Showing posts with label book. Show all posts
Showing posts with label book. Show all posts

Monday, January 18, 2021

Mystery on Lake Geneva

For once, this mystery book by Mary Stewart doesn't act as a travel guide extraordinaire at the same time. The story is too contained within the space of private properties, with good reason. Of Stewart's mystery books I have read, this one is the darkest and most obscure visible in title and storyline both. But follow me to Lake Geneva's French side to have a good look around.

High School Gay Romance

Presenting High School life in any form is fraught with danger; either authors presume too much knowledge about how its social mechanisms work or they lose themselves in the interactions that have little or nothing to do with the story they are telling. This book falls into the first category; and that's not the worst of its shortcomings

Tuesday, January 5, 2021

Sorcerer Apprentice No More

In the fourth book of the Belgariad series, the apprentice arrives at his destination. The worst kept secret (at least for the reader) is being revealed to all the world. And all the world means the universe and everything. While the previous books were dominated by a group interaction, this book now changes tack to a more stationary and divisive lifestyle. This can go only so far, though.

Friday, December 11, 2020

Billionaire Heir

Tradition can be a comfort and help run a functional and mainly happy family. And it can be disruptive and lead to a highly dysfunctional family when circumstances conspire against it. This is the scope of conflict Lucy Monroe is exploring in The Maharajah's Billionaire Heir. This modern romance is off topic, entertaining, and not what you expect at all.

Wednesday, August 19, 2015

When a Spell Goes Wrong

Enter the present day world of witches, warlocks, and high-school. Then add murder to the mix. This is the enticing recipe served up by Nikki Jefford in Entangled, the first of the Spellbound books. If the mix is something you can get into, the book is free to download on Amazon for Kindle at the time of publication of this review. You will be enchanted with what you find.


Friday, August 14, 2015

Germanic Gods and Goblins

In Gateway to Nifleheim, Glenn G. Thater delves into the Germanic world of gods and goblins that are related to Valhalla and Nifleheim, the powers of good and evil to spin her yarn. This is the first book in the Harbinger of Doom Series. I have to confess at the start, I skipped many a page to keep going. The story doesn't so much move as that it plods on, tediously.


Monday, August 3, 2015

How The Afterlife Works

Power of the Heir's Passion by L. R. W. Lee is a sort of a prequel to the Andy Smithson series. I assure you that this is the most accurate description of afterlife available, for the world of Oomladee, not ours. It is subtitled A Novella; not quite a book but too long for a short story. And it's a ghost story from start to end.


Sunday, June 23, 2013

Heroes Lacking Definition

The word hero conveys all kinds of images to us. When writing about heroes, you would expect that an author comes up with some sort of definition; it might even be a personal one. Lord Ashcroft wrote a book about heroes, and he didn't put a heroic effort into it. Special Forces Heroes is not that special and lacks in force. Heroically, though, I read it from beginning to end.


Saturday, June 15, 2013

Three Generations: The Forgotten Garden

Pan Books published The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton. In it, she tells the stories of three women in search of their roots covering a hundred years of family history. While two of them were displaced by no choice of their own, the third is set upon her quest by her grandmother to solve a family mystery.

Heligan Gardens

Thursday, June 13, 2013

Roger Moore Biography

Roger Moore’s My Word Is My Bond was published by Michael O’Mara Books. I don’t know where Moore found his ghost-writer, but maybe it was his accountant. The book could qualify as an accountant’s joke anytime. It is probably the most boring biography that ever came into my hands.


Tuesday, May 28, 2013

Quantum of Solace: The Source

When the James Bond movie Quantum of Solace was coming to the cinema, Penguin Classics published Quantum of Solace: The Complete Short Stories by Ian Fleming. What is the book's connection with the movie? What do its short stories tell us about the film? And how did Ian Fleming come by this odd book title?

Daniel Craig

Saturday, May 25, 2013

Duchess of Death

It is always difficult to come second and later. When writing a biography, it makes your job as a writer that much harder and your research must be more thorough than that previously done. Still, the outcome might be a book that contains nothing new over what has already been written. It ends up being a rehash of well known and acclaimed books with no merit of its own.


Sunday, April 14, 2013

The Little Prince: 70 Years After Publication

The Little Prince has grown big over the years, really huge, since its first double publication (French and English) in New York in 1943. There are few other books that have been translated into over 200 languages. Some of these languages have otherwise only ever seen the Bible translated before. This book can therefore be said to have been and still being a huge success. But what makes it so special? 


Friday, April 12, 2013

Poking Fun at Book Critics

Rupert Thomson has written a novel under the title of a memoir. He is out to take book critics for a ride. As far as I was able to find reviews, he was extremely successful even though plot, style, and hyperbole used are a dead give-away. But the book offers much more than schadenfreude at the expense of hapless professional book reviewers.