A Cineaste’s Bookshelf
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REVIEW: DEAD WAKE by Erik Larson
In Larson’s latest, he manages to bring tension worthy of The Hunt for Red October or Das Boot to a pivotal day in May 1915. Two vessels, unaware of their fates, barrel toward an outcome the reader knows all too well. Despite the fact most are aware of at least the basics of the sinking of the… Read More »
GIVEAWAY: LES MISERABLES by Victor Hugo
Thanks to the fine folks at Penguin Classics, I have one copy of a new translation of Victor Hugo’s classic to giveaway. To enter: 1) Share this giveaway. 2) Leave a comment, with a link to your “share” and please include your email so I can tell you you’ve won. 3) Sing… Read More »
ACCENT: AMERICAN GHOST by Hannah Nordhaus
I am very lucky to have a grandmother and a father who are very into genealogy and ancestry. She held on to family quilts and dug up photos of relatives long since gone. I have the strange privilege of looking back on this people, 150 years ago, knowing that although we never met, we are… Read More »
ACCENT: LOST IN TRANSLATION
So many times, even the best writers among us, are at a loss for words. It’s why we turn to idioms and metaphors. We attempt to construct something that will convey what we are thinking. And that is usually because we don’t have a word for it. Luckily, many languages do, and Ella Frances Sanders… Read More »
ACCENT: THE TURNIP PRINCESS
The archetypal story of untapped treasure has been proven possible again. Erika Eichenseer discovered thirty boxes of von Schonwerth’s manuscripts just waiting to be uncovered. Hoping to find such a trove, Eichenseer brought to light what had been stored in the Regensburg archive for more than a century. Fairy tales are fantastical by their… Read More »
REVIEW: BLACK DIAMONDS by Catherine Bailey
Anyone with a penchant for the tension between the past traditions and the coming future (a la Lord Grantham in Downton Abbey) and historical nonfiction should pick up Black Diamonds. Catherine Bailey, author of The Secret Rooms, has once again scoured archives private and public looking for the missing links in noted family’s story. Posterity… Read More »
ACCENT: THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN by Paula Hawkins
Comparisons to Gone Girl are inevitable so let me start there. Yes, this is a suburban suspense, with a (perhaps) unreliable narrator at the heart of it. She views her old home from the commuter train everyday. My head leaning against the carriage window, I watch these houses roll past me like a tracking shot in… Read More »
Parisian Art Heists
Unbecoming by Rebecca Scherm In a dusty corner of Paris, Grace works in an antique repair shop. She fixes the tiny baubles on chandeliers, the cracking of gilt frames and the prongs of antique jewelry. But Grace is not just a woman having a youthful adventure. But behind her small tools and magnifying glass,… Read More »
REVIEW: MR MAC AND ME by Esther Freud
Freud has imagined the summer of 1914 for Charles Rennie Mackintosh and his wife through the eyes of Thomas Maggs, a thirteen-year old boy who lives on the Suffolk Coast. The artist couple takes a cottage in the small town, far from their busy, stressful lives in Glasgow. The novel is told a first person… Read More »
ACCENT: A PLEASURE AND A CALLING by Phil Hogan
It is every bit as creepy as the cover implies. Mr Heming is a quiet realtor in a tiny English town. Many of his neighbors couldn’t tell you his name, if they noticed him at all. He goes about his business efficiently, under the radar. But he’s not your typical realtor. Mr Heming makes… Read More »
REVIEW: DID SHE KILL HIM?
Stuck in the airport? Stuck with the in-laws? Feeling a bit murderous? Escape with this engrossing true (mainly unsolved) crime from Victorian England, with its roots in the American South. Florence Chandler, every inch the southern belle, took a steamer from New York to Liverpool in 1880. Her gold-digging mother planned to shop her on the… Read More »
ACCENT: MISSING REELS by Farran Smith Nehme
Nehme, author of the acclaimed classic film blog Self-Styled Siren, has written a novel. Drawing on her extensive and joyful knowledge of old Hollywood, and her actual time living in NYC in the 1980s, she created a naive but likeable protagonist in Ceinwen Reilly. Somewhat predictably, Ceinwen works at a vintage clothing shop and shares a… Read More »
READS for your winter break
A few days off mean more time to read. Right? Even between all the travel, parties and meals, we bibliophiles can usually find a few secret hours to read. Here are my suggestions on what to read (and what to skip) on your winter break. the big black lizard big book of locked-room mysteries Edited… Read More »
ACCENT: FOXCATCHER by Mark Schultz
In the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, Mark Schultz won a gold medal in wrestling. His brother, Dave, won as well in a higher weight class. The Schultz brothers represented a dynasty in that part of the athletic world. From the world stage, Mark was recruited to be the anchor for John du Pont’s world-class training camp… Read More »
ACCENT: THE MURDER OF HARRIET KROHN by Karin Fossum
Scandinavian literature is still a mystery to me most of the time. I think I like it, but I can’t quite decide. That area of the world definitely has distinct modes of storytelling. Some of it is dark and heavy, like Russian literature. At other times, it feels closer to an Old English or… Read More »