A Cineaste’s Bookshelf
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REVIEW: THE UNINVITED GUESTS by Sadie Jones
The book's uncanniness is quickly addictive. Just when it seems to find a tack, it changes direction again. Various scenes come in and out of focus and the author manages to demonstrate contemporaneous events very well. A very enjoyably out-of-body experience.Read More »
REVIEW: MIDNIGHT IN PEKING by Paul French
I noted when I first read this, and I still find it true: This is the best true crime book I have read since The Devil in the White City. Paul French painstakingly recreates not only the last days of Pamela Werner, but a crumbling China. Like the Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago, Peking… Read More »
Poe Baseball Card
How cool is this? A baseball trading card made by the very cool folks at Novel-T. It seems the only way to obtain this awesomeness is to visit their booth, #211, at (LATFOB) this weekend.Read More »
GIVEAWAY: Midnight in Peking
Thanks to the folks at Penguin, I am giving away a hardcover copy of MIDNIGHT IN PEKING by Paul French. It’s the best historical true crime I’ve read since The Devil in the White City. (My full review is here) To enter, please: 1. Leave a comment, with link to a Facebook or Twitter post… Read More »
REVIEW: KINO by Jurgen Fauth
I’m not exactly sure where to begin. This book is incredibly fresh and exciting, yet nostalgic and wise. The narrative centers around Mina, a newlywed whose husband is hospitalized during their honeymoon. She mysteriously receives cans of film reels, a lost movie made by her grandfather, a German director. Intrigued, she takes them to Germany… Read More »
REVIEW: THE BEDLAM DETECTIVE by Stephen Gallagher
My frequent readers will no doubt sigh and shake their heads at me for reading another English Victorian – set novel to do with murder and madness. I know what I like – what can I do? But this book was different. While it used the framework of a Victorian sensational novel (although it’s technically… Read More »
REVIEW: THE CHILD WHO by Simon Lelic
This novel is a balanced mixture of psychological thriller and police procedural, primarily told from the point of view of Leo Curtice, a defense lawyer. He is assigned the case of Daniel Blake, a twelve-year-old accused of killing his eleven-year-old classmate. Curtice seems clear that his job is to protect the boy as his… Read More »
REVIEW: ELEGY FOR EDDIE by Jacqueline Winspear
A Maisie Dobbs Novel I am quite aware that this is a series, and a popular one at that, but this is the first Maisie Dobbs novel I have read. Spunky and precocious, Dobbs defies convention by owning her own business and having skipped a few rungs on the social class ladder. Maisie grew up… Read More »
REVIEW: THE FACE THIEF by Eli Gottlieb
This was one of those books that just appeared, unsolicited, in my mailbox. While I always give those surprise titles a glance, I usually don’t have time to read and review them in addition to the ones I’ve already committed to. Add to that my suspicion of modern novels and it’s strange that I even… Read More »
REVIEW: GILLESPIE & I by Jane Harris
I am still reeling from this book. Surprising at every turn — and I’m not easily surprised. Nor am I easily impressed, particularly when it comes to books. The writing is fabulous – both in style and in storytelling. The first-person narrator, Harriet Baxter, is an older women now, in 1933. She has decided to… Read More »
REVIEW: THE COINCIDENCE ENGINE by Sam Leith
If HG Wells, Dave Barry and Jasper Fforde had a child, it would be Sam Leith. Refreshingly original and smart, this novel follows multiple points of view ranging from a lovesick youth, a thug with no ability to judge consequences, a mastermind with a cutting sense of humor and an agent with a troubled past.… Read More »
REVIEW: THE BLACKHOPE ENIGMA by Teresa Flavin
This was another young adult (I’d place this in the 9-13 year old age range) title that made its way into my review pile. Something about its description, and yes, its cover, kept tempting me. It centers around a group of young teens who are assigned to do a historical art project. Two of the… Read More »
REVIEW: HOW TO LIVE, OR, THE LIFE OF MONTAIGNE by Sarah Bakewell
I must say, I prefer biographies of this sort. It’s far too arrogant for a biographer to think they can just begin at the beginning and go from there. Bakewell instead takes a more meaningful approach to a thinker, philosopher, and writer four-hundred years and a language removed. She drops in, like a neighbor stops… Read More »
REVIEW: THE DOLL by Daphne du Maurier
The Lost Short Stories These tales written very early in her career (1926-1932), long before Rebecca. Some were published much later, some not at all. It’s fascinating to see the writer she would become taking shape in these early stories. Sometimes they style is slightly more simplistic as though they were first drafts or rough… Read More »