About 80% historical fiction and 20% chick lit—that’s my very rough estimate of the nature of this novel by Dara Horn. And it won’t surprise you that I enjoyed the 80% much more than the 20%. There are, of course,… Read More ›
Books
Foundation’s Friends (for, not by, Isaac Asimov)
This is a collection of 16 original science fiction short stories, plus one novella, written by 17 authors and assembled 32 years ago in honor of Isaac Asimov shortly before his untimely death. Inevitably the quality is uneven, but the… Read More ›
Boston in Transit (the book this time)
Five weeks ago I wrote about a BPL talk on “Boston in Transit,” i.e. the history of public transit in Boston. Now I’ve been reading the accompanying book, with the same title. What a gorgeous book it turns out to… Read More ›
Department of Death
The trouble with good academic satires is that they are too much like reality. This one is an excellent academic satire, and a mystery to boot. Department of Death is the latest and best of Lev Raphael’s literate mysteries featuring… Read More ›
Ready Player Two
How do you avoid being formulaic when writing a sequel to a creative and highly successful popular novel? The answer, apparently, is that you don’t avoid it; you give in to it. Now don’t get me wrong! Ready Player Two,… Read More ›
Train of Thought
Some fun reading for the pandemic! Linda M. Au’s Train of Thought is a light-hearted account of a two-week cross-country train trip—well, almost cross-country, being Pittsburgh to Seattle and back again. People who don’t appreciate train travel always observe that… Read More ›
Why is there a connection between crime novels and trains?
You think of crime novels, you think of trains. Well, maybe not you. but many people. Murder on the Orient Express leaps to mind, of course, but there are a lot of other examples, as you can read about in… Read More ›
Isaac Asimov’s “Black Widowers” stories
Isaac Asimov was best known as a science fiction writer, though many readers justly prize him for his ultra-clear writing of science fact. Not so many readers realize that Asimov was also a prolific—stop there! “prolific” anything is redundant when… Read More ›
Seven Types of Atheism
What a misleading book title! What I had expected was a book about… well… seven different types of atheism. A reasonable assumption, isn’t it? But no. It’s not about seven types of atheism. It’s a very interesting book nonetheless—but it’s… Read More ›
A Murder of Magpies
An outstanding first novel from Judith Flanders, published seven years ago, A Murder of Magpies is a mystery that will hold your attention and keep you entertained. In a recent post I wrote about another Judith Flanders book, but in… Read More ›
Adequate Yearly Progress
If you write a novel about teaching, how realistic should it be? If, in particular, it’s supposed to be a satire, then how realistic should it be? Can you distinguish a satire from reality? Sometimes it’s hard to do that…. Read More ›
That Day the Rabbi Left Town
Way back in the Before Times—in 1964, when I was still in high school—local author Harry Kemelman wrote Friday the Rabbi Slept Late, thus inaugurating a series of a dozen cozy-style mysteries featuring Rabbi David Small of a Conservative synagogue in Barnard’s… Read More ›
Feline Philosophy: Cats and the Meaning of Life
Quick: What is the meaning of life? You said 42, right? No, wait a minute—that’s a different book. In Feline Philosophy: Cats and the Meaning of Life, philosopher John Gray explores what cats think about the meaning of life, what… Read More ›
Have you read Robert Heinlein’s Coventry?
Are you old enough to know the English phrase “sent to Coventry”? According to Merriam-Webster, if you were “sent to Coventry,” you have been ostracized. Although the cover story of the July 1940 issue of Astounding Science Fiction featured a… Read More ›
The book called The Book—plus a lagniappe: a book about type
Read The Book in hardcover! Not in paperback. Nor on your Kindle. And don’t listen to it as an audiobook! The hardcover is essential. The full title is The Book: A Cover-to-Cover Exploration of the Most Powerful Object of Our Time, as you… Read More ›
Hwæt?Beowulf? newly translated for your enjoyment
The world is atwitter at the arrival of a new translation of Beowulf by Maria Dahvana Headley. Well, a certain segment of the world, anyway. And you may well wonder why. The idea of reading this epic poem has never appealed to… Read More ›
Troubled Blood
Robert Galbraith has a secret identity, though you won’t spot him changing in a phone booth. What’s his secret identity? Well, many people know him better by his pseudonym, J.K. Rowling. No, wait! That can’t be right. J.K. Rowling is… Read More ›
The Font of the Baskervilles
The Hound Font of the Baskervilles? We’ve all learned, particularly in the last few years, to be cautious about believing what we read. Some people (though not nearly enough of us) have even learned to be cautious about what we see… Read More ›
A Place for Everything
Yes, the title of the book is A Place for Everything. No, it is not a Marie Kondo knockoff. It will be the subtitle that tells you what it’s really about: The Curious History of Alphabetical Order. That’s what it’s about…. Read More ›
The Secret Life of Books
A book about books—how self-referential! And how wonderful! The full title of the book under discussion is The Secret Life of Books: Why They Mean More than Words. More than words indeed. Tom Mole’s delightful paean to the book is largely about… Read More ›
Learning Strategies 