Metamorphoses, Books 6-10

Some years ago, I read Italo Calvino’s collection of Italian folktales. As I read that large work (well over 700 pages), I became fascinated by the way folk tales and fairy tales operate by rules: be kind, be generous, be the third son if possible, and so on. While reading Ovid’s Metamorphoses, I tried to [...]

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Fatale

Sometimes there’s no accounting for taste, including my own. I could come up with a list of reasons that I’m unenthusiastic about Fatale, the J.P. Manchette novel newly translated from the French, but I’m not sure any of those reasons are particularly good ones. The novel is entertaining enough, but it just didn’t do much [...]

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The Drawing of the Three (Dark Tower #2)

When we saw him last, Roland the gunslinger was sitting on a beach, alone, pondering a prophesy. The man in black, whom he’d been pursuing throughout The Gunslinger, told him his future in three cards: The Prisoner, The Lady of Shadows, and Death (“but not for you”). In The Drawing of the Three, we see [...]

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Take This Bread

Subtitled, “the spiritual memoir of a twenty-first-century Christian,” Take This Bread is Sara Miles’s account of her journey into Christianity and the founding of the food pantry at Saint Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church in San Francisco. It’s an inspiring story of an unexpected conversion and an unconventional ministry at an unusual church. Miles, actually [...]

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Sunday Salon: Meeting the Author: Mary Doria Russell

I’ve never been all that interested in going to author signings and meeting authors and so on. I suppose this partly comes from my penchant for reading dead authors, but it also comes from the fact that writing a book doesn’t necessarily make a person interesting. Plus, I often feel like readings and signings are [...]

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Martin Misunderstood (audio)

Karin Slaughter is one of the many crime writers who has been on my radar for years without ever making it onto my TBR list. All I really know about her is that she’s popular and prolific. I’ve found that popular crime fiction can be either sublime or dreadful, so I’ve remained mildly curious about [...]

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Out of the Blackout

The possible unreliability of memory is one of those plot hooks that will catch my interest every time. Give me a story about amnesia, lost memory, or conflicting memories, and I’ll at least consider giving it a try. Add in a World War II English setting and a cold-case mystery, and I’m in. Robert Barnard’s [...]

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The Measure of Days (Morland Dynasty #30)

Cynthia Harrod-Eagles continues her slow march through World War I in this, the 30th book in the Morland Dynasty series. The book begins with what may be the most upsetting news a family back home could receive: the news that one of their men is missing. The previous book, The Burning Roses, hinted strongly at [...]

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Sunday Salon: On Obligations, Partnerships, and Independence

Ever since attending BookExpo America, I’ve been thinking a lot about the relationships between bloggers and publishers. I’ve read lots of great posts on the topic (some of which I’ll reference below), and I’ve been mulling over how I want to navigate that relationship for myself. I share these thoughts not to tell others what [...]

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Flight

Zits is 15 years old and miserable, angry really. One source of his misery is right there in his name. He’s tall and skinny; he believes he looks like “a bag of zits tied to a broomstick.” He’s also alone. His American Indian dad left him when he was a baby, and his Irish mother [...]

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