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Ayşe Kulin — Last Train to Istanbul: Dramatic WWII Story (Book Review)

by Barbara the Bibliophage | Feb 22, 2021 | RELAX: Historical Fiction

Well-loved Turkish author Ayşe Kulin illustrates another angle on the early years of World War II in her 2002 book Last Train to Istanbul. (Translated to English in 2013.) The story is set partly in Turkey and partly in the Nazi-occupied French cities of Paris and...

The Language of Threads from Gail Tsukiyama—Women of the Silk Book #2 (Book Review)

by Barbara the Bibliophage | Feb 18, 2021 | RELAX: Historical Fiction

The Language of Threads is a continuation of Gail Tsukiyama’s excellent book Women of the Silk. I’m glad to have read both in sequence, which immersed me in the main character’s entire life.  In the first book, Pei is taken from her small China village, sold to work...

M.L. Stedman — The Light Between Oceans: An Unthinkable Dilemma (Book Review)

by Barbara the Bibliophage | Feb 12, 2021 | RELAX: Historical Fiction

M.L. Stedman creates historical fiction based around a unthinkable choice in The Light Between Oceans. Set in the years between the World Wars and along the coast of South West Australia, it’s a unique period piece. And the choice its main characters make reverberates...

Gail Tsukiyama — Women of the Silk delivers Historical Fiction set in China (Book Review)

by Barbara the Bibliophage | Feb 11, 2021 | RELAX: Historical Fiction

In Women of the Silk, a 1991 book from Gail Tsukiyama, times are hard. It’s China in the late 1920s and especially in the small villages nature and politics affect everyone. Our main character is a young girl named Pei. As the story opens, she’s about six, and her...

Danielle Girard — Exhume: Dr. Schwartzman #1 (Book Review)

by Barbara the Bibliophage | Feb 6, 2021 | RELAX: Mystery-Thriller

Danielle Girard introduces readers to Dr. Annabelle Schwartzman, Medical Examiner in a new series. This first book is called Exhume and it includes a variety of themes. First, of course is the world of morgues and autopsies. Second, is the way her role of gathering...

Doris Kearns Goodwin — The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism (Book Review)

by Barbara the Bibliophage | Jan 29, 2021 | RESIST: Politics

Doris Kearns Goodwin creates a behemoth of early twentieth century history in The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism. I confess to knowing very little beyond the basics about Roosevelt. Before reading this book, I...

Kerry Greenwood and Phryne Fisher: Cocaine Blues is Historical Mystery Par Excellence (Book Review)

by Barbara the Bibliophage | Jan 10, 2021 | RELAX: Mystery-Thriller

Author Kerry Greenwood introduces a new mystery heroine in her 2012 book, Cocaine Blues. Phryne Fisher is different from a typical late 1920’s female sleuth in many ways. First, she’s based in Melbourne, Australia instead of the more typical New York, London, or...

C.J. Sansom: Dissolution—A Chilly Tudor Era Mystery (Book Review)

by Barbara the Bibliophage | Dec 26, 2020 | RELAX: Historical Fiction, RELAX: Mystery-Thriller

C.J. Sansom creates an unlikely hero in his character Matthew Shardlake. In Dissolution, the time is Tudor England, and Shardlake is a lawyer working in the service of Thomas Cromwell. He’s just two degrees from King Henry VIII. But he’s still just a lowly guy charged...

Boys in Two Unique Coming-of-Age Books

by Barbara the Bibliophage | Dec 21, 2020 | RELAX: Other Relaxation

Reading two books about two boys in very different eras and situations warmed my heart at the start of this cold, dark winter. I began Bud, Not Buddy by Christopher Paul Curtis with my 10-year-old granddaughter. And then I started The Absolutely True Diary of a...

From Paramahansa Yogananda: Autobiography of a Yogi—A Classic Memoir

by Barbara the Bibliophage | Sep 27, 2020 | RELAX: Memoir

Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda is exactly that. Yogananda details episodes in his spiritual and bodily life from childhood until the book’s publication around 1945. The stories are wide-ranging and vary between India and the U.S. But primarily,...

The Sandcastle Girls: Heartbreaking Historical Fiction from Chris Bohjalian (Book Review)

by Barbara the Bibliophage | Sep 16, 2020 | RELAX: Historical Fiction

In The Sandcastle Girls, Chris Bohjalian crafts a skilled and sad historical fiction novel. It centers on the little-known Armenian genocide around the time of World War I. Tragically, the Ottoman government expelled and mass murdered 1.5 million Armenians in Turkey...

Following Trump in 2016: Unbelievable by Katy Tur (Book Review)

by Barbara the Bibliophage | Sep 3, 2020 | RESIST: Politics

What does it say about my reading habits that when I needed something easy, I picked up the 2017 book Unbelievable: My Front Row Seat to the Craziest Campaign in American History by Katy Tur? And that subtitle? It’s not holding up over time, if the state of the 2020...

Life on Other Planets? The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin Book Review (Remembrance of Earth’s Past #1)

by Barbara the Bibliophage | Aug 23, 2020 | RELAX: Fantasy, Horror, Sci-Fi

The Three-Body Problem is science fiction based in China and written by Chinese author Liu Cixin.  Despite being set in a completely different culture, the science focus offers plenty of commonalities. Plus, of course, the fascination with life on other planets. That...

Stacy Schiff: Cleopatra: A Life—Shifting Sands of Power (Book Review)

by Barbara the Bibliophage | Aug 5, 2020 | LEARN: Everything Else

Stacy Schiff looks for hidden details about the world’s most famous female monarch in Cleopatra: A Life. And, believe me, those details hide among gobs of information about the men she loved. In order to tell Cleopatra’s life, Schiff really tells the stories of Caesar...

Margaret Walker, Classic Southern Historical Fiction and Jubilee (Book Review)

by Barbara the Bibliophage | Jul 4, 2020 | RELAX: Historical Fiction

Reviewing Jubilee by Margaret Walker, a classic piece of historical fiction, is a daunting thing. Walker crafts a story, “inspired by the memories of her maternal grandmother, Elvira Ware Dozier.” (see source below) The main character is Vyry, a woman born on a...

Book Review: Zone One by Colson Whitehead

by Barbara the Bibliophage | May 25, 2020 | RELAX: Fantasy, Horror, Sci-Fi

Zone One from Colson Whitehead isn’t your typical zombie novel. Not that I’m a regular reader of the genre. But I know my fantasy and horror. What Whitehead does is show us the mind of one man in his post-pandemic world. (Yes, I read another pandemic book.) This world...
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