May's Mutterings

Tag: books

  • Book review: Sunshine by Robin McKinley

    Sunshine by Robin McKinley My rating: 4 of 5 stars I really dislike vampire novels. I find them clichéd and silly (other than Bram Stoker’s Dracula, of course). And, if it weren’t for the fact that Robin McKinley is one of my favorite fantasy writers, I wouldn’t have read this one either.But I’m glad I…

  • Book review: “Wintering” by Katherine May

    Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times by Katherine May My rating: 4 of 5 stars We all have times when our preferred action is to crawl into a dark hole and never come out again. Grey skies and cold, dreary weather makes us even more likely to burrow. In “Wintering,” the…

  • Book review: A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah Maas

    A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas My rating: 4 of 5 stars I have never read anything by Sarah Maas before, but this book looked interesting and so I thought I’d give it a try. I am so glad I did! The book is best described as a romance tucked inside…

  • Book review: The Feather Thief by Kirk Johnson

    The Feather Thief by Kirk Wallace Johnson My rating: 4 of 5 stars For those of you who enjoy “Moby Dick” as a tale of obsession, welcome to a real-life version. This book takes you into the world of rare birds, their feathers, and the obsessive world of the Victorian era art of salmon fly-tying.…

  • Book review: A Great and Glorious Game by Bart Giamatti

    A Great and Glorious Game: Baseball Writings of A. Bartlett Giamatti by A. Bartlett Giamatti My rating: 5 of 5 stars I like baseball (a lot), but I don’t love baseball. (College basketball is my true obsession.) But Bart Giamatti’s essays about baseball makes me wish that I loved baseball as much as he did…

  • Book review: Murder on Black Swan Lane by Andrea Penrose

    Murder on Black Swan Lane by Andrea Penrose My rating: 4 of 5 stars This is the first novel in a mystery series with an interesting premise. The hero, Lord Wrexford, is a member of the aristocracy and very scientifically minded. The heroine, A.J. Quill, is a satirical artist, who seems to know facts about…

  • Book review: The Secret Lives of Codebreakers by Sinclair McKay

    The Secret Lives of Codebreakers: The Men and Women Who Cracked the Enigma Code at Bletchley Park by Sinclair McKay My rating: 3 of 5 stars You have to set your expectations when reading this book. First and foremost, the author is British, so, not surprisingly, Bletchley Park and the contributions by the British codebreakers…

  • Book review: The Scourge of War: The Life of William Tecumseh Sherman by Brian Holden-Reid

    The Scourge of War: The Life of William Tecumseh Sherman by Brian Holden-Reid My rating: 4 of 5 stars The author of this book has a definite viewpoint, which is that William Tecumseh Sherman got a bad rap and was not the savage butcher and scourge of the South that he has been portrayed to…

  • Book review: Tilly and the Bookwanderers by Anna James

    Tilly and the Bookwanderers by Anna James My rating: 4 of 5 stars This book (the first in the series) has a very clever premise. Bookwanderers are those readers who have the ability to actually wander into a book and “live out” the book’s experiences. Tilly is one of those fortunate to have the ability…

  • Book review: Chalice by Robin McKinley

    Chalice by Robin McKinley My rating: 4 of 5 stars I have loved almost everything I’ve read by Robin McKinley, and “Chalice” is no exception. On the surface, this is a conventional fantasy with magic and villains and heroes. The author lifts the book out of its conventional genre with lyrical–almost poetical–writing (as is typical…