Frog Music is stuffed full of characters, humor, drama, sex, and tragedy. It sprawls across the stage in technicolor, a stunning contrast to Donoghue’s earlier book Room, which confined her two protagonists—and her readers–to a tiny claustrophobic space for much of the story. And yet Frog Music has carved an aching and tender place in my heart, just as Room did. Frog Music takes place in 1876 San Francisco, and is based on the true story of the murder of street denizen Jenny Bonnet, a […]
This book completely ate my brain.
First of all, yes, this is essentially a five star review, but please note, it’s five stars with reservations. The five stars is almost entirely due to the first 1/3 or so of the book (and maybe a little past that) and how it absolutely took over my life. If I could, I’d probably rate the first 1/3 six or seven stars, and the rest four, but that’s obviously not possible, so here we are. The rest of the reason that I settled on five […]
An Echo in the Bone (Outlander #7) by Diana Gabaldon
First of all, don’t read this review if you haven’t read the previous six books. It won’t make any sense and it’ll spoil quite a bit. The Outlander series is fantastic, but it is not a series you can pick up in the middle. Go find the first six books (and you totally should), and come back when you’re done. I’ll wait. “True, the body’s easily maimed, and the spirit can be crippled – yet there’s that in a man that is never destroyed.” An Echo in […]
Please Don’t Shoot
We have a problem with policing in this country. Hopefully this isn’t a surprise, although many people have only started to notice this since the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson last month. People in many communities, for years, have been more fearful of the police than of the criminals in their communities; this is especially true for black people, who can be shot for having a BB gun, a toy sword, or nothing at all. Mr. Balko has written a book that unfortunately is […]
A historical romance with a maths genius
Young Rose Sweetly is a computer in Victorian England. This means she works for a male astronomer, doing amazing feats of arithmetic and calculation to help him in his work. She lives with her pregnant sister, taking care of her while waiting for her brother-in-law, a naval doctor, to return from abroad. Preferably before the baby is born. She’s also very much in love with her neighbour, the infamous author and columnist Stephen Shaughnessey. Yet she heeds her sister’s advice. He is a legendary scandal […]
The further adventures of Jamie and Claire Fraser – we’re getting closer to the American Revolution
3.5 stars This is the sixth book in the Outlander series, and really not the place to start reading. You will have missed out on literally thousands of pages of plot developments, intrigue and characterisation. If you are interested in checking out the series (which thanks to the current TV show, I suspect more and more might be), start at the beginning with Outlander. Ok, where do I even begin to summarise the plot here. The mass market paperback is over 1400 pages long and the action spans […]
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