Time to Murder and Create by Lawrence Block
About ten years ago, I spent a summer working an internship and living with three other people. During the week, I bided time until the weekend, when I could go hang out with my then girlfriend, who lived about an hour away. But until then, there wasn’t much to do where I was at and the four of us were all broke interns. So I killed time reading and doing other stuff. The job I was at had a cart full of random books. One […]
S by JJ Abrams and Doug Dorst
CBR11 Bingo – Listicle If you look this book up on Goodreads, it ends up on several of their book lists, including “Best Experimental Books Ever”, “Books With Innovative Designs”, and “Books You Can’t Read On A Kindle”. All of these categories hint at the unique design concept which makes this book the amazing piece of work that it is (and with JJ Abrams (yes, that one) as the co-creator, it’s not a shock). The story is about Jen, a university undergrad who works […]
Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik
I don’t know what to say about this awesome book. Novik does a great job of developing three characters (Miryem, Wanda, and Irinushka). The setting of the story is great and we have a fire demon, a race of people called the Staryk who live in a wintery world that is adjacent to the Russia the story takes place in. I loved all three of these characters equally (which almost never happens). I wanted a follow-up story though about what happens to Miryem. The ending […]
The Devil in Silver by Victor LaValle
The titular devil in LaValle’s The Devil in Silver comes in many forms. Its most obvious is the monster that roams the halls of the New Hyde psychiatric ward at night, attacking patients who leave their doors unlocked. When Pepper is committed against his will after committing a crime he doesn’t fully remember, he quickly comes face to face with this evil. Along with some of his companions on the ward, he sets out to solve the mystery of this hushed up resident of the […]
Another Thing to Fall by Laura Lippman
Not too much to say here except that this read like a filler book in the adventures of Tess and her private investigation business. It’s pretty apparent she got some of this plot idea from being married to David Simon. It just didn’t work and honestly all of the characters we are used to (Whitney, Crow, and even now I guess Lloyd) felt very muted. “Another Thing to Fall” has Tess almost being ran over by a television crew boat. She’s somehow offered a job […]
Dope by Sara Gran
Dope is such a solid crime novel that it makes me want to immediately clear my TBR pile and read Sara Gran’s entire catalogue. The problem with that is I’ve tried to read Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead so many times and have never been able to get into it. I just can’t connect with the inner monologue of the titular character. Which sucks because it’s doubtless that Sara Gran is a talented writer. I picked this one up when I saw it on a […]
