Cold Comfort Farm (1932) by Stella Gibbons is a marvelous send up of brooding romantic literature in the vein of the Bronte sisters. In addition to a crazy woman upstairs, a dark and hunky cad, crazy gibberish talking locals, and a plucky dauntless heroine, Gibbons gives her reader some hilarious dialogue and overall goofiness that is difficult to resist. Gibbons represents the best of British humor a la Wodehouse and Jerome K Jerome and of women writers of the 1930s such as Dawn Powell and […]
I can’t really review this with the detail it deserves. But trust me, it was really good.
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…I went on vacation and read a bunch of wonderful books. And I am still struggling to catch up with those reviews. Sadly, the two book reviews that will suffer the most from my lack of reviewing effort are two of the best — Red Shirts by John Scalzi, and this one. A few Cannonballers have already read this (honestly, I’m shocked that this hasn’t been more of a “thing”): you can read excellent reviews from narfna and ElCicco that […]
“It’s true, you know. In space, no one can hear you scream like a little girl.”
I’m amazed that this book has been out for so long and is still being discovered by so many enthusiastic readers. I’m sure that the upcoming — and pretty amazing looking — movie has something to do with it, but really, I think mostly its because this is just a damn good story. By now we all know the basics, so I’m going to keep this short. Mark Watney, astronaut on NASA’s latest mission to Mars, is injured in a wind storm and left for […]
Being of Two Minds
Patricia Highsmith might be best known for her Ripley novels and their film adaptations, but Strangers on a Train, her first novel, set the path for her career and has likewise been adapted several times, most notably by Alfred Hitchcock in 1951. It is an unsettling, suspenseful psychological thriller that features brutal crime and some deep philosophical pondering. Guy Haines, an up and coming architect, is on his way home to Metcalf, TX, with the expectation that his philandering wife Miriam is going to finally […]