Much of Caroline Herschel’s life is spent alone with her angry, unhappy mother, working as little better than a slave for a woman who has never shown her any interest or kindness. As a young girl she contracted typhus but it is the 1700s and there is nothing to be done but hope she survives. When she does it is to even greater misery from her mother who seems to enjoy telling ... Read More...
The Choices They Made: Mini-Reviews
When enjoying a book a lot comes down to understanding the characters. I don't even need to like them (in fact sometimes it makes for better reading if I don't) but I have to believe in their actions. Maybe even more so when they're women--because really, who has any idea why men do what they do?! Sadly, two of January's new releases were about women where I didn't believe the ... Read More...
Hunters in the Dark
Lawrence Osborne was a travel journalist and currently lives in Bangkok, but his latest novel Hunters in the Dark is not one that will inspire readers to head to Southeast Asia. Instead, it has a Heart of Darkness feel—where the language spoken by the natives is not one that can ever be learned by foreigners and behind nods and smiles is a deep-seated, unforgiving ... Read More...
The Expatriates
The Expatriates is Janice Y. K. Lee’s new novel about three American women living in Hong Kong: Margaret, a married mother of small children; Hilary, a corporate wife who longs for a baby, and Mercy, a recent college graduate. While each embodies a different phase of life they are on equal footing, living in a city where they don’t belong and where they are unlikely to stay ... Read More...
Marie Antoinette: Mix and Match
It's no secret I'm not a huge reader of non-fiction, but often I am led to it by fiction or movies about real life subjects. For whatever reason, I need to be led to non-fiction by shiny objects and visual effects. Plus, when I do read it it is often about the aristocracy (dreams of a previous life as an Empress, maybe?). So, it's no surprise that I've found Marie Antoinette to ... Read More...
The Guest Room
Chris Bohjalian always manages to tell a great story and in a way that encompasses its truth, but in The Guest Room he delves into the kind of subjects that make us squeamish—the underbelly of our society, a place most of us never hear about. Richard Chamberlain is a happily married investment banker who agrees to host his younger brother’s bachelor party at his home in ... Read More...
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