Neuromancer

Although I often love science fiction films, I’ve never been a huge reader of science fiction, so over the last several years, I’ve been trying to read some of the classics of science fiction that I’d never gotten around to. One of the books I particularly wanted to try was the original cyberpunk novel, Neuromancer [...]

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Guarding the Golden Door

In this ambitious book, Roger Daniels attempts to trace the history of immigration in the United States from 1882 to the present day. It’s a huge task; I for one had no idea how huge it was until I started reading Guarding the Golden Door for my church’s book club. The massive scope of the [...]

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Sunday Salon: You Are What You Eat

Since Teresa is busy this weekend, I’m taking this opportunity to talk about two of my favorite things: food and books. Not books about food, though I love those, too. Food memoirs like Ruth Reich’s Tender at the Bone or Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential, or even books about where our food comes from like Michael [...]

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The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation: Volume 1, The Pox Party (audio)

In colonial-era Boston, Octavian lives an unconventional life. His home is also the home of the Novanglian College of Lucidity, a group of philosophers and scientists who are providing Octavian with an excellent education even as they study his every move, right down to the movements of his bowels. His mother, once an African queen, [...]

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The Chalet Girl

I don’t read a lot of romance novels or chick lit (a term I still find moderately useful to describe contemporary comic romances), but sometimes I do get a craving, and it’s nice to know which authors are reliable. So when I read this terrific post at Vulpes Libris about what too often goes wrong [...]

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Queen Pokou

I had the opportunity to read Véronique Tadjo’s novel Reine Pokou because of the Francophone African literature class I’m teaching this semester. I wanted to find a book that let us take a look at some of the issues that arise in women’s narrative in Africa, but some of my students had already studied the marvelous So [...]

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Daddy-Long-Legs

Sometimes when I read children’s or young adult classics, I think wistfully that I wish I’d read them when I was a child, because I don’t appreciate them quite as much now as I would have then. I’ve missed out on something essential. But sometimes when I read them, I only wish I’d read them [...]

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The Cause (Morland Dynasty #23)

Opening in 1874, The Cause, the 23rd book in Cynthia Harrod-Eagles’s Morland Dynasty series, finds the central characters pretty much where they were when the previous book ended. Venetia Morland is struggling to balance her hopes for a medical career in the face of many obstacles with her desire to maintain peace with her family. [...]

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Tamara Drewe

About a year ago, I read Gemma Bovery by Posy Simmonds. I enjoyed it a lot: her modern retelling of Emma Bovary, in graphic-novel format, struck me as clever, witty, and urbane. I was therefore very interested in reading Tamara Drewe, which is another modern way-we-live-now graphic novel loosely based on Thomas Hardy’s Far From [...]

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Sunday Salon: The Book of the Year!

I know that there are more than three months left in the year, but I can say with confidence that I have just this week gotten a copy of what will be the most significant publication of the year for me. However, it’s not so much a book to read, nor is it one I [...]

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