Monsters and Critics

All Book Reviews on M&C

Monday 12 May 2008

• Book Review: The Water Garden

  

  Superb photography coupled with Geddes-Brown’s knowledgeable writing make for a dynamite combination in this visually stunning tour of some of the world’s most beautiful gardens. Distinctive water features is the unifying theme of...

• Book Review: The Indiana Jones Handbook

  Can’t get enough of the movie legend? Then dive into this delightful, partially tongue-in-cheek adventurer’s guide that councils, among other things, to be certain to pack plenty of toilet paper. Packed in with the film trivia, photos and...

• Book Review: Inspired to Knit

  

  What inspires you to knit or better yet, design a knit garment? Ever wondered where or how designers come up with their ideas? If you answered yes to any of these questions then take a close look at Orne’s new book. She includes four mini-workshops covering...

• Book Review: Armed & Magical

  

  Fans of Magic Lost, Trouble Found  will most certainly want to get their hands on Shearin’s second book of the Raine Benares series which picks up shortly after young sorceress lands on the Isle of Mid. Raine went there in order to learn how to...

Monday 05 May 2008

• Book Review: Willie Nelson: An Epic Life

  

  One needn’t be a fan of his music to appreciate this engrossing, meticulously researched chronicle of an American legend although Willie’s fans will certainly enjoy the insights and background behind his many...

• Book Review: Everyday Cat Excuses

  

  Enter the delightfully demented world of cat lover and cartoonist Molly Brandenburg as she explores the many reasons cats can’t be bothered to pay attention to their owners. Anyone who has ever been owned by a cat is well aware...

• Book Review: Blood Bank

  

  Fans of Tanya Huff’s popular Blood Ties series, either the books or the Lifetime channel renditions, will enjoy this collection of all the short stories based upon her three main characters. Vicki Nelson was...

• Book Review: The Whole Truth

  

  Multimillionaire Nickolas Creel, head of a defense conglomerate known as the Ares Corporation, is looking to create the impression that an armed conflict is imminent in order to further his own agenda. No one is better suited to the task then...

• Book Review: The Mother Factor

  

  Stymied in your personal or professional relationships? According to clinical psychologist Poulter, chances are you are suffering fallout from the Mother Factor. Although fathers play a significant role in a child’s well-being, the author argues...

• Featured Book Review: Everyman Library by Irene Nemirovsky

  

  Generally I find it a good rule of thumb that if one is searching for book reviews regarding a literary “classic” writer or even a “rediscovered classic” writer like Irene Nemirovsky, one can pretty much forget finding any reasonable criticism. Why? Because people have it so ingrained into their heads that if a writer lived a long time ago and has maintained his or her name in print, then the public just assumes that writer is great.

Thursday 01 May 2008

• Book Review: The Seventh Tower by Garth Nix

  

  Tal lives in a Dark World where sunlight is unknown. He is fortunate to be one of the Chosen, a potential keeper of the magical sunstones. His world changes when his father fails to return after a journey during which the family sunstone has been lost.

Wednesday 30 April 2008

• Book Review: The Templar, The Queen and Her Lover: A Knights Templar Mystery by Michael Jecks

  

  Queen Isabella has been sent to France to negotiate peace with the French king. 

• Book Review: The Adversary by Michael Walters

  

  A police procedural located in the unusual setting of Mongolia.

• Featured Book Review: Dubliners by James Joyce

  

  Many years ago I got into an argument with a drunken professor over James Joyce. My contention was that no scholars had ever looked into the role that Joyce’s syphilis had in the breakdown of his narrative abilities. Most have taken for granted that all of the dashing of Joyce’s style from Dubliners, his first published fiction, through Finnegans Wake, his last, was by choice.

Tuesday 29 April 2008

• Book Review: Panda by Heather Angel

  

  A wonderful, charming book guaranteed to capture the hearts of children, adults, wildlife lovers alike.

• Book Review: The Chicago Way by Michael Harvey

  

  An American Private Eye mystery in the traditional style. Michael Kelly is an ex cop who is asked to investigate a brutal rape attack which took place eight years earlier.

Monday 28 April 2008

• Book Review: Frida Kahlo: The Still Lifes

  

  Mexican painter Frida Kahlo’s vivid still lifes are the focus of this fascinating, in-depth look at an unusual, talented and tormented artist who lived from 1904-1954 and whose work remains hugely popular...

• Book Review: Lamplighter

  

  Book two of the Monster of Blood Tattoo series picks up shortly after the Foundling with young Rossamund well into his prenticeship to be a lamplighter. The boredom and repetition leave him questioning his decision to...

• Book Review: A Kiss Before the Apocalypse

  The first clue something was seriously amiss in the world came with a routine surveillance job to check on a husband’s fidelity. It turned ugly when the man in question shot his secretary in...

• Book Review: A Little Stranger

  

  Fran and Nick have been happily married for over twelve years, they weren’t rich by any means but were getting along just fine. Nick managed a trendy London restaurant and Fran enjoyed her job selling trendy...

• Book Review: Charles Fort: The Man Who Invented the Supernatural

  

  Fans of supernatural phenomenon owe a debt of gratitude to Charles Fort, a fascinating writer, also known as “the mad genius of the Bronx” who lived from 1874-1932. As this biography reveals, Charles endured a harsh upbringing with a strict disciplinarian father who...

