A Cineaste’s Bookshelf
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GIVEAWAY: The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards
This is certainly one of the best books I read in the past year. It’s fresh and funny, yet somehow heartening and grounding. Here is what I wrote about it when first released: This is the The Talented Mr. Ripley for the newest generation. It’s a twisting tale of identity and the search for true companionship. (read… Read More »
ACCENT: THE KING by Kader Abdolah
This is a sweeping epic, its narrative full of tiny stories of great import. While it is technically a fiction, it is an allegory for the Iranian political system — in the eyes of its author. Kader Abdolah is a pen name her created to honor fallen friends and the author has lived in exile… Read More »
REVIEW: WINTER PEOPLE by Jennifer McMahon
This book was terrifying. Delightfully so. McMahon's atmospheric writing is so chilling. She uses cold, solid words to evoke the sense of bleakness and ruthlessness of a New England winter.Read More »
REVIEW: THE ORPHAN CHOIR by Sophie Hannah
This may be the creepiest thing Hannah has written yet. The author so deliciously gaslights her protagonist that the reader can’t help but be taken in as well. The reader knows to be careful but it’s impossible not to slowly lose touch with sanity as the story goes on. The premise is unpretentious: Louise and… Read More »
ACCENT: THE MIST IN THE MIRROR by Susan Hill
Hill employs the standard elements — vague warning from an older gentleman, unsettling malaise, a crumbling English house, a mysterious ancestry and a naive narrator — to tell the story of James Monmouth. James, our narrator, is English by birth but has no memory of the short time he spent there as a small child.… Read More »
REVIEW: THE GHOST OF THE MARY CELESTE by Valerie Martin
I am fascinated by tales of the ocean, mysteries of the sea (I even have an interest in cryptozoology). The ocean is just so vast and for centuries uncharted. It was the greatest adventure anyone could embark upon. But even with maps and coordinates and best laid plans, ships disappear. What’s significant about the Mary… Read More »
REVIEW: CARELESS PEOPLE by Sarah Churchwell
This is a must-read for any Gatsby enthusiast, English lit student, or lover of the Jazz Age. Churchwell carefully pieces together very specific events in the Fitzgeralds’ lives and relates them to Scott’s most famous work, The Great Gatsby. These are not wild hunches or bizarre theories. She draws from scrapbooks, newspaper clippings, letters from friends,… Read More »
REVIEW: MASTERMIND by Maria Konnikova
I’ve read all the books, watched all the movies and the TV episodes. My sister and I were even Holmes and Watson one Halloween. I try to apply his logic in my daily life — mostly just for fun. And still I have not been able to determine how Sherlock survived the Reichenbach Fall (a… Read More »
REVIEW: THE VISIONIST by Rachel Urquhart
I was never a Shaker but I often wondered what it would have been like. I lived in New England for a number of years and volunteered a few summers at Canterbury Shaker Village. I spent hours upon hours in the gardens. One of my jobs was harvesting mints for their special four-mint tea and… Read More »
ACCENT: THE DEAD IN THEIR VAULTED ARCHES by Alan Bradley
This is the sixth in the Flavia de Luce series — but the first one I have read. No doubt there are aspects of the novel that I didn’t appreciate since I was familiar with the stock characters. In this episode, Flavia’s mother Harriet (who has been missing since she was a baby) is coming… Read More »
REVIEW: THE HOUSE ON THE CLIFF by Charlotte Williams
The narrator is one Jessica Mayhew, a successful psychotherapist. She becomes interested in one of her patients who has recently remembered a childhood memory. He believes he saw his father kill his au pair, throwing her off a boat near the Welch coast. This vague memory has haunted his dreams for a couple of… Read More »
GIVEAWAY: THE REAL JANE AUSTEN
GIVEAWAY I have TWO copies available for this title, which I reviewed here. Description from the publisher: Unlike the conventional cradle to grave biography, THE REAL JANE AUSTEN focuses on a variety of key moments, scenes, and objects in both the life and work of Jane Austen. As described in The New York Times Book… Read More »
ACCENT: NOSTRADAMUS by Stephane Gerson
The turn of a new year is as good a time as any to revisit our plans and perhaps read a horoscope or two. For some people these predictions are literal. Others find it to be an amusement but nothing more. This book asserts nothing about Nostradamus’s ability or even prognosticators in general. Instead, Gerson… Read More »
ACCENT: THE TIME REGULATION INSTITUTE by Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar
Those of us who are only fluent in English are so fortunate to have had this book translated from the original Turkish. The book incisively mocks bureaucracy from the point of view of clocks. The main hero is Hayri Irdal, who guides us through the strange world of the Time Regulation Institute. In this Turkey,… Read More »
REVIEW: BEING SLOANE JACOBS by Lauren Morrill
Growing up, I kinda skipped the YA genre. For one thing, it was not as prevalent. For another I was pretty “old” for my age (I still am). Sometimes I feel I am catching up for my younger self. I wish this book had been around when I was in 5th or 6th grade, and… Read More »