Five friends arrive at a decaying Heian era mansion in Japan. Two of them have invited the rest to celebrate their wedding and to spend the night telling ghost stories. Okay, I’ll play along. I think I’ve heard this story before, but it sounds like a good time. And it was. Though it took me a while to warm up to it, Nothing but Blackened … Continue reading Nothing but Blackened Teeth by Cassandra Khaw
I wish I liked this book more than I did. I liked it. But I wish I liked it more. One thing about memoirs is that they have to a reason why you should read them. Some are so well written that they deserve to be read just for that reason, but most need to bring something more to the table. This could be a … Continue reading Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner
Are you someone who will read a random book you picked up in a thrift store? Such people must exist since there are so many thrift stores still carrying old paperbacks. My copy of Booked to Die has a 1992 copyright way back when the cover price for a paperback was $5.99. It’s already been resold at least once for $4.00 according to the penciled … Continue reading Booked to Die by John Dunning
This is the second Lovecraftesque book I’ve read this year. (The first was The House on the Borderland, see review here.) Both The Twenty Days of Turin and William Hope Hodgson’s The House on the Borderland share a narrator’s P.O.V. and a godlike evil force that remains unexplained by the novel’s end. In both books the narrator is basically reconstructing historical events long separated from … Continue reading The Twenty Days of Turin by Giorgio De Maria, translated from the Italian by Ramon Glazov
You might think Battling the Gods: Atheism in the Ancient World would count as advanced reading. It sounds like a difficult book, a history of philosophies looking for evidence that Atheism existed as an accepted point of view in classical Greece and Rome. It probably sounds fairly dry at first glance. (“Sounds” at “glance”? Does that count as a mixed metaphor?) While I can’t qualify … Continue reading Battling the Gods: Atheism in the Ancient World by Tim Whitmarsh
This book is not very good. But I can see why the publishers had it translated into English. It hits three very sweet spots as far as sales go: Japanese books in translation have a definite fan base these days; it’s about books and bookstores and it features a cat. Three things with very clear audience appeal. I’ve seen it in lots of shops and … Continue reading The Cat Who Saved Books by Sosuke Natsukawa; translated by Louise Heal Kawai
One thing that makes reading history fun, for me at least, is finding out what really happened. So often what we know, or think we know, has been influenced by forces outside the facts: racism, sexism, classism, nationalism, all the ‘ism’s plus time. Time passes and history changes. Then, periodically, someone comes along to set the record straight. It makes for interesting reading. In the … Continue reading Forget the Alamo by Bryan Burrough, Chris Tomlinson and Jason Stanford
The library book club, which meets above the witchcraft supply store here in Grass Valley, met yesterday. They did not like the book Continue reading White is for Witching by Helen Oyeyemi
Memoir is the wild west of literary genres. Anything goes. Continue reading +Nina Simone’s Gum by Warren Ellis
This book may be illegal in your state. If you live in Texas, Florida or any assorted U.S. states with Republican governments, it may be difficult to find Four Hundred Souls in your public library, school library, even at your local college or university library. This is just the sort of book Texas Governor Abbot and Florida Governor DeSantis have in mind when they complain … Continue reading Four Hundred Souls, edited by Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N Blain
History is problematic. American history is very problematic. I only recently started reading American history seriously. During the last three years of my teaching career, I kept trying to get an 8th grade history position. If I had, I might still be teaching. The closest I came was teaching it via Zoom during lockdown. Prior to that my historical interest was ancient and Medieval, largely … Continue reading Blood and Treasure: Daniel Boone and the Fight for America’s First Frontier by Bob Drury and Tom Clavin
My new favorite book. I am a fan of crime fiction, but I’ll admit the genre can be a bit stale at times. Someone I know, not a fan, described it as too “rat-a-tat-tat” for his taste. Fair enough, I guess. Much of the time the formula is part of the fun. Readers of crime fiction don’t necessarily want to be challenged with experimentation or … Continue reading Notes on an Execution by Danya Kukafka
May Contain Spoilers 