• Book Review: The Gatherer

  

  The bizarre circumstances linking two murders sends Boston detective Mike Sams on a collision course with a demonic foe and unexpected love in Bayne’s first paranormal thriller. An archeological dig in Tivoli, Italy not far from the Vatican reveals...

• Book Review: God: The Failed Hypothesis

  Philosophy, physics and astronomy professor Victor Stenger takes the existence of God at face value by subjecting beliefs in His existence to the same set of scientific principles and arguments that are used to test any theory. Opening with a compelling...

Friday 25 April 2008

• Featured Book Review: Tin Lizard Tales: Reflections From A Train by Schuyler T. Wallace

  

  Upon reading this book, there are several ways in which it could be classified. On one hand, it is definitely travel writing, and yet it is also a compiled memoir broken down into separate essays—which discuss not only Wallace’s actual month long trip but a history of all the places he and his wife visited, the food that they ate, the people they encountered. So in other words, it is a little bit of everything.

Wednesday 23 April 2008

• Featured Book Review: Purdytion (Rooms for Rent in the Outer Planets) by Al Purdy

  

  For reasons I choose to cherish, Al Purdy and The PH Factor (a.k.a. The Goal) shine luminously in my mind, intermeshed miracles meant to last forever.

  It's 1972, first year of university, and it's hockey, hockey, glorious Canada-Russia hockey with Henderson's delirious goal one of the gaddawfullest greatest climaxes in the sport's history. (Yep, it was good for me, too <*BSEG*>.)

Tuesday 22 April 2008

• Book Review: We Will Be Heard

  

  From early strikes for better working conditions and unionization to the current erosion of civil liberties in the name of homeland security, the federal government continues its long history of intimidation and incarceration, ignoring...

• Book Review: Nebula Awards Showcase 2008

  

  Once again the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America have selected the best of the best short stories, poems, novellas and scripts for their Nebula Awards Showcase featuring the 2006 award winners. These are the sorts of creative, visionary stories that..

• Book Review: The Voice

  

  Music storeowner Charlie Madison’s quiet life is thrown into turmoil when his niece, with several men in hot pursuit, runs into his shop. Following her parents instructions, thirteen-year-old Jazmin Lutzer ran to...

• Book Review: Fat-It's Not What You Think

  

  Just when you figured you had a handle on cholesterol numbers and were sticking to a low-fat diet, along comes a book like this with a completely different take on the issue. After combing through piles of research...

• Book Review: The Triumph of Deborah

  

  Expanding upon historical accounts of the ancient conflict between the Israelites and Canaanites, Etzioni-Halevy has created a vivid, richly textured tale of feminine courage. In going against...

• Book Review: Lady and the Vamp

  

  In a cruel twist of fate, former vampire hunter Michael Quinn became the very thing he was carefully raised to hate. When Michael receives an old letter spelling out the location of The Eye, a long lost...

Wednesday 16 April 2008

• Featured Book Review: Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut

  

  Why ruin a Vonnegut review with a plot summary? Could I possibly? For those who are wondering, Vonnegut is definitely an acquired taste. [“The use of the identical expression as the title for this book is not intended to indicate an association with or sponsorship by General Mills, nor is it intended to disparage their fine products”]. A taste that happens to soothe my buds just fine. Ok, I am being cheeky. Breakfast of Champions tells the story of sci-fi writer Kilgore Trout (many who have called this character Vonnegut’s “alter ego”) and Dwayne Hoover the auto dealer.

Monday 14 April 2008

• Book Review: Before They Are Hanged

  Dark, twisted and full of subplots, second of the First Law trilogy is a surprisingly strong follow-up to The Blade Itself. Where many of the characters in the first book seemed stiff and contrived, here they become dynamic...

• Book Review: Dragons Wild

  

  Fresh out of Michigan University, business degree in hand, Griffen McCandles is facing a life crisis as he realizes he is without a job and has no idea what to do with himself. Figuring to land a cushy job with his uncle...

• Book Review: Dirty Money

  

  The story picks up shortly after the armored car robbery in Nobody Runs Forever that saw Parker and his duo of criminals stashing their haul of 2.2 million dollars to elude capture. What they failed to realize...

• Book Review-The Raven

  

  Lawson continues his saga begun in Witch Ember by focusing on Sir Guiromélans, a Medianist Knight and a Raven of the Seven Kingdoms. The defeat he suffered at the hands of a witch has left him shaken...

Friday 11 April 2008

• Featured Book Review: Lorca: A Dream of Life by Leslie Stainton

  

  On 19 August 1936, at the age of 38, internationally revered poet, musician, dramatist, and all-round artistic renaissance man Federico García Lorca was assassinated before sunrise in Granada by anti-republican rebels (mostly falangists and fascists) during the Spanish Civil War.

Monday 07 April 2008

• Featured Book Review: Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth

  

  This is an odd book. Yet, highly entertaining is it as long as excessive sexual details don’t deter you. Honestly, this book was better than I thought it would be—it’s quite funny actually, and I found myself laughing out loud. Here’s the thing: I had read Philip Roth in the past, two novellas of his, and found them to be rather humorless and silly. Portnoy’s Complaint, however, is rather silly and full of humor. So that’s not so bad.

• Book Review: Infected

  

  Renowned podcasting author, Scott Sigler blasts into the hardcover book market with this riveting combination of cutting edge medical sleuthing, covert government agencies and a nasty infectious agent that makes dengue fever look like a walk through the park...

