Read the previous post HERE.

These issues I had with the plotting and characters in Longbourne were really very small, and most of the time reading I was in awe of not just the spare perfection of Baker’s prose, but the brilliance of her observations. Many times I found myself doing the thing I really do know better than to do, and speculating on ( Read more... )

Dear Readers! I have written fewer than 20 blog posts in 365 days! That’s… kind of terrible?

Anyway! After my controlled rant about Katherine Addison’s The Goblin Emperor*, I felt bad, for it seemed like I was being too negative, and all my reviews lately made the books sound awful, which they aren’t necessarily. OK, Tigana really is that bad ( Read more... )

Dear Readers! Do you require assistance with a question of propriety, honor, duty, sacrifice, or sangria? Our resident Genius can help! Ask him your questions and he will give you his (or his friends’ and relations’) answers! Do you have a burning need to know about a topic in biology, mythology, folklore, or battling ghosts of the evil dead? ( Read more... )

In which I continue to review Katherine Addison’s The Goblin Emperor [Tor, 2014] and Heather Rose Jones’s Daughter of Mystery [Bella Books, 2014].

Go to Part One

( If you don’t have your health, you don’t have anything )

Dear Readers! I know posting has been somewhat erratic, but I’m trying to emulate the words of Julia Child: No Explanations, No Excuses. Anyway, Today I am reviewing two books about Court Intrigue With A Smattering Of Magic: Katherine Addison’s The Goblin Emperor [Tor, 2014] and Heather Rose Jones’s Daughter of Mystery [Bella Books, 2014] while ( Read more... )

Dear Readers,
I think it would be fun to post Wednesday book reviews that relate in some way to the preceding Monday’s Tigana post. Today I’m reviewing Bitterblue by Kristin Cashore [I have the trade paperback, Firebird (Penguin), 2013 (hardcover first edition published in 2012 ( Read more... )

Dear Readers! This is my first post dissecting Guy Gavriel Kay’s 1990 novel Tigana! All posts about the novel will be categorized under the new tag “dissecting tigana,” so as to a) be easy to find and b) not clutter up my “books” tag. This post will cover the Prologue ( Read more... )

Dear Readers! This is the end of my critical review of Paula Byrne’s The Real Jane Austen (Harper 2013). Part One is HERE. Part Two is HERE.

( Click here to read this essay! )

In which I continue to review Paula Byrne’s The Real Jane Austen: A Life in Small Things. Part One is HERE.

( Click here to read this essay! )

Human beings tell stories, to entertain, to explore, and to define themselves. We class ourselves and others by comparing the narratives of the cultures we are part of, and deciding which assumptions of another’s culture are like or unlike our own. Every other person is an alien to us, their culture a foreign planet whose ways we can never fully ( Read more... )