Category Archives: Uncategorized

Before they’ve even arrived at the remote Canadian island where they are to spend their summer, Barnaby and Christie are making trouble. The two 10-year-olds met on the boat over and immediately started quarrelling and getting into trouble. But a … Continue reading →

The Song of Achilles is Madeline Miller’s much-lauded retelling of the story of Achilles and Patroclus. I enjoyed Miller’s Circe last year, as well as Pat Barker’s The Silence of the Girls, which looks at the Trojan War from the perspective of Briseis. … Continue reading →

When I read classic novels, I often find myself having to put myself in the mindset of a different time, reminding myself that attitudes commonly understood to be wrong today were less well understood then. In a lot of cases … Continue reading →

This debut novel by Nancy Johnson is a thoughtful exploration of issues related to race and class in the early Obama years, but it’s also pretty frustrating and ultimately not especially rewarding.  The book’s main character, Ruth Tuttle, is a … Continue reading →

Sylvia Harrison has written dozens of novels and multiple series, but now that she’s in her 70s, widowed, and diagnosed with cancer, it seems that her career, and her life, are winding down. This is a serious concern for the … Continue reading →

The last book I read by Lydia Millet, Sweet Lamb of Heaven, was a sort-of thriller that never quite gave in to actually being a thriller (and was therefore not quite as good as it should have been). A Children’s Bible is … Continue reading →

I don’t know about you, but I feel like November 2020 was simultaneously the longest and shortest month of the year so far. It was short in that it can’t possibly be December already (much less late December now that … Continue reading →

Happily, I was able to do much more reading in July than I did in June! A lot of it was an exploratory sort of reading — will I enjoy this? What about this? — and some of it was … Continue reading →