• Book Review: A World Too Near

  

  Book Two of The Entire and the Rose series focuses on the multilayered duel between pilot Titus Quinn as he struggles to save the earth’s universe by destroying the Ahnenhoon engine and Helice Maki, an ambitious scientist with...

• Book Review: The Alchemist's Code

  Duncan revisits his historical fantasy world introduced in The Alchemist’s Apprentice with another fast-paced romp through 16th century Venice as narrated by Maestro Nostradamus’s quick witted apprentice, Alfeo Zeno. After using his crystal ball to...

• Book Review: Jewelry Studio: Wire Wrapping

  

  With the aid of detailed, close-up photography, the authors have done an excellent job of demystifying the art of creating wire jewelry. From the essential tools of the trade to exactly how to hold a set of pliers to lessen...

• Book Review: The Secret Bride

  

  Since early childhood, King Henry VIII’s little sister Princess Mary Tudor has known it was her duty to king and country to cement alliances through an arranged marriage. First Mary’s father King Henry VII arranged a betrothal to...

• Book Review: Hollywood Crows

  

  Nate Weiss an officer with the LAPD’s Community Relations Office, dreams of making it big as an actor one day thus earning him the name, Hollywood Nate. As one of the Crows, Nate doesn’t ordinarily deal with simple...

• Book Review: Bead Romantique

  

  When approached to write this book, Lisa Kan wanted to impart a sense of femininity and romance, creating elegant yet wearable beadwork that paid tribute to historical jewelry designs. One can only say that Kan met her goal with this collection of seventeen projects...

Friday 04 April 2008

• Featured Book Review: The Bay of Love and Sorrows by David Adams Richards

  

  Imagine a flimsy dinghy tossed upon a Stygian river of rough love, cheap sex, and violent death in some New-Brunswick back-of-beyond and you begin to appreciate the cruel and carnal currents David Adams Richards navigates in The Bay of Love and Sorrows.

Tuesday 01 April 2008

• Featured Book Review Of Charlie LeDuff’s US Guys: The True And Twisted Mind Of The American Man

  

    If there is one thing more depressing than bad writers, it is bad critics, who are clueless as to what constitutes bad writing.

Monday 31 March 2008

• Featured Book Review: Mr. Potter: A Novel by Jamaica Kincaid

  

  And it may be foolish to speculate whether expat Antiguan Jamaica Kincaid's novel, Mr. Potter, might have worked better as a novella or longish short story; but there it is.

Sunday 30 March 2008

• Book Review: Fried! Fast Food, Slow Deaths

  

  Indulge your taste for the demented with this darkly delightful, no-cal romp through the fast food underbelly as told through 23 inventive short stories that puts a fresh spin on dining out. Bret Jordan serves up a unique entrée in “Veggie Burger” that features...

• Book Review: Magic Burns

  

  Mercenary Guild member Kate Daniels has her hands full, Curran’s ex-girlfriend wants her to ask the lord of the beasts permission to marry Kate’s former possible love interest, the Pack wants her to locate a cachet of missing maps and a strange bowman with the ability to teleport keeps popping in, grabbing her butt and...

• Book Review: Jane Goodall: A Biography

  

  From early childhood Jane Goodall was fascinated by the natural world, a keen observer determined to figure out such mysteries as how chickens lay eggs, she spent countless hours with Rusty, a neighbor dog who showed her...

• Book Review: Fifteen Minutes of Shame

  

  Relationship guru Lisa Daily follows the old rule “write what you know” in her debut novel featuring romance expert Darby Vaughn. Happily married three years to her publicist husband Will, Darby’s career was taking off with...

• Book Review: Shibori Knitted Felt

  

  Shibori is an ancient Japanese technique of adding resists to fabric before dyeing, typically by mechanical means such as binding with running stitches. Alison Crowther-Smith has applied this definition to felting with charming results as she...

• Book Review: Start Spinning

  

  Packed with excellent detailed photos and clear written instruction, this is the sort of instruction book I wish was available when I struggled to teach myself how to spin. Beginning with an overview of...

• Book Review: The Gift of Years: Growing Older Gracefully

  

  Chittister, a Benedictine sister brings her wisdom and considerable insight to a topic that typically strikes fear in the hearts of youth obsessed Baby Boomers; growing old. Instead of viewing advancing years with...

• Book Review: Misspelled

  

  This collection of 17 short stores explores what can happen when magic spells go awry, creating some rather unusual situations for the would-be spell casters...

• Book Review: The Blue Star

  

  Readers were first introduced to ten-year-old Jim Glass in Earley’s first novel, Jim the Boy. Jim is now a high school senior at a crossroads in time, its 1941 and the world is poised to begin WWII. During this uncertain time...

• Book Review: Rolling Thunder

  

  Varley resumes his space opera tale of the Garcia-Strickland clan with the adventures of Lieutenant Patricia Kelly Elizabeth Podkayne Strickland-Garcia-Redmond, Podkayne for short. As a third generation Martian...

Friday 28 March 2008

• Featured Book Review: Christopher Marlowe: A Renaissance Life by Constance Brown Kuriyama

  

  Constance Brown Kuriyama's Christopher Marlowe:  A Renaissance Life may well become the definitive portrait of the quintessential Elizabethan "bad boy," despite the fact at least a dozen respectable Marlovian studies already exist.

