Farewell, Robert B. Parker

The last 10 days have seen the loss of three great figures in American letters – J.D. Salinger, Howard Zinn, and Robert B. Parker.  (Correction: news of Louis Auchincloss’ death came through as I was writing this.)  Each added, in his own way, to a portrait of the American sensibility. Robert B. Parker is perhaps [...]

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The List: Best of 2009, Aggregated

Here at Blogging for a Good Book, we don’t skimp. When it came to recapping last year’s best, we could have given you a list based on the small sampling of last year’s output that we actually read, but that didn’t just feel right. Instead, we broke out our handy spreadsheet and started counting votes [...]

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The Everafter, by Amy Huntley

What happens after you die? Where do you go? What is it like? These are questions long discussed; even in other books I’ve blogged here. The Everafter, by Amy Huntley, has its own theory. Our guide through the afterlife is Madison Stanton. As the book begins, Madison is sure she is dead, but she doesn’t [...]

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Farewell, J. D. Salinger

Today we mourn the passing of an icon. On Wednesday the 91-year-old J. D. Salinger died in the New Hampshire home where he had lived in seclusion for more than fifty years. Salinger published very few works in his lifetime; he abhorred fame and celebrity; he wrote his most famous work a lifetime ago, in [...]

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As You Wish, by Jackson Pearce

In As You Wish, by Jackson Pearce, Viola is having a hard time getting over her last break-up. Her ex didn’t callously dump her and never speak to her again–that, she might have been able to handle. Instead, her boyfriend of two years and best friend of even longer told her that he’s gay. They [...]

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Snap, by Carol Snow

As I was reading this book by Carol Snow, I was reminded of another. Something about Snap made me feel the way I felt while reading Ghost Town by Richard W. Jennings. At first I thought maybe it was the writing style. Then I realized that both books are about the same thing: cameras that [...]

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Devoured, by Amanda Marrone

What if fairy tales were real? Specifically, what if the story of Snow White was true? As Devoured begins, we find that there really was a Snow White, a wicked step mother, a magic mirror, a huntsman, and a prince. There was also a terrible legacy left to the descendants of both Snow White and [...]

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Geektastic: Stories from the Nerd Herd, edited by Holly Black and Cecil Castellucci

This book of short stories certainly lives up to its name; it is geektastic! Name a cult favorite, fandom, field, or following and it will at least be mentioned in this book. There might even be a whole story devoted to the topic. Star Wars, Star Trek, Buffy, RPG, MMRPG, Rocky Horror, astronomy, paleontology, academic [...]

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The List: Crisp Packets in British Crime Fiction

Brits love potato chips. They call them “crisps” and consume 10 billion bags (packets, in their lingo) of the things per year. They go in for crazy flavors: prawn cocktail, chicken tikka masala, Marmite, slow-roasted lamb with mint, Cajun squirrel, or Builders Breakfast, which are supposed to taste like eggs, buttered toast, bacon, and ketchup. [...]

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Tell Me Where It Hurts: A Day of Humor, Healing, and Hope In My Life as an Animal Surgeon, by Nick Trout

The first chapter of this book is titled “2:47 A.M., Wake-Up Call.” Nick Trout writes: This may seem strange, coming from an Englishman, but sometimes emergency surgery in the middle of the night can play out like a synopsis of a perfect season for the Boston Red Sox. The beginning may be predictably crappy, slow, [...]

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Tyranny, by Leslie Fairfield

The first time I heard about anorexia was in the early 1980s when Karen Carpenter died at 108 pounds. A co-worker of mine who was then in her late forties told me she’d gone to college with a girl who consumed only lettuce and coffee because she didn’t want to gain weight. The girl was [...]

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Winter’s End, by Jean-Claude Mourlevat

I catalog juvenile and young adult items for the Library. Sometimes while doing this, I come across a book that I immediately determine to read. Winter’s End was one of these. The gloomy cover with the solitary hooded character in a wintry landscape, a slight splattering of blood across the top, made this book irresistible. [...]

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Normal At Any Cost: Tall Girls, Short Boys and the Medical Industry’s Quest to Manipulate Height, by Susan Cohen and Christine Cosgrove

When I was fifteen, I was 5’10” and very skinny. I’d been teased by classmates and neighborhood kids about my height and weight since first grade. Our family doctor told my mother and me about hormone treatments given to tall girls to stunt their growth, and I begged my parents to let me try. At [...]

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Where the Wild Things Were: Life, Death, and Ecological Wreckage in a Land of Vanishing Predators, by William Stolzenburg

There are too many deer in this area! They run out in front of cars and cause accidents. They eat flowers and bushes, and destroy vegetables in people’s gardens. I know there are too many deer, but I’d always hated the fact that the beautiful animals were deliberately shot and killed. I knew, but hadn’t [...]

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The List: Old Skeletons and Cold Cases

I love it when long-buried skeletons turn up in mystery stories. How deliciously creepy! In all of these books, the unearthing of a skeleton uncovers an old crime or reopens a cold case, challenging investigators to go back in time to solve the crime. The Fallen Man, by Tony Hillerman Frames, by Loren D. Estleman [...]

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Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, by Susanna Clarke

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell is possibly the eeriest and most disconcerting book I’ve ever read, and certainly the most unsettling fiction I’ve read since it was published in 2004.  It succeeds as a dark tale of fantasy, a flawlessly detailed period piece and alternate history, a well-developed story of conflict between teacher and pupil, [...]

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The Elegance of the Hedgehog, by Muriel Barbery

In a luxury Parisian apartment building, concierge Renee Michel – squat, homely, antisocial – serves wealthy intellectuals, politicians, and businessmen, intersecting with their lives only when they want packages held, elevator doors polished, or cooked cabbage banned from her diet.  Madame Michel doesn’t really mind being overlooked because she has a secret she jealously guards [...]

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Ghosts of Belfast, by Stuart Neville

Belfast and noir go together like water and wet.  That is, they did before the referendum which ended the worst of the strife and started Protestants and Catholics governing Northern Ireland together.  The city’s long history of sectarian violence created wounds on both the physical and psychic landscape of the city, many of which appear [...]

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