Yes, I know I know. I should just re-title my blog “I Read A Lot of Stephen King”. But he’s been my go-to author for nearly thirty years and given that he had a brush with death fifteen years ago now and toyed with retiring twelve years ago, so any new book from him is a cause for me to skip about and click my heels. That this is his second book of the year and there is another on the horizon already for next […]
1001 Nights, for Beginners
Engraved on the Eye is a collection of 8 short stories told in various settings of Fantasy Middle East, drawing on Islamic and Middle Eastern folklore. It’s an extremely quick read. The stories are entertaining and the characters are lively, jovial, and diverse. Every story has some sort of supernatural creatures; ghuls feature prominently, along with ghul-hunters, martial artists, gunslingers, supervillains, rogues, dervishes,bounty hunters, and shaykhs. As with many short story books, there’s a range in subject matter and quality. I particularly enjoyed Mister Hadj’s Sunset Ride (about a gun-slinging Muslim wizard in […]
Black sheep and stage fright
I can never decide whether Ngaio Marsh’s Died in the Wool (1945) has one of the silliest or best detective fiction titles I have ever seen, and there are a lot of bad ones out there (ahem, Charlaine Harris). The story seems to be constructed around the pun; the dead body of a lady sheep farmer and member of parliament in New Zealand is found rather mashed up in…a pack of wool. It’s like calling a book Bloody Mary and having the main character be […]
The first “must read” book of 2015 has arrived
This should have been my Cannonball. One of the joys of becoming a Cannonball Reader and starting this blog has been occasionally managing to get my hands on an advance reading copy of an upcoming novel. And this one, which is published mid January 2015, is a real treat. It’s being touted as the next Gone Girl and the first must read book of 2015. SJ Watson, who made a huge splash with his own debut novel a few years back, is quoted on the cover. And […]
When a barnacle covered bag washes ashore on a small island in British Columbia, Ruth is immediately drawn into the narrative of Nao, a 16-year-old from an ocean away in Tokyo, Japan. Nao lived with her parents in California, where Silicon Valley and the California sun held nothing but hope and happiness for the Japanese family. But her father’s job loss returned Nao’s family to Japan, where she went from happy well-adjusted teenager, to a bullied outcast. Escaping the constant pinching, stalking, and even fake […]
Never, ever house sit for a friend.
Care of Wooden Floors was recommended to me by Mr Smith (@changeist), and for that I will be eternally grateful. While it won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, Will Wiles’ first novel was one of the best books I read this year. Told mostly through interior monologues and observation, Wiles’ nameless protagonist sets off on a journey to hell by agreeing to housesit for an orchestra conductor friend, (who’s not really a friend) as he must leave his East European home country to begin […]
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