Wednesday 26 March 2008

• Book Review: Dancing with Demons by Peter Tremayne

  

  Brilliant  - there is no other word to describe this history mystery.

• Book Review: Genie Us by Steve Cole and Linda Chapman

  What would you wish for if you were suddenly offered the opportunity to make your dreams come true?

Tuesday 25 March 2008

• Book Review: The Summoning by E.E. Richardson

  Justin has always been curious about his grandfather's fascination for magic even though he thinks it is a bit of a joke.

• Book Review: Bansi O'Hara and the Bloodline Prophecy by John Dougherty

  

  A good choice for an amusing story to read at  children's bedtime.

Monday 24 March 2008

• Book Review: The Bromeliad by Terry Pratchett

  

  Thousands of tiny nomes live under the floorboards of a department store.

• Book Review: A Small Part of History by Peggy Elliott

  It is 1845 and the Oregon Trail has been opened up.

• Featured Book Review: Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle

  

  In December 1994, French essayist, filmmaker, and counter-celebrity nonpareil Guy Debord helped himself out of this world with a bullet. It was a direct hit proving, if nothing else, that death's one hell of a great career move.

Saturday 22 March 2008

• Book Review: Clean Cut By Lynda La Plante

  DCI Anna Travis's relationship with colleague DCI James Langton is in trouble - and it is made worse when he is almost fatally injured.

Friday 21 March 2008

• Book Review: Soldier of Fortune By Edward Marston

  

  Historical adventure with a Sharpe like hero. Captain Daniel Rawson is a spy, ladies man and soldier. 

• Book Review: The Art Thief by Noah Charney

  

  Three masterpieces go missing resulting in three investigations in three countries.  Slowly the three begin to mesh.

• Featured Book Review: Fidel Castro: A Spoken Autobiography

  

  There are many different ways one could approach when reviewing this book. On one hand, it’s an excellent source when thinking of Fidel Castro. Not so much because of historical and objective accuracy, but one of Castro’s character. On the other hand, could one claim this a pleasant read? Unless you are just a die-hard Fidel fanatic, I think most readers would find this boring.

   

Thursday 20 March 2008

• Book Review: Dark Horse by John Francome

  When Mark Presley's wife dies in a hit and run accident, it seems that the wheel has come full circle for Mark has a guilty secret.

• Book Review: Special Operations: Dogfight by Craig Simpson

  

  Norway has just been taken over by the Germans. The Resistance is active and two teenage boys are keen to get involved.

• Featured Book Review: Mason & Dixon by Thomas Pynchon

  If it takes all kinds to make a world, then American Thomas Pynchon has indeed created several magnificently realised fictional faites accomplis comprising all such sorts and sundry kinds (from Vineland, V, and The Crying of Lot 49 to the novel generally considered his masterpiece, Gravity's Rainbow).
  

Wednesday 19 March 2008

• Book Review: The Templar by Paul Doherty

  

  The setting is 1097 and Pope Urban II has called for a crusade against the Infidel occupying the Holy Land. 

• Book Review: Innocent Blood by Elizabeth Corley

  DCI Fenwick is on a tough case trying to expose a paedophile ring. Then an eleven year old boy Sam Bowyers goes missing.

Tuesday 18 March 2008

• Book Review: Joe Rat by Mark Barratt

  

  In the dark underworld of Victorian London a boy named Joe scavenges for coins or anything useable amid the rat infested sewers of the East End.

• Book Review: The Stranger from Home by Frederic Lindsay

  

  A very gritty novel focusing on a central character very similiar in style to the well known TV detective Taggart.

• Book Review: Affair of the Mutilated Mink, The (Missing Mysteries) by James Anderson

  

  A 1930's style country house murder story. The film loving Earl of Burford is in seventh heaven when he discovers that Rex Ransom, his favourite film star, and Hollywood film producer Haggermeir want to film in his country estate.

• Book Review: Girls in Trucks

  

  As a Camellia Society debutante, Sarah Walters endured the many lectures about proper manners, correct dance steps and meeting the right sort of boys suitable for marriage consideration at the Charleston...

• Book Review: The Best Sports Writing of Pat Jordan

  

  Following three disappointing minor league baseball seasons, Pat Jordan found himself teaching English, he dreamt of becoming a successful writer when he sent off a story about Muhammad Ali and the rest as they say, is history...

• Book Review: The Martian General's Daughter

  

  In AD 2323 Justa Black, illegitimate daughter of General Peter Black recounts his life spent in service to Mathias, emperor of Pan-Polaria. If Mathias was the last honorable emperor, then General Black was certainly “the last decent man” ...

• Book Review: The Hidden City

  

  Con and businessman Rath considers himself a loner, effectively cutting himself off from his family, dealing with antiques dealers as he sells bits and pieces scavenged from the undercity. After Jewel, an orphan street urchin steals from...

• Book Review: Forgetting

  

  We have all heard jokes about losing our memory as we grow older but for millions, this is no laughing matter. Nearly everyone has wondered if they are suffering the first sign of Alzheimer’s when they can’t find their...

• Book Review: Tangled Webs

  

  The latest of the Black Jewels series begins innocently enough with an invitation to tour Queen Jaenelle Angelline’s spook house. Lady Surreal SaDiablo arrives and immediately finds herself and her escort trapped in a...

