Last night my colleague and I undertook our 4th annual trek to the Toronto Antiquarian Book Fair, an event to which I very much look forward. Alas, it takes place only once a year, and life affords only so many opportunities to seek out such rare and marvelous books. But there is another way to satiate one's hunger for many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore, and that is, fittingly, by reading books that are about books...
Category: Book Reviews
Book Review – Lethal White
Since his capture of the Shacklewell Ripper, Cormoran Strike has had an upswing in clients appearing at his door, but when an unstable madman descends upon his office with a delusional story of a murdered child, Strike and his partner Robin find themselves drawn into a scandal that reaches high into the halls of power, and deep into the indecorous past of a wealthy family.
Book Review – Undermajordomo Minor
A young man, bored by his humble life and forced from his home by his seemingly callous (though more likely long-suffering) mother, sets out to take up employment in the only place that will have him: a mouldering castle where the few remaining servants are always certain to lock their doors at night...
Book Review – Kushiel’s Dart
It took me a long time to work my way through this book, for several reasons. The first, and least important, is that it is a brick. Weighing in at a whopping 1,015 pages (yes, that’s a comma in that number), this book is no breezy, book-club volume. It’s a commitment. Like buying a turtle.
Book Review – Beren and Luthien
I will begin by saying that this book is most definitely not for the Tolkien neophyte. The Silmarillion is unquestionably required reading before attempting this collection (for collection it is), and a firm understanding of that work at that.
Book Review – Blood Meridian
I made the early error of presuming I could read - and thereby review – this book by the same rules and standards of other fiction, but such conventions are meaningless to Cormac McCarthy. What he has created in Blood Meridian is something altogether distinct, and as such requires a different lens through which to examine it.
Book Review – The Cuckoo’s Calling
I began reading this novel knowing that, (even because) it was published under J.K. Rowling’s ‘nom de plume’, and so I was curious to see how it would differ to her Harry Potter books, and of course, by extension, how it would resemble them as well.
Book Review – The Bone Clocks
By far the strength of ‘The Bone Clocks’ comes from its characters. From rebellious Holly Sykes, through the charismatic (yet dastardly) Hugo Lamb, to self-absorbed author Crispin Hershey, Mitchell imbues each with a unique voice, and an ample number of pages in which to convey it.
Book Review – The Blue Firedrake
The narrative of ‘The Blue Firedrake’ revolves around the nefarious actions of Elinor Shaw, an historical figure, being the last woman in England to be burned alive for the practice of witchcraft...