Volcano by Shusaku Endo Fiction Peter Owen Publishers, March 2012 Paperback 175 pages Synopsis from the back cover: One of Shusaku Endo’s finest works of fiction, Volcano is a powerful novel of ideas as well as a sensitive and moving depiction of the trials of old age, set in the central region of Japan. With [...]

Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created at The Broke and the Bookish. This week’s Top Ten Tuesday asks us to list our ten favorite blogs or websites that aren’t about books. This is going to be rather hard for me, because I read a lot of great blogs that aren’t specifically about [...]

Naples Declared: A Walk Around the Bay by Benjamin Taylor Nonfiction — History / Travel A Marion Wood Book/Putnam; May 10, 2012 Paperback (ARC) 210 pages Description from the author’s website: It is a city of seemingly irreconcilable opposites, simultaneously glorious and ghastly. And it is Ben Taylor’s remarkable ability to meld these contradictions into [...]

Yesterday, Brenna of Literary Musings blogged about her favorite book blogs (which you should really check out because there are some really great blogs listed there). I was only familiar with three of the blogs on her list, so I checked out the rest and added them to my RSS reader. One of those blogs is [...]

Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray Fiction — Classic Lit. Book-of-the-Month Club, 1991 Paperback 768 pages This is not going to be a formal review. I spent an entire month reading Vanity Fair, and it fought me the whole time. I know I had a lot of things to say about it when I finally [...]

Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created at The Broke and the Bookish. This week’s Top Ten Tuesday was originally supposed to be “Top Ten Authors I’d Like To See On A Reality Show,” but then some feedback about its difficulty made Jamie give us a Freebie Week, as well. Thank goodness, because–and [...]

Lizz Free or Die: Essays by Lizz Winstead Nonfiction — Essays / Comedy / Memoir Riverhead Books; May 10, 2012 Hardcover 320 pages This is a book of essays about life. My life. It’s not a memoir, per se, as I decided to write about some specific moments that will give you some insight into [...]

Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created at The Broke and the Bookish. It has been a long time since I’ve participated in Top Ten Tuesday, but this week’s prompt is right up my alley. This week, The Broke and the Bookish want to know what everyone’s top ten favorite book quotes are. [...]

In One Person by John Irving Fiction Simon & Schuster Release date: May 8, 2012 Hardcover 448 pages Synopsis from the publisher: In One Person is narrated by Billy Abbott, one of Irving’s most tormented and impassioned protagonists. Billy grows up in First Sister, Vermont, a small town with two defining institutions: a boarding school [...]

Um…where did April go? It really feels like it has only been a couple of weeks since I typed up the reading wrap-up for March. But I did some exciting things in April! Eric and I built a new bookcase, and I changed the look of the blog; I am super happy with both. I [...]

The Little Red Guard: A Family Memoir by Wenguang Huang Nonfiction — Memoir Riverhead Books; April 26, 2012 Paperback (ARC) 262 pages Father made me Grandma’s coffin keeper when I was nine, imbuing the spooky black wooden box with a mythic significance that I could barely grasp. His stories lulled me into believing that Grandma’s [...]

This month’s discussion for the November’s Autumn Classics Challenge is all about book covers: What are your first impressions as you look at the cover? Does the book cover have an aspect that reflects the character, setting, or plot of the novel? If you could have designed the book cover what would you have chosen? [...]