Rare Objects Kathleen Tessaro Harper Release Date: April 12, 2016 ISBN 978-0-0623-5754-0 In 2013, Kathleen Tessaro’s novel, The Perfume Collector, became one of my favorite reads of all time despite it not falling within the parameters of my preferred genre. Now, three years later, her newest book has been released, […]
“The past is a pebble in my shoe.” ― Edgar Allan Poe Ah, life. It is fascinating. Life stories are fascinating. Sometimes, putting aside a writer’s manuscripts and looking at their “mundane”, real world life proves to be as fascinating as the stories they tell. Take Edgar Allan Poe. I’ve […]
Sometimes, the hardest thing about writing a weekly column is coming up with a good idea.Often for me, ideas seem to appear just in the nick of time – ta dah! – giving me just enough slack to delve into the topic but not enough time to allow it to […]
The Curiosity Stephen P. Kiernan William Morrow Publication Date: July 9, 2013 ISBN 978-0-06-222106-3 When Dr. Kate Philo of the Carthage Institute for Cellular Seeking heads a scientific expedition exploring the Arctic Sea, the hope is to find a berg with enough hard-ice to house significant numbers of frozen specimens […]
Sight Reading Daphne Kalotay Harper Collins First Edition: May 21, 2013 ISBN 978-0-06-224693-6 Sight reading occurs when a musician is asked to perform a piece of music off a written score without ever having seen it before; without rehearsal. Often used as a test for musical acuity, students hope to […]
Bunker Hill: A City, A Siege, A Revolution Nathaniel Philbrick Viking First Edition: April 30, 2013 ISBN 978-0-670-02544-2 Non-fiction, historical books aren’t supposed to be this good. They aren’t supposed to be fluid and entertaining. They are supposed to be full of footnotes and impeccable, dry explication abounding with names […]
On this day, December 3, in 1857, Joseph Conrad was born in Berdichev, Imperial Russia (modern
Ukraine, then a part of Poland). While he settled in England and wrote in English, he always considered himself a Pole. Heart of Darkness, one of the most famous of his 20 novels (which explores colonialism and the attitudes regarding what constitutes a barbarian versus civilized society) is considered one of the best English novels of the 20th century, as is his novel Lord Jim, which chronicles a crew’s abandonment of its disabled ship. Conrad died in England in 1924 at age 66.