book review - Page 6 of 7

If you are turned off by The Martian because you have heard it has science-fiction tendencies, I urge you to reconsider. The Martian by Andy Weir is an amazing novel; I could not put it down and already have plans to re-read it. The story is pretty simple: Mark Watney, astronaut, botanist, and mechanical engineer,… Read More

If I had to make a list of the most influential movies of my childhood, The Princess Bride would be at least top three, if not number one. It had everything – to quote the posters: “Heroes. Giants. Villains. Wizards. True Love. Not just your basic, average, everyday, ordinary, run-of-the-mill, ho-hum fairy tale.” My sister… Read More

Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and his Years of Pilgrimage is the latest novel by Haruki Murakami. In Japan, when his books are released, fans wait for hours in line to get a copy. I had not read any of Murakami’s novels before, and as soon as I started to read it I understood why he is… Read More

I started reading Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven right at the height of the Ebola scare, which given its premise, probably wasn’t the best timing, but I quickly became immersed in this wonderful, multi-layered novel. Hollywood actor Arthur Leander is performing in King Lear one snowy night when he suddenly has a heart attack… Read More

The Map to Everywhere is the fantastic first book in a new middle grade fantasy series by husband and wife team, Carrie Ryan and John Parke Davis. Fin lives in the magical Khaznot Quay where he suffers from being forgettable. It’s not just that he doesn’t stand out; people truly forget him seconds after talking… Read More

Lady Emily Ashton has been a widow for longer than she had known her husband Philip - and she has only been in mourning for a year.  We begin the story from Emily’s point of view and know Phillip only from her account.  Emily freely admits she made no effort to know her husband before… Read More

Lucy Knisley, author, illustrator, and adventure seeker, is now in her late twenties and has a lot to write about. Her memoir, Relish: My Life in the Kitchen, focuses on her adolescent years when all she wanted was to find a way to mix her two passions, drawing and cooking, to create something that would… Read More

An interesting phenomenon over the last decade has been the proliferation of well-written and interesting Nonfiction books. One of the theories about this relates to the dying field of journalism. As newspapers go out of business and less and less journalists can make a living working in journalism, they are using their skills to write… Read More

Few debut novels garner as much buzz as Lauren Owen’s The Quick has been getting. Released by Random House in June, the novel has gotten praise from Publisher’s Weekly, Kirkus, Booklist, O, The New York Times, and many others. Tana French (In the Woods) and Kate Atkinson (Case Histories) both blurbed the book. All of… Read More

At the start of Jo Knowles’ See You at Harry’s, 12-year-old Fern’s summer is unfolding in a predictable way as she helps out at the family diner and hangs out with her best friend.  Readers are lolled into her comfortable routine, although there are definitely some incidences that make this more than a simple and… Read More