About stories of all kinds
The Haunted Bookshop by Christopher MorleyMy rating: 4 of 5 starsI really loved this book on first read—the atmospheric bookshop, the eccentric proprietor, the silly love-story, and the espionage plot shoe-horned in throughout. What’s not to like? Recently when I was skimming through it in search of a quotation, I got caught on so many… Continue reading Judging Spies by Their Covers: The Haunted Bookshop Review
Reading this book just made me want to read the first one again... This is portal fantasy and fractured fairy tales and an original fantasy world and parallel universes and alternate history all rolled into one.
A dying motel with a custom built tower, a night-walking sister who is obsessed with Hitchcock, and a grandmother who tells stories of monsters combine to create a setting ripe for horrors of all kinds.
This book was just what I needed to pick me up from a series of reading disappointments. There haven’t been many new reads I’ve discovered that I really liked instantly and kept me interested and enjoying them all the way through.
Admittedly, I read this book during a lazy summer a couple of years ago. This is the review I wrote then, very short on specifics and very long on the adjectives. "Fantastical and atmospheric. The view through a child's eyes can be heartbreaking and poignantly identifiable."
The story is written in vignette style, but each vignette is still so tightly bound to the overarching plot that it isn’t purely vignette style, but something in-between vignette and novel. In my opinion, the result is that it fails to effectively be either.
The Big Sleep by Raymond ChandlerMy rating: 4 of 5 starsEver since I saw the murky, black-and-white film noir (a dizzying merry-go-round of murders and mayhem with a new character and a new accusation every five minutes that was Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall in a classic gumshoe and siren routine), I've been wanting to… Continue reading Don’t Sleep on Raymond Chandler: The Big Sleep Book Review
Red Rising by Pierce BrownMy rating: 4 of 5 stars4 stars evenI have mixed feelings about Red Rising, but because the predominant ones ended up being really positive, it gets a high rating. But I have to still address the dissenting impressions I had throughout: the main reason being that I felt like I was… Continue reading Varicoloured Impressions: Red Rising Book Review
Moriarty by Anthony HorowitzMy rating: 3 of 5 stars2.5 stars.I really liked this book the first time I read it. I liked the ending—I appreciated how unapologetically villainous Moriarty was. It was a breath of fresh air—“and [I] shot him in the head.” Very in keeping with the pragmatism of a man calculating enough to… Continue reading Fishing for Red Herrings: Moriarty Book Review
There is probably no English author quite as well known by reputation as Shakespeare. The only others who could come close would probably be Chaucer, Dickens, and more recently, Agatha Christie. But for a playwright with such a firm position in the annals of English literature and a reputation as “serious literature for serious people,”… Continue reading A Tale of Sprites and Goblins: Books Inspired by Shakespeare
Fictitiously Yours 