Hiding in the security of all things books, with some movies and tv - occasionally food...
Anyone who has glimpsed A Christmas Carol: A Pop-Up Book, by Charles Fischer & Bruce Foster knows that it is a delight. I was on my way out when this package arrived, so I took the box with me to meet a friend at Starbucks, and I had barely gotten it out of the box [...]
Two years ago, In Hovering Flight was my first introduction to Joyce Hinnefeld and Unbridled Books. Getting to know each was a wonderful treat. Hinnefeld is a rich and observant writer and Unbridled seems to take great care in choosing its authors. I have found that their books, even if they don’t go on to [...]
In So Cold The River, by Michael Koryta, Eric Shaw is a failed filmmaker, newly separated from his wife, and in the process of establishing himself as a videographer of the deceased- creating short pieces to show at their funerals. He has always had the knack for sussing out hidden truths, and that talent calls [...]
Frankenstein, for me, fell short of fully realizing the ideas that it set out to explore in the story told by Mary Shelly. In Frankenstein’s Monster, however, Susan Heyboer O’Keefe builds on the foundation set forth by Shelly in Frankenstein, and in being free from the creation/education of monster story, is able to delve more [...]
When I Allie and I planned to go up to Sleepy Hollow, New York to investigate the town famously featured in The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, I knew that I would have to re-read the story. In spite of movies and tv specials, I am much more familiar with Irving’s other famous tale, Rip Van [...]
This month Allie (Hist-Fic Chick) and I are featuring Harrowing Historicals in our Month Long Celebration of All Hallows, in other words, books with a scary bent that take place before 1960. In The Turn of the Screw, Henry James has written as much a Rorschach test as a ghost story. Craftily put together, this tale [...]
This month Allie and I are featuring Harrowing Historicals, books with a scary bent that were set before 1960. Frankenstein fit perfectly within that vein, and is also the subject of an upcoming podcast that I am recording with Jen from Devourer of Books. I have read Frankenstein twice now within as many years. I [...]
This month Allie (Hist-Fic Chick) and I are featuring Harrowing Historicals in our Month Long Celebration of All Hallows, in other words, books with a scary bent that were set before 1960. Earlier in the year I read The Little Stranger, by Sarah Waters for a discussion that I was having with Rebecca from The [...]
Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague, by Geraldine Brooks, sees Anna Frith, a young mother and housemaid in a small village, grapple with the ideas of religion, scripture and the strength of her own faith when an outbreak of the plague cripples the community in which she was born and raised. As the village [...]
In To Kill A Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, Atticus Finch is a single father raising his two children, Jem and Scout, in Maycomb County, Alabama under the watchful eyes of dear and eccentric neighbors. Atticus rules the roost with a seemingly lenient hands off approach (he has Calpurnia to more strongly keep the kids in [...]