The wonderfully inventive Brian Selznick broke new ground in 2007 with The Invention of Hugo Cabret, a “children’s” book that combined text and illustrations in a way that had never really been done before. In fact, half the book is text and the other half full-spread illustrations, and the illustrated passages tell just as much […]
As promised last week, I am featuring Colson Whitehead’s newest, Zone One, in bookstores and online today. Arriving on the heals of season two of The Walking Dead (AMC), Zone One is a Zombie Novel, one I am very excited to read. Yes folks, zombies are everywhere. The trend is alive and well and not […]
I love Entertainment Weekly. I even subscribe to it. But I’ve noticed something disturbing lately, and I want to explain myself. Entertainment Weekly covers the Big Four of entertainment: Movies, TV, Music and Books. I love movies and TV. And if you’ve read any of this blog before, you know I love books. (I love […]
Jeffrey Eugenides is one of those writers who takes his time writing books, and it shows. His first book was The Virgin Suicides, a creepy and sad little story set in the 70’s that was made into an extremely creepy and sad movie. His second book, Middlesex, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2003, and is […]
October is the perfect month to talk about scary stories. It’s also the perfect time to mention Stephen King, without doubt one of America’s modern masters of horror. (I’m pretty sure someone else came up with that title.) Say what you will about Steve (yes, I am claiming the right to call him “Steve”), he […]
Fall is always a busy time for publishing, it seems. Best-selling authors oftentimes release their latest and greatest in the fall. I mean, when was the last time Stephen King didn’t release a novel in October or November? (And yes, he has a new novel coming out this fall. More on that later.) This week […]
A contortionist folds herself into a tiny box. A young girl’s gown changes from white to black in front of your eyes. A magical ice garden waits to be explored within a black and white striped tent. Welcome to the Night Circus, a place where imagination is real, and reality is whatever you can imagine. […]
A Spy at Home is not the kind of book I usually choose to read. Nonetheless, as a new book review blogger it is flattering to be asked to review a book by a writer who visits your website. So I set off to read it, and discovered a new sub-genre: the international spy thriller/domestic […]
Just released today is my pick of the week: The Barbarian Nurseries by Héctor Tobar. It is the story of Araceli, a Mexican live-in maid for the Torres-Thompsons, and what happens when she wakes up one morning to find herself alone with the two Torres-Thompson boys and no parents in sight. After trying and failing to […]
This week I have two books that are worthy of mentioning. First, Brian Selznick’s Wonderstruck. The Invention of Hugo Cabret was one of the most surprising and beautiful books that I read back in 2007, and Wonderstruck is his follow-up in the same vein. Of the 629 pages in the book, over 450 of them are […]