discuss with my college students as we’re warming up in French class is what they’re reading lately. I enjoy hearing what they like to read, and occasionally they are so passionate about it that they make me promise to read their latest favorite. That’s how I read Tracy Chevalier’s [...]
About a Boy
Posted in Bookish films, Contemporary, Fiction on April 22, 2009 | 7 Comments »
This has to be the most light-hearted book about severe bullying, dysfunctional relationships, and suicidal depression I’ve ever read.
You have to hand it to Nick Hornby. About a Boy reads as if he went out into the street in London sometime during 1998 and took a snapshot of the emotional life he found there, and then [...]
News From Tartary
Posted in Memoir, Nonfiction, Travel/ Exploration on April 21, 2009 | 2 Comments »
In One’s Company, Peter Fleming described his more-or-less solo journey across Manchuria and Mongolia in 1933. He was only 26 years old, avid for adventure, going because the going was good (for certain values of “good” — difficult, intrepid, and sometimes dangerous travel across country where few European people have ever been isn’t for everyone.) His [...]
The Chevalier (Morland Dynasty #7)
Posted in Fiction, Historical Fiction on April 21, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
The Chevalier, the seventh book in the Morland Dynasty series by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles, is another exciting, fun read. Once again, Annunciata Morland is the central character, and I’m happy to say that I found her more likable in this book than I did in The Oak Apple. She’s still rather self-absorbed, but because her self-absorption [...]
Cop Hater (re-read)
Posted in Fiction, Mysteries on April 20, 2009 | 2 Comments »
Cop Hater is the first in Ed McBain’s long, long series of police procedurals about the 87th Precinct. There were, in the end, over fifty of them, plus a smattering of short stories, all of them taking place in the great imaginary city of Isola. McBain started writing them in the 1950s, sometimes writing two [...]
One’s Company
Posted in Memoir, Nonfiction, Travel/ Exploration on April 20, 2009 | 3 Comments »
At the beginning of this book, there is a Warning to the Reader:
The recorded history of Chinese civilization covers a period of four thousand years. The population of China is estimated at 450 millions. China is larger than Europe.
The author of this book is twenty-six years old. He has spent, altogether, about seven months in [...]
