Volk’s Game, by Brent Ghelfi

Can’t get enough of Lee Child?  How about taking a chance on his Russian counterpart, Alexei Volkovoy?  Now, Volk, as he’s known to all, hasn’t appeared in as many titles as Jack Reacher (c’mon Brent, we’re waiting!), but his stories are as fast-forward and brutal as any thriller series going. Who is Volk?  For starters, [...]

Read Full Post »

2010 Megalist Updated, Version 2

The 2010 Megalist: the compilation of best-books-of-the-year-lists has been updated. In the last week, twelve more lists have been added to the compilation–including biggies like The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Morning News Tournament of Books, NPR, Oprah Magazine, the National Book Awards and more–have been compiled into the big spreadsheet. Keep checking back [...]

Read Full Post »

Super Sad True Love Story, by Gary Shteyngart

Russian-American emigré Gary Shteyngart has received many awards for his acerbic satirical fiction, but his best reviewed book yet is 2010′s Super Sad True Love Story. It’s an apocalyptic tale set in the near future of the United States. The story is told from two viewpoints. Lenny Abramov is a middle-aged nebbish, a salesman of [...]

Read Full Post »

Furies of Calderon, by Jim Butcher

I read Furies of Calderon in preparation for Jim Butcher‘s guest-of-honor visit to MarsCon, Williamsburg’s annual science fiction and fantasy convention. Butcher drew throngs of admirers, driving convention attendance over the thousand-person mark for the first time. Accompanied by wife Shannon Butcher, an accomplished author herself, he was a funny and engaging guest, participating in [...]

Read Full Post »

James Tiptree, Jr.: the Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon, by Julie Phillips

It’s a biography about a depressed and somewhat obscure science fiction writer popular briefly in the 1970s. Do I have you rushing to buy a copy or put the book on hold? OK, let’s try again, because Alice B. Sheldon, aka James Tiptree, Jr., lived a fascinating life that should be of interest to anyone [...]

Read Full Post »

One Day, by David Nicholls

One of my favorite books of 2010 was David Nicholls’ romantic, mostly comic but often bittersweet novel One Day. It’s the story of Emma Morley and Dexter Mayhew, who connect for a one night stand on the night they graduate from the University of Edinburgh in 1988. The book checks in with Em and Dex [...]

Read Full Post »

Secrets of the Sands, by Leona Wisoker

Williamsburg local Leona Wisoker has written a strong first fantasy, an epic with a desert setting as fully realized as that in Frank Herbert’s classic science fantasy Dune. As with many epic fantasies, readers must have patience as the main characters are introduced and the culture of their complex and vivid world is developed. The story follows [...]

Read Full Post »

Farewell, Reynolds Price

The world lost a powerful and compelling voice on Thursday, January 20, 2011 with the death of Reynolds Price. Price was 77. Equally at home writing novels, poetry, essays, memoirs, and biblical exegesis, Price drew the reader into whatever story he was telling. I first came to Price’s work after hearing him as a commentator [...]

Read Full Post »

Looking for a Good Book?

If you are a reader, you probably know what it is like to hit a dry spell, when you cannot find an author or title to try, and you feel like you are in a reading rut. Fortunately, the library has just the thing to help readers in this situation locate new writers whom they [...]

Read Full Post »

Introducing the 2010 Megalist: All the Best Books of the Year in One Spreadsheet

For the third year, I have been compiling the results of all of the major “best books of the year” lists into an Excel spreadsheet. So far, for 2010, I’ve compiled about 50 of the most prominent lists and book awards, with at least that many more still to come. Check back here at Blogging [...]

Read Full Post »

Warm Springs

This made for TV HBO docudrama explores the little known early life of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, before he became President of the United States and led his country through the Great Depression and the Second World War. In 1923, in the prime of his early life, Roosevelt is struck with infantile paralysis, or polio, after [...]

Read Full Post »

Hachi (2010)

Today’s post is from Youth Services Director Noreen Bernstein. Years ago, while preparing a presentation on children’s books about World War II, I came across two titles, Hachiko: the True Story of a Loyal Dog by Pamela S. Turner and Hachiko Waits by Leslie Newman. Both books chronicled the story of a Japanese man and [...]

Read Full Post »

Think of a Number, by John Verdon

This debut is set in upstate New York.  The main character, Dave Gurney, is a former homicide detective with the NYPD.  He and his wife have moved to a remote property in a small town.  Although Gurney has been retired for a year, it has been challenging to disengage from his former life.  To make [...]

Read Full Post »

Human Chain, by Seamus Heaney

We don’t review much poetry here. I think that this is in part because the reading of poetry is an intensely personal experience. If talking about why you enjoyed a book is hard for many folks, talking about poetry is even more challenging. Another issue is that for many people, poetry reading is associated with [...]

Read Full Post »

Recess Pieces, by Bob Fingerman

7:54 a.m., September 27th, 1974. Classes are about to start at the Ben Turpin School (grades K-8), and Mr. Elber is finishing up a disappointing extra-credit bio lab, in which he and two students failed to reanimate a deceased fetal pig. Not only did the experiment flop, but now there’s a weird purple smoke wafting [...]

Read Full Post »

The Stuff of Life: A Graphic Guide to Genetics and DNA, by Mark Schultz

Here is today’s lesson. Listen carefully. If you take a really complicated and difficult topic, but then illustrate it with lots of engaging pictures and describe it with lucid language and familiar examples, it is still going to be really complicated and difficult. I’m sorry about that. There is no such thing as a book [...]

Read Full Post »

Beasts of Burden: Animal Rites, by Evan Dorkin

It sounds dreadful: a group of talking dogs goes around the neighborhood solving mysteries. It sounds like one of those wholesome cozy novels where the cat helps his human solve the crime, or like Scooby-Doo without the kitsch appeal. It’s amazing, really, that Evan Dorkin could take such a cutesy premise and turn it into [...]

Read Full Post »

The United States Constitution: A Graphic Adaptation, by Jonathan Hennessey

Pictures. That’s what’s missing from the United States Constitution. The framers did a really good job with the words, but some illustrations here or there would have been a big help in the trickier parts. But I forgive them. The men attending that Constitutional Convention of 1787 were under a lot of stress. They were [...]

Read Full Post »