I’ve lived in Long Beach for over thirty years, and I love my hometown. It’s not easy for a town to gain international recognition when it’s living in the shadow of a major metropolitan city, but Long Beach has done just that. Long Beach is scrappy. I read D.J. Waldie’s
The Valley of Mild Appreciation
My review of The Valley of Amazement is now up on my blog. I seem to be off to a slow start; in my defence I’ve been playing a lot of Skyrim – er, I mean, reading a footnoted non-fiction book which has slowed my reading down a lot but which I will review when I am finished. (Mainly Skyrim though. If I review books from Tamriel does that count? Because some of them are quite good.) Linky here:
Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet
Jamie Ford’s Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet was my book club’s selection for January and I was pretty excited to read it. With a World War II setting, Asian cultures, and forbidden love, I assumed it would be right up my alley. Well, you know what they say about assumptions… The novel opens with 50-something Henry Lee passing a crowd gathering outside a long-shuttered hotel in Seattle, the Panama Hotel. In the basement, the hotel’s new owners discovered hundreds of suitcases’ worth […]
Chevalier: I officially don’t get it
This is the second of Chevalier’s books that I have read. Last year I tackled “Girl with the Pearl Earring” and despite the critical acclaim, it fell flat for me and I found it obvious, and sort of a chore. I also didn’t like Remarkable Creatures, but for somewhat different reasons. This novel has two narrators: Mary Anning and Elizabeth Philpot. Set in England in the 1800s, this is a story about women as they try to leave their mark on the scientific community, and […]
A trip through Dante’s Inferno
As a true lover of Dante’s Divine Comedy, I must confess that Brown’s choice of inspiration for his fourth Langdon novel hit just the right spot for me. While some readers may be bored by his lengthy descriptions of Dante’s cantos on the odyssey from Inferno and Purgatory to Paradise, I wanted more. Some readers may find his near tour-guide-style descriptions of Florence and Istanbul to be a divergence from the plot, but I was entranced and nearly salivating at the chance to visit […]
A Splendid Time Travel Tale (Or, Connie Willis Deserves All of Her Awards)
Kivrin, a historian and student at Oxford in 2054, plans a trip to the Middle Ages using the well-established technology of “the net.” She must do extensive research in order to blend in with the locals. The history department’s technicians must perform complex calculations to get her to the right location. Her instructors carefully set up a rendezvous to bring her back. No one has ever traveled to the fourteenth century before. Kivrin’s favorite professor, Mr. Dunworthy, is deeply worried for her. However, Kivrin has […]
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