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After weeks or months of reading nothing but formulaic genre fiction—some of it quite entertaining but none of it particularly special—I forgot what it’s like to suck up some genuine literary prose. While reading The Hunter, I was… Read More

Jakarta farce

I just finished reading The Good, the Bad, and the Aunties, the third book in the series by Jesse Q. Sutanto, and I have to say I am glad the trilogy ends here. Again, as in the second… Read More

Another old faithful

I first discovered the books of Robert Crais when I picked up one of his stand-alones at a library sale, and that one—Demolition Angel—remains a favorite; I think I have read it three or four times over the… Read More

Person, place, thing

I wrapped up my wallow through the writings of familiar authors by reading two books that I really should have saved for six weeks or so but, once discovered, I couldn’t resist them. These were Jenny Colgan’s latest,… Read More

Riches

Sometimes forgetfulness or inattention is a gift. I was so busy for a while there trying out new authors and new titles garnered from various Facebook reading groups that I quit paying attention to the yield of some… Read More

Re-invested!

I just finished #7 in the Cormoran Strike/Robin Ellacott series by J. K. Rowling, and my complaints from the previous book are all forgotten in the sheer pleasure of reading this one. The Running Grave (named for a… Read More

A deep dive into fantasy

While I was a teen librarian I had the pleasure of discovering the book Graceling, by Kristin Cashore. It’s one of those fantasy books that was (perhaps) written with teens in mind but which appeals more widely to… Read More

A World of Curiosities

I was late to the party reading Louise Penny’s most recent in her Chief Inspector Armand Gamache series—they reliably drop in the fall of each year (although this one, coming out in November, was later than the usual… Read More

Over the top is okay!

The latest installment of Elle Cosimano’s Finlay Donovan series dropped on January 31st, and I started reading it a few days later when I discovered it on my Kindle (I had prepaid for the e-book dump and then… Read More

Genre confused

I am a big fan of Peter Heller’s work. I have read all of his novels and haven’t disliked a one of them, although I do have favorites. So I was delighted to discover that he has a… Read More