Monday 17 March 2008

• Featured Book Review: Hank Williams: Snapshots from the Lost Highway

  

  He was christened Hiram Williams, but everyone called him Hank, everyone, that is, but Irene, the protective older sister who chose contemporary countryist Marty Stuart to preserve her brother's legacy.

Friday 14 March 2008

• Featured Book Review: Of Time and the River by Thomas Wolfe

  

  The things people have told me about Thomas Wolfe. Descriptive. Long. Boring. Plodding. Misogynist. Etcetera. Ok so yes, Of Time and the River isn’t exactly a short book since the version I have finishes at 866 pages with small print and it took me a little over a week to read. But am I glad I did.

Wednesday 12 March 2008

• Featured Book Review: Museum of Bone and Water by Nicole Brossard

  

  Born in Montréal in 1943, Nicole Brossard is, arguably, Canada's greatest living poet.

Monday 10 March 2008

• Book Review: Good Neighbors, Bad Times

  

  Throughout Mimi Schwartz’s youth her father, Arthur Loewengart frequently mentioned how in the tiny German village where he grew up, “everyone got along” and “In Benheim, everyone behaved!” Trying to become as American as possible, Mimi largely ignored...

• Book Review: Grimspace

  

  Thanks to a genetic abnormality Sirantha Jax is a jumper, one of the few people capable of navigating ships through grimspace. It’s an ability that eventually kills the jumpers and until the mysterious crash...

• Book Review: Goblin War

  

  Book Three of the Goblin Novels chronicles the further adventures of Jig Dragonslayer, a most unlikely hero and high priest of one of the forgotten Gods, Tymalous Shadowstar. It also provides insight on...

• Book Review: A Million is Not Enough

  

  Financial wizard Michael Farr challenges readers to do their homework and become the architects of their personal retirement packages. The Forward by P.J. O’Rourke is hilarious and almost worth the cost of the book which is broken into...

• Featured Book Review: Still Here by Linda Grant

  

  Despite the fact it opens with a mother's death, Liverpudlian Linda Grant's Still Here is one wow of a book which calmly probes the devastating problems besetting contemporary Israel even as it coolly deploys literary allusions to die for, most notably when its cagily brilliant author makes raids on the writings of high-modernists James Joyce, Gertrude Stein, William Faulkner, Ezra Pound, et. al.; and, oh, by the way, why don't Jews drink?

Thursday 06 March 2008

• Featured Book Review of Goblin War by Jim C. Hines

  

  And so the mighty ballad of Jig comes to a close. A tale of high fantasy and drama. Of mystical creatures and magic swords and ferocious battles between elves and humans and goblins and orcs.

Monday 03 March 2008

• Book Review: Cult Watches

  

  Labeled the “leading watch industry expert” by the Financial Times, Balfour brings his considerable expertise to this beautiful volume celebrating 30 of the world’s top-selling wristwatches. Accurate timepieces have always held prestige and value beyond...

• Book Review: The Fortune Cookie Chronicles

  

  On March 30, 2005 a phenomenal number of people from across the country won big on the Powerball drawing, triggering alarm bells throughout the lottery system. Amidst fears of fraud came the discovery that the majority of those winners...

• Book Review: The Girl Who Stopped Swimming

  

  From her lovely home in the Florida gated community of Victorianna to David, her husband who is more comfortable dealing with the lines of code in the computer software he designs then with people, Laurel Hawthorne has worked hard at building a life separate from...

• Book Review: Funny Boys

  

  After New York Echoes and The War of the Roses, readers have come to expect more from Adler than this love story that gets bogged down under the weight of its tiresome, overdone Brooklyn accent. Set in New York’s Catskill Mountains during...

• Book Review: Stitch Graffiti: Unexpected Cross-Stitch

  

  Holland-Daly who learned an appreciation for needlework from her mother and grandmother has taken that love and turned it into Monsterbubbles, a cross-stitch design business. She shares her expertise by getting...

• Book Review: Lost Time

  

  Twelve-year-old Violynne Vivant misses her archaeologist parents, lost in the Lindos sands a year ago while working on a dig uncovering the mysteries of the Croon civilization and like the Croon, vanished without a trace. A security breach and theft of her father’s violin from...

• Book Review: Deep Inside

  

  This review contains adult material that might be considered inappropriate for younger readers or those with delicate sensibilities. Now that I have the attention of every teenager cruising the internet, Frost has combined erotica with some...

• Featured Book Review: If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho Translated by Anne Carson

  

  "Among the mutilated poets of antiquity, there is none whose fragments are so beautiful as those of Sappho. They give us a taste of her way of writing, which is perfectly comformable with that extraordinary character we find of her in the remarks of those great critics who were conversant with her works when they were entire."

• Featured Book Review: Desperate Passage by Ethan Rarick

  

  The Donner Party. When I first learned about them I recall my history teacher telling me about a comic strip involving two pieces of bread with a leg sticking out of it.

Tuesday 26 February 2008

• Featured Book Review of Pump Six and Other Stories by Paolo Bacigalupi

  

  It's often said that science fiction is the literature of ideas--a fictional attempt to understand the trends and science and beliefs which continually shape our present and future worlds. Unfortunately, this view of science fiction as philosophical fiction doesn't endear the genre to many readers.

