Leaving on a jet plane

The Nook is packed: David Nicholl’s One Day, Isabel Wolff’s A Vintage Affair, Iain Pears’ Stones Falls, couple old Martha Grimes & Georgette Heyers, The New Yorker and other assorted books for all seasons and reasons. New Tana French on order. While I’m gone, you might like Deirde Madden’s Molly Fox’s Birthday, Deborah Noyes’ Captivity, [...]

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Furst mission accomplished

My heart always beats a little faster upon spying a new novel by Alan Furst.  It’s no secret that I am a longtime fan of Furst, “who uses the shadowy world of espionage to illuminate history and politics with  immediacy.” I wrote that in a review of one of his earlier works, Dark Star or [...]

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Easy, breezy summertime

Hollywood calls them rom-coms, as in romantic comedies. Publishers label them chick-lit. I’ve always thought of them as beach books, even if I’m reading them in winter. They make me think of sun and porches and peaches and girl-talk. But now it really is summer, and I’ve been downing them like pink lemonade. Jill Murray, the likeable heroine [...]

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When food has feelings

I spent a couple hours yesterday trying to find a Steven Millhauser short story I read years ago. Of course, I couldn’t remember the name of it, although I was pretty sure I had the anthology where I first read it. Something about libraries. But what was the name? Many internet searches later, I had the [...]

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End in sight, or apocalypse wow (via On a Clear Day I Can Read Forever)

A thunderstorm interrupted the first posting. Here’s all of it. Coming soon to this space my take on Justin Cronin's The Passage, but we are having a helluva thunderstorm and I'm logging off for now…. If the lights go out, it will be so appropriate. Ok, it's two hours later, I'm back, and so's the [...]

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End in sight, or apocalypse wow

Coming soon to this space my take on Justin Cronin’s The Passage, but we are having a helluva thunderstorm and I’m logging off for now…. If the lights go out, it will be so appropriate. Ok, it’s two hours later, I’m back, and so’s the electricity. Made me think of the residents of First Colony [...]

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Gatsby lite

I love the cover and title of Danielle Ganek’s The Summer We Read Gatsby. The book, not so much. Oh, it’s a pleasant summer beach tale — two half-sisters living for a month in the rickety Hamptons cottage inherited from an eccentric aunt.  But I was led on by the Fitzgerald references, and the publishers’ blurb, [...]

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Spring before summer, part one

The recovering journalist in me is channeling the White Rabbit: “I’m late, I’m late.” The reader in me is already devouring summer books. The blogger in me is now going to play catch up over the next few days with several spring books in hopes that pesky rabbit will shut up and give this lupus-lazy tortoise [...]

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Destination imagination

I’m going to wait on butterbeer. My Theme Park Ranger pal Dewayne assures me it’s kind of yummy, but I can’t imagine that it’s good enough to make me stand in line when the the Wizarding World of Harry Potter opens June 18th at Universal Studios here in Orlando. Snow may be glistening on the turrets of Hogwarts, but it’s [...]

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