Featured Review Archive

These reviews, which were promoted in CBR social media, on our homepage, and in Pajiba Love, appear below by review publication date, not by date featured.

Curiosity = Happiness

Alone Time: Four Seasons, Four Cities, and the Pleasures of Solitude by Stephanie Rosenbloom

January 7, 2023 by KateMc 3 Comments

“Alone, there’s no need for an itinerary. Walk, and the day arranges itself.” In Alone Time, New York Times travel writer Stephanie Rosenbloom travels solo to Paris, Istanbul, Florence, and New York. She shares details about the small, quiet moments that make up the most memorable parts of her trips: Alone, with no one at my side, I was also able to see le merveilleux quotidien, “the marvelous in everyday life”: a golden retriever gazing at a café chalkboard in Montmartre, as if reading the […]

Secrets Typed In Blood: The Third Pentecost & Parker Mystery

Secrets Typed In Blood by Stephen Spotswood

January 4, 2023 by Owlizabeth 6 Comments

Hello howdy and hey y’all, it’s my first post ever! I love detective stories. I’ve got a brain that enjoys puzzles and being right, so it’s fun on top of fun. But I am also super picky and easily distracted or annoyed by most mysteries. I need a challenge but not something so convoluted it’s unsolvable. I don’t want anything too cozy or too grim, nothing with lots of graphic violence/mutilation/torture but a decent amount of action. I prefer women authors and characters, I like […]

The Randomness of Food Trends Past at the Antique Store

The Southern Junior League Cookbook by Ann Seranne

January 2, 2023 by CoffeeShopReader 5 Comments

I don’t especially care for antique stores, but sometimes they do have interesting books, especially things like The Southern Junior League Cookbook. This book dates to the late seventies, and has recipes from about 30 different Junior League cookbooks from North Carolina to Florida, and Georgia to Texas. A lot of it is the sort of thing you’d expect, home cookery recipes and what we might now call ‘hacks’ for most of your basic categories from Appetizers and Soup to Meat and Poultry to Grains-Beans-Peas […]

Who’s Up For a Field Trip to the Murder Room?

The Murder Room by PD James

January 1, 2023 by elderberrywine 2 Comments

The Dupayne is a unique private (and fictional!) museum located on the Hempstead Heath that is dedicated to the interwar years in Britain. Located in a formerly stately house, most of it is dedicated to archives and is dreadfully scholarly, but there is one room upstairs set aside to highlight the most sensational murders of the period, AKA, the Murder Room. Needless to mention, it is especially a hit on local field trips. Who wants to check out the box that a murder victim got […]

Mary Shelley (1)

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

January 1, 2023 by vel veeter 6 Comments

“You will rejoice to hear that no disaster has accompanied the commencement of an enterprise which you have regarded with such evil forebodings.” In what is probably my 20th reading of the novel, I am beginning to wonder what more ideas and meaning I can squeeze from it. One of the nice things about teaching this novel is that students end up liking it in spite of themselves. There’s still some somewhat antiquated language and idiom, and there’s a set of references we need to […]

It’s hard trying to look at something unfiltered by the vast acclaim of its author

The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin

January 1, 2023 by ingres77 27 Comments

I think I’m a well-intentioned person. But we all do, I suppose. I try to read more books written by women. But I often don’t. Since I started reviewing books for CBR, I’ve reviewed 91 stories written by women, which is a hair over 20% of everything I’ve read. CBR07: 2 (7%) CBR08: 32 (29%) CBR09: 20 (26%) CBR10: 6 (11%) CBR11: 5 (18%) CBR12: 16 (26%) CBR13: 9 (18%) CBR14: 1 (8%) That’s abysmal. There’s no two ways about it. And that’s after some […]

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