A Cineaste’s Bookshelf
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What are you reading?
My reading as of late has been a bit haphazard, I will admit. I also have multiple books going and I rotate between them as my mood suits. But the past month or so has been enormously stressful and I've found it difficult to concentrate long enough to read a few pages. A fewer major milestones at work have passed so I am working to get back into a rhythm again.Read More »
D-DAY GIRLS by Sarah Rose
In 1942, an Allied victory was far from certain. Britain was barely holding its own after a battering in the Blitz and America was only just agreeing to enter the war. Using recently declassified files, diaries, interviews and more, Sarah Rose tells the stories of a handful of unlikely spies who paved the way for the Allied invasion.Read More »
SMOKE AND ASHES by Abir Mukherjee
The adventures of Sam Wyndham and Surrender-Not continue in this third installment of the series by Abir Mukherjee. I haven’t read the other two but I had no trouble jumping right into the adventure in 1920s Calcutta. Set in the uneasy era between Queen Victoria’s stabling reign and the uprising of anti-colonial leaders, Sam Wyndham… Read More »
Sea People
The mystery of Polynesian culture has baffled scientists, explorers and linguists for centuries. They are a people with shared traits scattered across tiny dots of land in a sea of ten million square miles. But where did they come from, and how did they get there? More importantly, how did they know to look there?Read More »
Things That Make Me Pick Up a Book
My friends and family will probably say, "What makes you not pick up a book?" It's true -- I am incredibly drawn to them. A whole world exists in such a small footprint. But there are a few things that make a book irresistible to me.Read More »
The Vanishing Man by Charles Finch
Finch explores Shakespearean rumor, English history, mystery, and a bit of a quest adventure. He winds together the Dissolution of the Monasteries, steamers on the Thames, riddles, and the complicated dance of high society. Read More »
The Stranger Diaries
Clare Cassidy, high school English teacher, is stunned when her friend and coworker is murdered. Shock turns to fear when she realizes the killer is referencing author R.M. Holland, the mystery writer Cassidy is researching. Inscrutable clues hover just around the edges of Holland's stories and former home. Read More »
Books for March
“It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade.” ― Charles Dickens, Great ExpectationsRead More »
More Deadly Than The Male
Rudyard Kipling wrote, "For the female of the species is more deadly than the male," in his 1911 poem. It was not warriors or kings that need be feared, he suggested, but the women who worked in mischievous ways. Here editor Graeme Davis brings together ghostly horror stories penned by women from the long 19th century. Read More »
Latest additions to my reading list
It's amusing to look at my list and see how varied my it is: a Western, a copyediting book, French history, gothic fiction and more.Read More »
REVIEW: THE PARAGON HOTEL
Alice James has jumped a cross-country train to escape from an unknown pursuer. Fighting off searing pain and feverish hallucinations, her Pullman porter insists she come to The Paragon Hotel to hide while she recuperates. This seems like a reasonable enough arrangement. But this is the 1920s, and Alice is white and The Paragon is only for blacks.Read More »
Top Ten Tuesday: Winter reads
I've actually got a fair amount of time off work for this winter break and I'm so looking forward to some serious reading time. I'll definitely be celebrating jolabokaflod as well. Here are some of the titles coming out this winter that I'll be reading. Read More »
Top Ten Tuesday: Ghostly winter reads
There is a contingent of readers and writers trying to bring back the Christmas tradition of telling ghost stories around the fireplace. After all, A Christmas Carol is really a ghost story, and Christmas does fall during the darkest time of the year. And with the Icelandic tradition jolabokaflod taking hold here too, a good stack of ghastly reads is just the thing for the season.Read More »
ACCENT: The Woman in the Water
Veteran author Charles Finch presents the first in a trilogy of prequels featuring his thoughtful gentleman detective.Read More »
Books for November
"November comes / And November goes, / With the last red berries / And the first white snows. / With night coming early, / And dawn coming late, / And ice in the bucket / And frost by the gate.” ~Elizabeth CoatsworthRead More »