Monday 25 February 2008

• Book Review: This May Help You Understand the World

  

  This is a life raft for anyone who finds themselves floundering amidst a sea of ten second sound bytes, wishing they had a better grasp of complexities of world politics and global issues. Clear, concise language sets the...

• Book Review: Madhouse

  

  Half-human half Auphe Cal Leandros and Niko, his human brother have decided end their days of running and set up a specialized detective agency in the midst of New York City. The Big Apple attracts plenty of...

• Book Review: Step-By-Step Jewelry Workshop

  

  Think of this book as Jewelry Making 101, a beginner’s course in jewelry design and construction. Starting with the basic tools and materials conveniently marked with a three star system identifying essential and desirable tools along with...

• Book Review: The Killer's Wife

  

  Floyd’s debut thriller takes a novel approach to the serial killer theme by telling the tale from the wife’s perspective. Looking back, Leigh Wren realizes there had been signs her ex-husband was not what he seemed but with a new baby, it was easier...

• Book Review: Theft

  Following The Blue Taxi, Koenings offers five novellas that explore personal growth, the depths of love, loss and relationships beginning with the rather slow “Pearls to Swine” that finds a well-to-do woman entertaining visions of...

• Book Review: Simply Modern Jewelry

  

  As editor of Stringing magazine, Danielle Fox knows a thing or two about creating stylish jewelry with a minimum of fuss. Her expertise is evident in this collection of quick, easily made earrings, bracelets and necklaces that begins with...

• Book Review: A Magic of Twilight

  

  First book of The Nessantico Cycle takes readers into the intricate Renaissance city of Nessantico just as the fiftieth anniversary of Kraljica Marguerite ca’Ludovici’s reign is set to get underway. With the ruler’s age comes threats to her throne as...

• Featured Book Review: The Reserve by Russell Banks

  

  This being my first time reading Russell Banks, I had high hopes. Yet after reading his latest novel, The Reserve, coupled with the many negative reviews it has gotten, my hopes have been a bit deflated, yet not totally. It turns out that while The Reserve is not a great book, it’s not as bad as some of what the reviewers said.

Friday 22 February 2008

• Featured Book Review: Touch to Affliction by Nathalie Stephens and Red Ledger by Mary Dalton

  

  Above all else, a successful poem demands balance between perceptual ability and conceptual agility. Readers hanker for an irrevocable alteration of the literary mindscape on the transformational shift. Sometimes it flies, sometimes it falls diddly splat. As Aristotle noted, the "aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance." Damned straight.

Thursday 21 February 2008

• Featured Book Review: What I Was by Meg Rosoff

  

  What I Was, Meg Rosoff’s third novel, is classified as juvenile fiction. So call me juvenile. It’s a lovely and confusing love story, which seems perfectly apt as love is confusing when you are sixteen (or when you a hundred). The narrator of this novel is both.

Wednesday 20 February 2008

• Featured Book Review: Worrying the Nation by Jonathan Kertzer

  Ever get the urge to throw the book at its author?

Tuesday 19 February 2008

• Book Review: New Orleans 1867

  

  To maintain an awareness of New Orleans’ importance to France’s commercial interests, the city hired noted topographical photographer Theodore Lilienthal to create a body of work for the 1867 Paris Exposition. This collection of...

• Book Review: The Woman Who is Always Tan and Has a Flat Stomach

  

  Confirmed grumps look away now, this is the best laugh-out-loud funny piece of satire you are likely to come across and what’s more, it pokes fun at those incredibly annoying “perfect” people everyone secretly hates. You know the type, the composed troop leaders, the over-organized mega...

• Book Review: Dead to Me

  

  Thanks to his gift of psychometry which allows him to view up close and personal, the experiences and history of anything he touches, Simon Canderous once again finds his love life tanked. It’s almost as frustrating as working for...

• Book Review: Simpsonology

  

  With over four hundred aired episodes, America’s longest running sitcom and animated series goes under the microscope in this comprehensive look at the creators and characters of this wildly popular television show. Delaney explores the show’s impact on society and...

• Book Review: Mystery Date

  Disastrous first dates, everyone has a few nightmarish stories about them although few are as quirky as the seventeen tales in this anthology. Editor Denise Little claims these were written by friends, which makes one wonder about...

Monday 18 February 2008

• Featured Book Review: Paws & Effect by Sharon Sakson

  

  I admit that I am a dog liker but a cat lover. Still, despite my like for dogs I was interested in reading Paws & Effect because as an animal lover, I have always been curious in knowing more regarding their “healing power”.

Friday 15 February 2008

• Featured Book Review: Doing the Heart Good by Neil Bissoondath

  

  Quebécer Neil Bissoondath's sixth work of fiction, Doing the Heart Good, invites readers into the insular world of retired Montréal English professor Alistair Mackenzie.

Thursday 14 February 2008

• Book Review: Ladykiller by Lawrence Light & Meredith Anthony

  

  Four women have been murdered amid the streets of New York City.

• Book Review: The Officer's Prey by Armand Cabasson & Michael Glencross

  

  It is June 1812 and Napoleon is about to invade Russia. When a young Polish woman is murdered by a soldier; Captain Quentin Margont of the 84th Regiment is given the task of finding the guilty person.

Wednesday 13 February 2008

• Book Review: Amazing and Extraordinary Railway Facts by Julian Holland

  

  A perfect for any railway buff or transport enthusiast while anyone interested in social history will find it equally interesting. Holland has compiled a collection of British railway trivia which amuses and intrigues at the same time.

