Book Specs Author: Michael Ondaatje Publisher: Vintage International Publishing Date: December 1993 Number of Pages: 302 Genre: Historiographic metafiction Synopsis With unsettling beauty and intelligence, Michael Ondaatje’s Booker Prize-winning novel traces the intersection of four damaged lives in an abandoned Italian villa at the end of World War II. The nurse Hana, exhausted by death, […]
Tag: Readings
Book Review # 85: The Sea, The Sea
Book Specs Author: Iris Murdoch Publisher: Vintage Publishing Date: 1999 Number of Pages: 502 pages Genre: Psychological Fiction, Philosophical Fiction Synopsis The sea: turbulent and leaden; transparent and opaque; magician and mother. When Charles Arrowby, over sixty, a demi-god of the theatre – director, playwright and actor – retires from his glittering London world in order […]
Book Review # 84: Monsters of Men
Book Specs Author: Patrick Ness Publisher: Walker Books Ltd. Publishing Date: 2010 Number of Pages: 603 Genre: Young Adult Fiction, Science Fiction, Dystopian Synopsis “War,” says the Mayor. “At last.” Three armies march on New Prentisstown, each one intent on destroying the others. Todd and Viola are caught in the middle, with no chance of […]
Book Review # 83: The Subtle Knife
Book Specs Author: Philip Pullman Publisher: Laurel-Leaf Publishing Date: 1997 Number of Pages: 288 Genre: Science Fiction, High Fantasy Fiction, Bildungsroman Synopsis The intrepid young Lyra has passed through a shimmering portal in the sky and finds herself in a beautiful, haunted otherworld – Cittagazze, where soul-eating Specters stalk the streets and wingbeats of distant […]
Book Review # 82: The Ask and the Answer
Book Specs Author: Patrick Ness Publisher: Walker Books Ltd. Publishing Date: 2009 Number of Pages: 517 Genre: Young Adult Fiction, Dystopian, Science Fiction Synopsis Fleeing before a relentless army, Todd and Viola once again face their worst enemy, Mayor Prentiss. Immediately imprisoned and separated from Viola, Todd is forced to learn the ways of the […]
Book Review # 81: Neverwhere
Book Specs Author: Neil Gaiman Publisher: William Morrow Publishing Date: 2016 Number of Pages: 384 pages Genre: Urban Fantasy, Fantasy Fiction, Young Adult Fiction Synopsis Under the streets of London lies a world most people could never dream of. When Richard Mayhew helps a mysterious girl he finds bleeding on the pavement, his boring life changes […]
Book Review # 80: The Golden Compass
Book Specs Author: Philip Pullman Publisher: Laurel-Leaf Publishing Date: 1996 Number of Pages: 351 Genre: Science Fiction, High Fantasy Fiction, Bildungsroman Synopsis Lyra Belacqua is content to run wild among the scholars in Jordan College, her daemon familiar always by her side. But the moment she hears hushed talk of Dust, an extraordinary particle, she’s […]
October Book Wrap-Up: A Dive into the Deep World of Magical Realism
A Topsy-Turvy Month If there is one word that is to describe what kind of reader I am it would be “impulsive” because that is the type of reader that I am. I tend to read whatever book that comes to mind, regardless of the author and regardless of the author. That is why I […]
Book Review # 79: Of Mice and Men
Book Specs Author: John Steinbeck Publisher: Pearson Education Limited Publishing Date: 2011 Number of Pages: 118 Genre: American Fiction, Modern Classic, Tragic Realistic Fiction Synopsis Of Mice and Men is a poignant tale of the extraordinary friendship between two itinerant workers in the harsh depression years of 1930s America. George and his large, simple-minded friend […]
Book Review # 78: Killing Commendatore
Book Specs Author: Haruki Murakami Translator: Philip Gabriel and Ted Goossen (from Japanese) Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf Publishing Date: October 2018 Number of Pages: 681 pages Genre: Magical Realism, Historical Fiction Synopsis In Killing Commendatore, a thirty-something portrait painter in Tokyo is abandoned by his wife and finds himself holed up in the mountain home of […]
