Sea of Tranquility - Emily St. John Mandel (Harper Collins Publishers, 2022) ...this is what the Time Institute never understood: if definitive proof emerges that we're living in a simulation, the correct response tothat news will be So what. A life lived in a simulation is still a life. -Emily St. John Mandel, Sea of… Continue reading Book Review: Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel
This was an excellent collection of 10 short crime stories. There were mostly names I recognized, such as Ruth Rendell and Grahame Greene and G.K. Chesterton and others that I probably would recognize if I read more mysteries. I'm not sure that audio is the right format for me when it comes to short stories… Continue reading (Audio) Book Review: Classic Crime Short Stories
Set over three days in a maternity word for pregnant flu patients in Dublin in 1918 - there’s a LOT going on here. And yet this isn’t a book that feels overwhelming. It feels steady. You feel swept up in the unceasing action of a busy hospital. Rarely a moment to rest, life and death… Continue reading (Audio) Book Review: The Pull of the Stars by Emma Donoghue
The End of the Affair - Graham Greene (Heinemann, 1966) Maurice Bendrix's affair with Sarah Miles has been over for a couple of years when he unexpectedly runs into her husband, Henry, one evening. Bendrix reluctantly agrees to have a drink with Henry, only to find all his love and hate of Sarah reignited when… Continue reading Book Review: The End of the Affair by Graham Greene
The Marriage Portrait - Maggie O'Farrell (Alfred A. Knopf Canada, 2022) Lucrezia is the youngest daughter of Medicis of Florence. Raised in luxury but strictly watched over by her mother and father, her life as a young girl in the 1550s is dictated for her from birth. Yet there is a wildness to her, something… Continue reading Book Review: The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell
Loved this book. Who is the main character? I'm not sure and I don't even care. Ponzi scheme set in 2008 inspired by Madoff Vincent is an amazing main character - she’s smart and vulnerable, fluid and changing but consistent in her basic character. She feels real. The setting of a remote luxury hotel located… Continue reading (Point Form) Book Review: The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel
Hello and Welcome to the Fifth (yes, fifth!) Annual Karissa Reads Books Literary Awards! This is my annual, very rigorous, very competitive, highly esteemed way of looking back at what I've read over the past year and rating it by a merit system known only to myself. Eligible books must have been read by me… Continue reading The Fifth Annual Karissa Reads Books Literary Awards
When Lillian Leyb's whole family is killed in a Russian pogrom - brutally slaughtered by their neighbours simply for being Jewish - she boards a ship to a new country and ends up in New York City, sharing a cramped apartment with a cousin and a rotating cast of other roommates. A job at a… Continue reading (Audio) Book Review: Away by Amy Bloom
This is the second book by Silvia Moreno-Garcia that I've read (the first was Mexican Gothic) and so I feel comfortable saying that she has a knack for taking a familiar style of tale and adding her own flavour to it. In particular, a knack for telling a story from a Mexican perspective as both… Continue reading Book Review: The Daughter of Doctor Moreau by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Chivalry - Neil Gaiman & Colleen Doran (Dark Horse Books, 2022) What if the Holy Grail ended up in thrift shop in a quiet town in England? What if a little old lady who frequented the shop found it and, liking it, brought it home? What if she liked the way it looked on the… Continue reading Book Review: Chivalry by Neil Gaiman & Colleen Doran
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