I have been wanting to check out Naomi Novik’s Temeraire series for a few years now. It checks my dragons and alternate history boxes of interest. While reading, I shared my enthusiasm for the first book of the series on Facebook. Malin shared that she hadn’t been as enchanted because the book focuses more on the military maneuverings than on the dragons. This is a legitimate complaint, but not one I had. I had immediately pictured our hero, Captain Lawrence, a naval captain reluctantly turned […]
Afraid of Vaccination Since 1901
Conversations that occur in my household… CaitlinD: You know, this book on smallpox isn’t as good as I wanted it to be. Mr. D: Um you’re surprised? CaitlinD: Smallpox should be interesting!!! So yeah, I love history and non-fiction which is probably a bit strange; but my one requirement is that it doesn’t read quite so text-booky. The majority focus of Pox is on the vaccination process the government rolled out during the turn of the century when variola minor was becoming a problem everywhere […]
Amelia Peabody, can we be BFFs?
This was SO MUCH FUN. Almost immediately, like after the very first sentence, I was quite enamored with the whole thing. The tone, the characters, the setting, the banter. Amelia is SO SASSY. She’s an example of one of my favorite character types: a person who can afford to disregard the limitations put on her because of some sort of exception or power. It’s delicious, really, watching her come into her own. So basically Amelia Peabody is a “spinster”* in the late 1800s England. Her […]
It’s Not the Fall, It’s the Sudden Stop at the End
I’ve just finished a week-long family vacation spent about 10 minutes south of Yosemite National Park. The first day we went into the valley, my husband and I hiked about 7 miles, and stopped into a few of the little stores. Everywhere we went, this book was on the shelves. If you’re familiar with any of my favorite books, it shouldn’t surprise you that this book caught my eye. Off the Wall is a well-written, fascinating, long (nearly 600 pages) book that covers all of […]
Out of Bounds
Outlander is one of those books I picked up about a dozen times in various bookstores and then put down without actually buying it. It has a lot of elements I go for–WWII! Britain! Conspicuously well-groomed and progressive men-of-the-past! Time travel!–but for whatever reason, the back of the book never grabbed me. And I heard rumblings that the book had some problems, which I will get to later. Outlander is the story of Claire Randall, an English woman freshly back from WWII where she served […]
A Cather novel about the Antebellum South.
I’m now working my way through Willa Cather’s less famous novels, and I have to say, I’m disappointed the ones I’ve been reading are less famous than they could be. The Song of the Lark, O Pioneers!, and Death Comes for the Archbishop are all very deservedly famous, but after reading Sapphira and the Slave Girl, I hope that more of her works can receive greater prominence. She’s an excellent writer and she takes her readers to a bunch of backgrounds throughout the course of North American […]
- « Previous Page
- 1
- …
- 603
- 604
- 605
- 606
- 607
- …
- 677
- Next Page »