• Book Review: Dragon Horse by Peter Ward

  Superb. A compulsive page turner. Dragon Horse offers a new slant on the traditional dragon, good and evil stories.

• Featured Book Review: The Ottawa City Project, Poems From the Blue Horizon, and we live at the end of the 20th century by rob mclennan

  

  From iconic Ottawa poet rob mclennan (a.k.a. the prolific author of a dozen-plus chapbooks or the perspicacious mini-mogul of the small-press publication set) comes a slim yet impressive triple helping of the highly accomplished wordsmith's better work, The Ottawa City Project, Poems from the Blue Horizon, and the self-published we live at the end of the 20th century.

Tuesday 12 February 2008

• Book Review: The Art of Beowulf by Mark Cotta Vaz & Steve Starkey

  

  Beowulf is one of the oldest poems still in existance. It tells of the legendary monster Grendel and Beowulf's fight. In 2007, the poem became a film, created out of a maze of drawings, CGI and motion capture technology.

• Book Review: Shadow Forest by Matt Haig

  A fairy story with a difference. Written from the point of view of Samuel Blink, he is a laid back character encountering unusual people.

Monday 11 February 2008

• Book Review: New York Echoes

  See the Big Apple through the eyes of its inhabitants in this spellbinding collection of finely nuanced short stories that explore the multifaceted, emotional world of city life. Adler’s keen observers eye and fertile imagination ring true in...

• Book Review: Unquiet Dreams

  

  Since his encounter with the terrorist elf Bergin Vize in Unshapely Things, Connor Gray found himself stripped of nearly all his druidic skills due to a mysterious dark mass in his head. Equally strange was Detective Murdock’s...

• Book Review: Embrace the Night

  

  Cassandra Palmer just became Pythia, the world’s foremost clairvoyant with all of history open to her ability to time jump, but only if she learns to control it. Apollo has promised to teach Cassie the tricks of the trade but first she must prove herself worthy of...

• Book Review: 49 Sensational Skirts

  British textile designer and recipient of a Crafts Council Development Award, Alison Willoughby brings her innovative ideas to the simple skirt. While many of the skirt treatments may not be appropriate for everyday office wear, the embellishment ideas can be toned down (or ramped up) for those special...

• Book Review: The Inventors by Alexander Gordon Smith & Jamie Webb

  

  After accidentally turning their headmaster blue; inventors Nate and Cat win a scholarship to attend a special school hosted by the world's richest, cleverest and most charismatic inventor, Ebenezer Saint.

• Book Review: Intrigue (Lady Grace Mysteries)

  A new play, Intrigue, is about to open in London. Unusually, the audience have to guess who is the murderer.  Hearing about this play, the Queen and her court are keen to be the first to see it.

• Featured Book Review: Snow by Orhan Pamuk

  

  This is my first time reading a novel by Orhan Pamuk and given his large reputation, my expectations were high. Reading it, however, left me cold—and that’s not meant to be a pun off the title. It really did. Although the work is itself very “ambitious” for its political agenda, ultimately the narrative is plodding and disjointed with no real purpose for either.

Sunday 10 February 2008

• Book Review: The Hunting Season by Dean Vincent Carter

  

  Gerontius Moore lost his parents in a bizarre car accident in Austria.

• Book Review: The Good Thief's Guide to Amsterdam by Chris Ewan

  

  A story with a difference - and well worth trying. I found it a bit slow to get into a first, but soon the pace stepped up and my attention with it.

• Book Review: The Spoke by Friedrich Glauser

  This is the final novel in the Sergeant Studer series.

Saturday 09 February 2008

• Book Review: Sebastian Drake Prince of Pirates by Philip Caveney

  Fantasy with a difference. Sebastian is not your ideal hero - a bit of a coward, a jester who is not funny and cannot make anyone laugh; accompanied
  by a talking buffalope and dwarf sized warrior.

• Book Review: The Gardener's Wise Words and Country Ways by Ruth Binney

  Nostalgia which bears wisdom for modern day gardeners.  In a world where traditional gardening methods are increasingly been sought in preference to chemical gardening;  this book throws up a lot of ideas and advice.

Friday 08 February 2008

• Book Review: The Crochet Bible by Sue Whiting

  

  Essential reading for anyone who has ever wanted to try their hand at Crochet. This book gives simple step by step instructions for a wide range of crochet stitches, both basics and more complex ones.

• Book Review: Manga Pro Superstar Workshop by Colleen Doran

  

  Japanese manga is steadily becoming mainstream in the West - shelves of books are devoted to the subject in libraries and bookshops. There is a strong following for the numerous graphic novels that are appearing.

• Featured Book Review: Gambler's Fallacy by Judith Cowan

  

  The conundrum at the core of Gambler's Fallacy, Trifluvian author and translator Judith Cowan's seven-story follow-up to her distinguished 1997 début, More Than Life Itself, involves an impressively erratic cast of fearful and fragile Quebecois characters capriciously transformed into victims of the strange vagaries of chance and serendipitous circumstance.

Thursday 07 February 2008

• Book Review: Tim, Defender of the Earth! by Sam Enthoven

  

  One of the most enthralling children's books I have seen for a while!  Different, lively and entertaining.

