Just finished a book for work. It was a crime thriller set in Charm City, Jewel of the East, place of my birth, hon. But I don’t blog about these reads (why?), so instead you get some rambling musings far past my bedtime and a peek at one of the books in my [...]

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Synopsis:
A young mage-in-training with unprecedented powers performs a forbidden spell and looses a shadow from another realm that intends to destroy him.
Review:
The writing in A Wizard of Earthsea is beautiful, and the world is wholly original. However, this books gets a little too fantasy-ey for me. It’s got a lot of Magic, and [...]

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Synopsis:
A brainy high school senior narrates the events that led to the death of her charismatic and disturbed teacher.
Review:
I stayed up until 1:30 am last night blazing through the last 200 pages of the book, in a state of amazement (and not a little jealousy) over the superb plotting Pessl married to her delicious prose [...]

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Synopsis:
Snapshots in the life of a slightly depressed young woman with low self-esteem.
Review:
I loved Sittenfeld’s debut novel Prep, and had high expectations for this one. I was pretty disappointed. Hannah is passive and largely disinterested in life, and this just doesn’t make for a compelling main character, unless her passivity is what the [...]

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Synopsis:
A collection of lectures given by EM Forster at Trinity College in Cambridge in 1927, touching on all aspects of the novel from story and people to what Forster calls “fantasy” and “prophecy.”
Review:
A delicious gem of a book. Forster’s prose is gorgeous, and I want to read every book he mentions that I haven’t [...]

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Synopsis:
We live in the Age of Show Business. Postman’s book is a history of discourse that presents the case for the preeminence of the written word over visual media, and outlines the ills inherent in a visually-driven society.
Review:
I was somewhat familiar with Postman’s general ideas, having been friends with one of his protegees for [...]

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Synopsis:
When a betrayed wife discovers that her husband’s mistress could be her (much younger) twin, she convinces the mistress that they should switch places and see how the other half lives.

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Synopsis:
A survey of how American spending patterns have spiraled out of control.
Review:
I am having an enjoyable debate about how fast is too fast when it comes to reading in the comments portion of the Zadie Smith post I linked to earlier, so it’s a tad ironic that I’m going to tell you that I TOTALLY [...]

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Synopsis:
Aimless Tom Ripley has been dispatched to Italy to bring feckless playboy Dickie Greenleaf home, but when Dickie rejects Tom’s friendship, Tom chooses a darker course.
Review:
I have read and enjoyed several books by Highsmith, but stayed away from the Ripley books because in the crime and mystery genres, I tend not to like the recurring [...]

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I read for work last night, but it was a screenplay, not a book. I hadn’t planned on posting when I read a screenplay (because it’s hardly reading), but I woke up this morning and Boing Boing linked to a quote from Zadie Smith about reading. Perfect.
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