Yes, it’s official! I’m jumping the George R. R. Martin bandwagon! Since HBO aired the first season of the TV series Game of Thrones to wide acclaim, people have just been raving mad about how good it was — and … Continue reading
The Strain That Started It All (A Book Review of Michael Crichton’s The Andromeda Strain) Where others credit classic writers like Jules Verne and H. G. Wells, I forever owe my first real taste of science fiction to Michael Crichton … Continue reading
The Town Knew Darkness (A Book Review of Stephen King’s ‘Salem’s Lot) Far more complex than his debut Carrie, Stephen King ups the ante in his sophomore hit ‘Salem’s Lot, published in 1975. Raising the bar of horror from a … Continue reading
More Than Bats, Castles, and Fangs (A Book Review of Bram Stoker’s Dracula) Conceivably, no other single work in horror fiction has had a greater impact than Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Published in 1897, Stoker’s vision of the vampire, based from … Continue reading
Weirder Than You Think (A Book Review of Tales of H. P. Lovecraft edited by Joyce Carol Oates) Without a doubt Howard Philips Lovecraft, or more commonly known as H. P. Lovecraft, is one of the greatest writers the turbulent … Continue reading
Of Chickens, Journeys, and Forever (A Book Review of Before Ever After by Samantha Sotto) With its share of joys and aches, Shelley Sullivan’s love story, on its surface, is something we have known and heard before — that is … Continue reading
A Love to Defy the Rules of Time (A Book Review of Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time Traveler’s Wife) Right from the beginning of Audrey Niffeneger’s famed debut novel, The Time Traveler’s Wife, the reader is already thrown terrifically off-balanced. Here’s … Continue reading
Flight of Fancy (A Book Review of William Pène du Bois’s The Twenty-One Balloons) After busting a literary heavy I noticed that from time to time there’s this feeling, an emerging need to clear the palate, to freshen up and … Continue reading
Past Engagements (A Book Review of Nick Joaquin’s The Woman Who Had Two Navels) In 1955, Nick Joaquin left the Philippines on a Rockefeller creative writing grant taking him to countries such as Spain, the United States, and Mexico. This … Continue reading
As you may well know the crazy book sale season was over and done with a week ago, and I had some really nice purchases from bookstore branches here and there. Yet the book buying spree seems to haven’t stopped … Continue reading
A Lightning Read (A Book Review of Rick Riordan’s The Lightning Thief) The Lightning Thief is the first book in The Percy Jackson and the Olympians series by Rick Riordan for young, middle grade readers. I first heard of the … Continue reading
The Power of Stories (A Book Review of Tess Uriza Holthe’s When the Elephants Dance) A group of neighbors seek shelter in the cellar of an abandoned house. They are cramped, huddled on the dirt, starving and terrified. Outside fierce … Continue reading
Historical Fiction at its Finest! (A Book review of Ken Follett’s The Pillars of the Earth) First introduced to me as a 2007 book selection by the Oprah Book Club, The Pillars of the Earth remains of one Ken Follett’s … Continue reading
A Spy Novel that Reads Like a Good Alternate History Fiction (A Book Review of Ken Follett’s The Key to Rebecca) The last camel collapsed at noon. So begins Ken Follett’s intriguing World War II thriller set in 1942 Cairo, … Continue reading
Through a Child’s Eye (A Book Review of Maurice Sendak’s Where The Wild Things Are) I’m glad that I recently scored a vintage 1963 edition (picture above) of Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are in Booksale during one of … Continue reading
A Day Like No Other (A Review of William Joyce’s A Day with Wilbur Robinson) Few children picture books have that rare quality to equally charm and enchant youngsters as well as adult readers. William Joyce undoubtedly has it; this … Continue reading
The Best Dinosaur a Family Ever Had (A Review of William Joyce’s Dinosaur Bob and his Adventures with the Family Lazardo) The Lazardo family is anything but normal, so it’s not quite surprising that when little Scotty finds a dinosaur during … Continue reading
