*Update at bottom of post*
I’m a fan of Michael Chabon. I’ve read several of his novels, and though only The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay struck me as having truly electric, transformative power, I have enjoyed all of them and loved some of them. So when I saw Maps and Legends, a book of his [...]
Archive for June, 2009
Maps and Legends
Posted in Nonfiction on June 29, 2009 | 11 Comments »
In the Kitchen
Posted in Contemporary, Fiction, tagged Review Copy on June 29, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
You’re sitting down to dinner in a fine restaurant with a well-regarded chef who has arranged a special four-course dinner just for you. For an opening course, you’re given a selection of fine French cheeses and a lovely glass of French wine. But then the soup comes, and it’s a bowl of hot and sour soup. Even [...]
The Pillow Book
Posted in Classics, Memoir, Nonfiction on June 28, 2009 | 11 Comments »
Over the past several months, I’ve been lingering over the delightful Pillow Book by Sei Shonagon. I didn’t read it in one or two sittings as if it were a novel: rather, I read it slowly, as if each section were a prose poem, sometimes amusing, sometimes touching, but always a vivid and beautiful glimpse [...]
Speaker for the Dead (audio)
Posted in Audiobooks, Fiction, Speculative Fiction on June 25, 2009 | 3 Comments »
When I read Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card years ago, I loved it, but I had no particular desire to continue the series. The story felt complete, and some friends told me the rest of the books weren’t that good anyway. However, when I checked the audiobook for Ender’s Game out of the library, [...]
The Lost City of Z
Posted in Biography, Nonfiction, Travel/ Exploration on June 24, 2009 | 3 Comments »
Percy Harrison Fawcett was utterly convinced that there was evidence hidden in the Amazon jungle of an ancient civilization. He had found shards of pottery and rock paintings, he had spoken to Indians who had oral histories of their ancestors, and he himself had been farther into that ”green hell” than any other European man, and had survived. [...]
The Angel’s Game
Posted in Fiction, Mysteries, tagged Review Copy on June 23, 2009 | 15 Comments »
David Martín has been getting by writing penny dreadfuls under an assumed name. It’s a living, but it’s not what you’d call making a name for yourself. He’s lost the love of his life, his mentor is receiving all the accolades for a book he did most of the work on, and he has a brain [...]
Surrender
Posted in Children's / YA Lit, Fiction on June 22, 2009 | 5 Comments »
I had never heard of Sonya Hartnett until A Devoted Reader blogged about Hartnett’s novel Of a boy (aka What the Birds See) back in March. What she said sounded so good that I put Hartnett on my TBR list immediately, and when I went, list in hand, to the library, Surrender was the first [...]
The Flood-Tide (Morland Dynasty #9)
Posted in Fiction, Historical Fiction on June 20, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
The Flood-Tide, the ninth book in Cynthia Harrod-Eagles’s Morland Dynasty series, covers a relatively peaceful period in England. Under the governance of Allen and Jemima Morland, Morland Place is being restored and improved, after years of war and mismanagement. Although the Morland family no longer must worry about seeing their home ravaged by war, they [...]
The Story of the Stone, vol. 3
Posted in Classics, Fiction on June 17, 2009 | 2 Comments »
As the summer goes on, I continue to read Cao Xueqin’s The Story of the Stone (you can read my reviews of the first two volumes here and here.) If the first volume was an introduction to the huge cast of characters and the second volume settled us into the domestic routine of the two great Ning-guo and [...]
The Matisse Stories
Posted in Fiction on June 16, 2009 | 6 Comments »
I am extremely fond of the work of A.S. Byatt, both her novels and her short work. Most recently, I read The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye, and was so enchanted by those five fables that I eagerly sought out another book of her short fiction. This time, I read The Matisse Stories, three stories [...]
