Books
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Review: Feast Day of Fools (Hackberry Holland #3) by James Lee Burke
Sheriff Hackberry Holland is at it again! James Lee Burke’s third Hackberry Holland novel, Feast Day of Fools, is a tremendously complex and gritty mystery novel sure to make you stand up and pay attention. The fabulous ladies over at The Book Lady’s Blog were giving away this novel as part of their weekly Friday Reads give-a-way and I was the lucky winner. I have never read anything by this author and was very excited to receive it after I read the description(not to mention I love the cover!). It sounded like a novel that I would not normally read which intrigued me. I am always enthusiastic about reading books that…
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2012 Outlander Series Reading Challenge, Sign up now!
It’s that time of year again Sassenachs! Time to sign up for the Outlander Reading Challenge 2012! This is the time of year where all my fellow readers begin looking for new year reading challenges and book clubs and unlike last year, I am getting an early start and spreading the word about the Outlander Series Reading Challenge that I am hosting again this year. This is the second annual Outlander Series Reading Challenge, last year was my first year hosting the challenge and after great success I decided to host it again this year! I will be changing the format slightly from last years style. Last year I just read…
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Review: The Caldecott Chronicles No.1 by R.G. Bullet (Short Story)
Sweet succulent brains, that is what the undead are looking for in The Caldecott Chronicles by RG Bullet. Though the word ‘zombie’ is never used in the short story it is clear, the 32nd Earl of Rothshire and his home are under siege…from the undead….the zombies are coming! BRAINS! Since this is more of a short story, my review will not be as lengthy. The author was kind enough to give me an ARC of the short story, since he knows I am a huge Victorian/Gothic lit fan. I was really excited to start reading it when my e-copy of the story arrived. This is only the first installment and I…
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Review: A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
Like music to a readers ear, Jennifer Egan’s novel A Visit from the Goon Squad flows lyrically from page to page. The story, character, words, and tone of the novel come together in perfect harmony from beginning to end. I had the pleasure of meeting Jennifer Egan at Portland’s book festival, Wordstock, this past month where I had her sign my copy of Goon Squad. Not only was she charming and polite in person, she was also very ‘real’ and down to earth, smiling and greeting every fan and answering all their questions with genuine interest. I had heard lots of great things about this novel, not to mention its…
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Review: Murder at Mansfield Park by Lynne Shepherd
Hold on to your bonnets, there’s been a Murder at Mansfield Park! In this charming Jane Austen spin off, author Lynne Shepherd takes a classic English novel and turns it into a classic ‘who done it’. Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park is the only Austen novel I have not read ironically, for some reason it just never appealed to me. Everyone says that Fanny Price is the worse Austen heroine ever, though I cannot claim my own opinion of the original Fanny Price, I can say with confidence I didn’t care for the Shepherd version of Price in this book which was the obvious point of her novel. I’ve only read a…
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Review: The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
Facts. What are the simple facts of a story? How much background, story, context, and fact does one need when assessing a mystery? Imagine for a minute that you are a jury or perhaps an investigator of a mystery, what facts would you want? What are important? What would influence your decision? That’s what happens in The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins…we get the facts of a case presented to us from various sources and we must assess the facts and piece the story together through intricate statements/narratives by the main characters. When I first started The Woman in White, I had my doubts. I was worried that the…
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Review: The Fleet Street Murders (Charles Lenox Mysteries #3) by Charles Finch
I can feel fall in the air which means it’s time for another mystery book! This time I read the next book in the Charles Lenox mystery series, The Fleet Street Murders by Charles Finch. I started reading the Lenox series as part of the Historic Fiction Reading Challenge. When I started the series, I didn’t really know what to expect…I had heard mixed reviews about it. But after finishing the first book, A Beautiful Blue Death, I was pretty much hooked. I guess we can still consider this book part of the Historic Fiction Reading Challenge though it’s technically ‘over’ for me, my goal was to read just two…
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Review: Heartless (Parasol Protectorate #4) by Gail Carriger
I managed to read another book. This time I read Heartless by Gail Carriger as part of the Steampunk Reading Challenge! Originally I selected only the first two books of Carriger’s Parasol Protectorate series, but after reading Soulless I was hooked on the series and subsequently read Changeless and Blameless. Heartless is clearly a steampunk novel, not just because it features all kinds of dirigibles and steam powered machines but because it distinctly has the scientific flair that defines the genre in general. Heartless picks up right where the last Parasol Protectorate left off…with protagonist Lady Alexia ‘soulless’ Tarabotti Maccon pregnant and trying to avoid all hell breaking loose in…
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Review: The Beekeeper’s Apprentice (The Mary Russell #1) by Laurie R. King
I desperately needed something fun and easy to read….and this time of year I just love a good mystery….something about the turning leaves and the cool, slightly foggy mornings….geese flying south for the winter, the pumpkins ripening….I just love fall and always associate mysteries as the season’s preferred genre….maybe it’s the spirit Halloween (incidentally that is my fav holiday as well)! I just finished reading The September Society by Charles Finch and was hungry for another mystery but was waiting for my mom to give me back my copy of the next book in the series (The Fleet Street Murders) that I plan on reading next. So I was stuck…
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Review: The September Society (Charles Lenox Mysteries #2) by Charles Finch
How perfect and fitting that I am finishing this book today on the first day of September! I’ve just come off a string of long and content heavy books. So I just mentally needed a break from reading things that were hard/complicated, wordy, and had long, extensive family trees (which is so typical of English literary classics and British based books like Outlander or Through a Glass Darkly!). So, I was eager to read something else historically based but yet something I also knew to be a little less complicated and easy to read/understand….I immediately turned to the next book in the Charles Lenox Series, The September Society by Charles…