While there has been a lot of internet speculation (and outrage) over the latest Game of Thrones episode, “Breaker of Chains,” I have been preoccupied with a new acquisition, the Game of Thrones: A Pop-Up Guide to Westeros. Designed by renowned paper engineer Matthew Reinhart and illustrator Michael Komarck, the book is a blast, with not just the cool buildings that populate the fantasy series, but lots of fun pop-up surprises and pull-out guides to all of the warring houses from George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire novels and […]
I prefer bookstores
“There is no immortality that is not built on friendship and work done with care.” (288). It’s hard to know what to make of Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore. It’s a quest, it’s a mystery, it’s one man finding himself, and it’s the coalescing of a group of friends. It’s all this and more. Clocking in at fewer than 300 pages, Robin Sloan manages to craft an epic adventure for his protagonist and his merry band of players. And it’s simply delightful. The story is based […]
“…as if he knew even then that there existed under everything a universal grief”
I suppose that The Age of Miracles can be viewed as a dystopian novel. In it our narrator, Julia, tells us about the year she turned 12 and the Earth’s turning slowed down, eventually leading to weeks of daylight and weeks of darkness. It can also be said that this is a sad book, about the dying and destruction of our world. These things are true, but somehow Karen Thompson Walker prevents the novel from being as unbearably sad as the description might have you […]
Now I can be a Smug Book Reader too.
And I’ve finally caught up to Season 3 of HBO’s series and, according to the showrunners, informed most of what’s going to happen in Season 4. Who gleefully anticipated the Purple Wedding, y’all? THIS GAL! There are possibly spoilers in the rest of the review, though I’ve tried not to refer to anything too specific. Without a doubt, A Storm of Swords was my favorite so far of the ASOIAF series. Where, in the past, I frequently felt torn away from my favorite characters to […]
and now, another Penumbra review
I’m probably the tenth person to review Mr. Penumbra’s 24-hour Bookstore this year on the CBR, but without all those previous reviews I probably wouldn’t have heard about this novel since it’s a bit out of my typical genre. I’m a bit more “chick lit” and “historic fiction” with some YA fiction thrown in the mix. Mr. Penumbra has a bit more of a fantastical element then I look for; I prefer my books a bit more grounded in reality but this was a fun […]
The cat ran away.
I feel unsure what to say of this book. Toru Okada’s cat runs away and then he meets a bunch of people. That’s it. We cook spaghetti and we listen to his phone calls and lots and lots of people tell stories to him that we are subjected to listen to, never knowing whether this story will tie into the overall arch of finding the cat. His wife leaves him, but Toru Okada does little more than take the train and sit on a bench. […]