Gloriana’s Torch, by Patricia Finney

Fast forward fifty years from the events of Wolf Hall. Anne Boleyn’s daughter now reigns in England, former heretics are running the country, and if you’re still Catholic, it’s best to keep that a secret. Patricia Finney’s Elizabethan spy thrillers take place in the bloody mess of Europe’s religious wars, with longsuffering characters who are [...]

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The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, by Stieg Larsson

This week we are pleased to welcome back staff from the WRL Circulation Services Division to BFGB. Today’s review comes from Mandy Malone, who opens the week with an exciting and thought-provoking thriller.
Upon finishing The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, I set the book aside, shook my head, and muttered my frustration with Stieg Larsson. [...]

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Olive Kitteridge, by Elizabeth Strout

I’ve read a number of books that present themselves as short story collections, but which, when taken as a whole, comprise powerful novels.  I think one reason that this succeeds is that the author can approach the same topic from a number of different angles without losing the narrative thread that ties the whole package [...]

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The Bookshop, by Penelope Fitzgerald

It is my unscientific but educated opinion that most authors are better at short stories than longer works. With full-length narratives, authors are prone to blathering on or cramming in unnecessary details or cluttering the story with extraneous characters. With short stories they are forced to make careful choices about each word and sentence. The [...]

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Hell, by Robert Olen Butler

Welcome to Hell. The toilets are backed up, a new Wal-Mart opened today, and the weather forecast calls for scattered sulfurous fiery storms. There are cockroaches everywhere, but no trees or animals (but they don’t deserve to be here, do they?). There are lots and lots and lots of people—Stalin and Hitler (no surprises there) and [...]

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In the Shadow of No Towers, by Art Spiegelman

It has been eight years to the day since America was attacked on September 11, 2001. To commemorate, I’d like to discuss the best piece of 9/11 literature I’ve encountered in those eight years, a nonfiction graphic novel by Art Spiegelman, In the Shadow of No Towers.
Even if you don’t normally read graphic novels, you [...]

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The Magicians, by Lev Grossman

The comparisons to Harry Potter are inevitable, but when Quentin Coldwater is recruited by Brakebills, a magical university hidden in upstate New York, he’s no wide-eyed eleven year old. Smart, anti-social, competitive, and melancholy, he’s designed his life to please Princeton’s admissions office. He took up performing magic tricks so that he could claim an [...]

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The Hillston trilogy, by Michael Malone

This week we are delighted to have folks from the library’s Circulation Services division join us. This first post of the week comes from Alan Bernstein.
Between 1983 and 2002 Michael Malone wrote three novels (Uncivil Seasons, Time’s Witness, and First Lady) about the fictional North Carolina  town of Hillston.
Hillston is an exemplar of the new [...]

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Death with Interruptions, by José Saramago

On New Year’s Day, in an unidentified country, everyone suddenly stops dying. Disease still strikes, accidents still happen, the elderly get even more so, but everyone just keeps on ticking.
Havoc ensues, but it is very funny havoc, if you go in for dark social satire. The funeral workers are in a tizzy. The government is [...]

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Case Histories, by Kate Atkinson

I didn’t like the first three chapters of Case Histories. They were completely unrelated. It was like reading short stories or vignettes, which is fine if that’s what you’re in the mood for, but I wanted a novel.
Then I read the fourth chapter and became a hopeless fan of Kate Atkinson. Took a little while [...]

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