Don’t leave this book—Murder Your Employer: The McMasters Guide to Homicide—lying around casually at work. Your boss might get the wrong idea. Now that it’s safely on your night table at home, or on the end table next to your… Read More ›
Books
A Jewish student at a (thinly disguised) Ivy League college in the ’90s
If you’ve read My Last Innocent Year, you quickly figured out that it’s meant to be Dartmouth, right? Yes, it’s subtly called Wilder College, but it’s described as an elite college in New Hampshire that used to be all male… Read More ›
The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling
That’s the title of a seven-episode podcast about the attacks on J.K. Rowling from both the left and the right—originally from the right but now mostly from the left. Personally I think that both groups of critics are wrongheaded and… Read More ›
Which do we want, democracy or fascism? Pick one. (Wait…isn’t this supposed to be a book review?)
Jo Walton claims to be an optimist. So does Margaret Atwood. Keep that in mind while reading their dystopian novels. If you take the long view, you can see what they mean, but it’s all too easy to imagine that… Read More ›
The English understand wool.
Helen DeWitt is one of my favorite authors. That’s what I decided after reading her first novel! Actually I decided it at the halfway point. She may be one of my favorites, but she has never achieved true popularity; she’s… Read More ›
More Bones
Why do I continue reading Kathy Reichs’s Temperance Brennan novels? Because I enjoy them, of course! They hold my attention; I like the geeky details of the forensics; and I’m always interested in the character development through the series. Cold… Read More ›
Do we still think it can’t happen here?
Ron DeSantis wants to tell me what to teach. And what not to teach. Even though he has broken with Donald Trump, he is following in the Trumpian footsteps. Maybe it’s only half of current Republicans who have authoritarian impulses,… Read More ›
Can you own a plot?
“Not another story-within-a-story!” said I to myself, said I. Why am I suddenly reading so many novels with that particular structure? Must be something in the water: a plot by some nefarious organization. By this point you’ve realized that it’s… Read More ›
It can’t happen here. (Or can it?)
What took me so long? I have finally finished reading Jo Walton’s 2006 alternative history novel, Farthing, subtitled A Story of a World that Could Have Been, Volume I of the Small Change trilogy. Walton has written two of my… Read More ›
Ὁ Ἡρóδοτος: A beautiful new edition (in English, not Greek)
Can you name three or four ancient world historians? I don’t mean modern writers who study the history of the ancient world; I mean writers who lived in the ancient world and wrote about the history of their time and… Read More ›
Ça va bien aller.
It’s going to be all right, as they say (in Quebecois French) in this novel. After a long wait caused by so many other library patrons, I finally had a chance to read A World of Curiosities, the latest Three… Read More ›
This high-school reunion was even deadlier than usual.
The senior superlatives in my high-school yearbook didn’t include Most Likely to Murder. Did yours? Probably not. But that’s the title of the fourth (and last?) novel in Carole Shmurak’s Susan Lombardi series. I reviewed the first in the series… Read More ›
In which I read a graphic novel… and give it a surprising A+!
Graphic novels aren’t my thing. I never read them. Well, actually, that’s not quite true. On average I read one graphic novel every three… three what? three months? No. How about three years? No again. More like once every three… Read More ›
A pair of Horowitzes? (Is that the plural? How about Horowitzim?)
Actually, there’s only one Horowitz that we’re talking about here: Anthony. I’m using the plural metonymically, if that’s the right word, with the author standing in for his books. Thirteen months ago I reviewed A Line to Kill. Two months… Read More ›
Deadmistress
Yes, you’re right: the title is a portmanteau. It’s not a concatenation of “dead mistress” but a portmanteau of “dead” plus “headmistress.” Get it? This 2011 mystery by Carole Shmurak wasn’t so easy to find. CommCat couldn’t locate it for… Read More ›
Yes, it really is by J.K. Rowling, but…
It’s not part of the Harry Potter franchise. I’m talking about The Ink Black Heart, the sixth novel ostensibly written by Robert Galbraith, the well-known pseudonym that J.K. Rowling uses for her outstanding Cormoran Strike series. Unlike Harry Potter, the… Read More ›
Before I Go to Sleep (the book, not the movie)
It’s obvious that author S.J. Watson had seen the movie Memento before writing his first novel, Before I Go to Sleep. What isn’t obvious (at least to me) was that a mediocre movie of the same title was made from… Read More ›
That feeling when…you’re trying to enjoy Venice during a pandemic
I mean Venice, Italy, of course. Not Florida or California or Las Vegas or any other inauthentic place. Not that I visited Italy during the pandemic—at least not IRL—but I did manage a virtual visit by reading Give unto Others,… Read More ›
Fantastic ______s and Where to Find Them
This book reminds me of the caller who asked the Magliozzi brothers a question about his Volkswagen Quantum: he couldn’t get it repaired because he didn’t know any Quantum mechanics. What’s the connection? Well, first you need to know what… Read More ›
Did Hemingway write in short sentences? You probably think so. But you’re wrong! Science wins again.
You can believe actual data. We’ll call that Door #1. Or you can believe your general “impression.” We’ll call that Door #2. Or you can believe what other people tell you—the “common knowledge” that everyone “knows.” We’ll call that Door… Read More ›
Learning Strategies 