Posts under ‘Book Reviews’

This is not your childhood’s Judy Blume. Summer Sisters begins with a phone call, as someone named Vix (Vix?) finds out that someone named Caitlin is going to marry someone named Bru (Bru?). Then Vix runs to the bathroom to puke, and then BAM! It’s flashback time. It keeps being flashback time for about the [...]

The tag-line for this book reads “Max was just a hillbilly . . . until he became STARMAN JONES”. Is that not amazing? The rest of the book — the innards, I mean — is pretty good as well, although with all Heinlein it reads as terribly dated. Starman Jones was first published in 1953, [...]

I’ve been on a minor Robertson Davies kick lately, and What’s Bred in the Bone has once again proved itself to be an example of Davies at the very top of his game. It seems to me that everytime I try to explain why he’s so great I end up dissolving into incoherency — blaasrhghghahrarhagh [...]

I would have loved this book as a twelve-year-old, if I had been allowed to read it, which I wasn’t. I’m not sure why that is — well, I haven’t asked — but being a decade past the targeted reader age I figured that it was probably safe for me to finally take a look [...]

I know that Jodi Picoult has legions of fans who will disagree with me on this, mayhap violently, but I’m going to say it anyway: I really don’t see what’s supposed to be so great about her books. Vanishing Acts was just kind of spectacularly okay. Is particular novel an outlier? Are other books fantastic? [...]

Attention Kathy Reichs: I’ve figured you out. I’ve been reading your Temperance Brennan series, and I think that I’m ready to take over if you ever get tired of doing them. I might need some help with the forensics, but I’ve figured out all of the other necessary plot elements: Temperance Brennan must get bonked [...]

I have to tell you, I was all set to hate this book. For one thing, it arrived in the mail in a completely unsolicited fashion, and so I took one look at it and thought, I really don’t want to read this right now. And for a long time I didn’t want to read [...]

You know, it’s terribly unfashionable to admit this sort of thing, but there is something about the thought of Empire that just thrills me. It’s the words, I think. Fleet. Empire. Armada. The sun never sets, etc. etc. And yes, I know that colonialism is bad, blah de blah de blah, but let me tell [...]