Wednesday 06 February 2008

• Book Review: Burial Ground by John Richards

  Ex-FBI agent Alex Rourke is drawn to an isolated spot in the American mid-West by a mysterious note saying "People are dead. You have to find the crosses. Find them or other people could die...."

• Book Review: Astrostars: The Sun Snatchers by Steve Cole

  Imagine a world in which dinosaurs were not wiped out - they simply moved into a space divided up by carnivores and herbivores. 

• Featured Book Review: The Tree of Meaning by Robert Bringhurst and The Filled Pen by P. K. Page

  

  As Penelope Fitzgerald observed, "no two people see the external world in exactly the same way. To every separate person a thing is what he [or she] thinks it is — in other words, not a thing, but a think."
  

Tuesday 05 February 2008

• Book Review: Potted History by Catherine Horwood

  

  A fascinating study of something we usually take for granted. There are lots of books about how to care for house plants - but this is the first time that anyone has looked at how these plants came to be in our homes.

Monday 04 February 2008

• Book Review: The Cruise Connection (Bob Burns Series) by Peter Kerr

  

  Another in the Bob Burns Investigates mystery series.

• Book Review: Ranger's Apprentice: The Icebound Land by John Flanagan

  

  Ideal for getting boys to read. This is the third in a series of stories about the Rangers of Araluen.

• Book Review: Murder in Midwinter by Lesley Cookman

  

  Out of the blue, Bella Morleigh is left a derelict seaside theatre by an unknown relative.  Wanting to know more about it she is put in touch with local actress Libby Sarjeant and psychic Fran Castle.

• Book Review: Getting Even: Revenge Stories

  

  Anyone who has ever been burnt by love and fantasized of a suitable payback will delight in this collection of seventeen revenge stories. Naturally, there are plenty of downtrodden women so belittled by long years of abuse that no one would envision...

• Book Review: Darkling

  

  The third volume of The Sisters of the Moon series focuses on Menolly as she fights to come to terms with her nightmarish transformation into a vampire at the hands of Dredge, a sadistic master with possible ties to the demon Shadow Wing. With the help of her sisters Camille, a witch and Delilah a shapeshifter and their boyfriends, Menolly must try to locate...

• Book Review: The First Stone

  

  Emma is used to her husband, resident surgeon Sam Colten putting in long hours at New York General but lately it has been harder then usual to cope with. When renowned cardiac surgeon Dr. Malik moved from Cleveland with his trophy wife and young daughter to take over...

• Book Review: Blood Moon

  A brief history of witches and the burning times sets the stage for the modern day fulfillment of an ancient prophesy when a girl child, “The One” would be born during the proper planetary alignments. Under a Full Blood Moon, she would come into her full powers, capable of uniting black and white witches...

• Book Review: Send Yourself Roses

  

  Spanning Tuner’s career from her sultry screen debut in Body Heat at age 27 to her latest role as Martha in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf?, this autobiography divulges the ups and downs of a savvy actress. Touching briefly on childhood moments that reveal a gregarious, well traveled...

• Featured Book Review: Savage Beauty by Nancy Milford

  

  Cannily brilliant, unconventionally beautiful, and ruthlessly committed to the perfection of her art and craft, U.S. poet and dramatist Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950) gave the Jazz Age its lyric voice.

Friday 01 February 2008

• Featured Book Review: God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater by Kurt Vonnegut

  

  It is hard not to enjoy Vonnegut. Although Slaughterhouse Five still remains my favorite book of his, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater is a quick and entertaining read that cleverly pokes fun at capitalism and greed while being fun all the way through.

Tuesday 29 January 2008

• Featured Book Review: Letters of Ted Hughes Edited and Selected by Christopher Reid

  

  The Letters of Ted Hughes, as weighty as it is, documents only a small portion of the British-born writer's epistolary output. A concise and illuminating "Editor's Introduction" by fellow poet and countryman Christopher Reid, who selected the entries for this volume, acquaints the reader, at the outset, with the physical territory and psychic terrain covered by Hughes's correspondence.
  

Monday 28 January 2008

• Book Review: Skeletons in the Closet: Stories from the County Morgue

  

  The coauthors of Cause of Death team up for another look at the frequently convoluted world of forensic investigation with this collection of true-crime cases where “things ain’t always what they seem.” Cases like...

• Book Review: Small Favor

  

  Professional wizard Harry Dresden finds his life seriously disrupted by Mab, Queen of the Unseelie fae, Winter Court of the Sidhe to whom he owes a couple of “small” favors. Gentleman Johnnie Marcone, kingpin of the Chicago underworld has...

• Book Review: Something Magic This Way Comes

  From the usual vampires and werewolves to Houdini’s mirror and talking dogs, Greenberg and Hoyt have assembled a diverse collection of magical short stories, many that dish out just desserts, play with...

• Book Review: Stephen Hawking: A Biography

  

  Most everyone is familiar with Hawking’s work, as a world-renowned physicist he changed the way we view theoretical science, black holes and assorted cosmic oddities. Now thanks to Larson, it is possible to see more of the man then...

Friday 25 January 2008

• Featured Book Review: A Whistling Woman by A. S. Byatt

  

  Right off the top, let's get down to brass facts: When it comes to A. S. Byatt, this scribe worships the page upon which she writes.
  

Tuesday 22 January 2008

• Featured Book Review: Betty Smith: Life of the Author of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Valerie Raleigh Yow