The Somnambulist features Edward Moon, a conjurer most easily compared to Sherlock Holmes, but with a freakish twist. His Watson is an 8-foot-tall mute man named–can you guess?–The Somnambulist. The pair are asked to investigate a bizarre murder in the seamier part of London at the beginning of the novel. Within pages, they have solved […]
Everyone who knows pleasant Dr. Jekyll is surprised that he has taken the brutish Mr. Hyde under his wing. Hyde is a horrible person, and everyone who meets him claims to be immediately repulsed by him. It’s obvious that there’s more to the relationship than meets the eye, but no one guesses exactly how twisted […]
I have somehow never seen “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” or any of the other movie incarnations of this book. In fact, I was surprised to read the back cover of this book and find out that the book is about Dracula moving to Enland to set up shop. So, I had no expectations going into it. […]
Julie Jacobs is stunned the day she finds out that her great-aunt Rose, who raised her and her twin sister Janice, has died. She’s even more surprised when she finds out at the funeral that her real name is Giulietta Tolomei and Rose wanted her to go back to Siena, where she was born, and […]
In the interest of avoiding spoilers for the second book, I’ll just say that this picks up immediately after that awful cliffhanger of an ending in The Girl Who Played With Fire. So much has been said that I don’t feel like I have a whole lot more to contribute. I (mostly) raced through the […]
Oscar Wao is a loser. There’s really no kind way to put it. But it might not be entirely his fault. His family is from the Dominican Republic, where the evil dictator Trujillo held sway for an unbelievable amount of time. Oscar’s family fell into Trujillo’s bad graces way back in the day and they […]
3.5 Stars. This came awfully close to being a 3 star read for me. The book just seemed to get longer and longer. It was finally about 100 pages longer than my attention span for the story. But once I got to the end, I realized that everything was essential, even what I thought were tangents. John […]
The first volume in Maya Angelou’s autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is not an easy read. It picks up when she’s three and her brother is four and they’re being shipped from California to Arkansas–alone on a train. They live with their paternal grandmother for years. Maya writes poignantly and heart-breakingly, but […]
This is the story of Captain Yossarian, who is serving in World War II as a navigator on a bomber based in Italy. Yossarian is caught in a “Catch-22” where he wants to be grounded, but he can only get out of flying more missions if he’s crazy, but if he was crazy, he wouldn’t […]
Fermina Daza and Florentino Ariza fall in love when they’re very young. Ultimately, Fermina chooses to marry Juvenal Urbino, a wealthy, well-respected doctor from a good family. Florentino decides to wait for Dr. Urbino to die so he can renew his pursuit of Fermina. As he waits, he has 622 affairs. The best thing about […]
Alexia Maccon, née Tarrabotti, is awakened one morning by her husband bellowing out orders and questions. He doesn’t take time to answer her questions, but of course she finds out what’s going on later. Something or someone has found a way to completely negate whatever magic makes supernatural beings, well–supernatural. This has London in an […]