Walking the stacks in a library, dragging your fingers across the spines — it’s hard not to feel the presence of sleeping spirits. I suspect that a large chunk of Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore‘s popularity is the title. There is just something about the idea of a 24 hour bookstore, and the name, ‘Mr. Penumbra,’ has a certain gravity to it that would pull in any bibliophile. However, make no mistake about it, this is not a book about literature. For a story with a […]
Yet another Book Thief Review
Every so often you find a story that pulls you in and holds you tight in the grip of anxiety. Spoilers aside, we all know what it is we’re afraid of in any story about a German family hiding a Jewish man in their basement during World War II. We’re terrified something will happen to him, or the family hiding him. We’re terrified of concentration camps and public beatings. We’re terrified of saying the wrong thing to the wrong person. We’re terrified of indoctrination and […]
Me Before You
Me Before You is the story of a seemingly free-spirited young woman who is trapped in a small life. She loses her safe, quiet cafe job and, through the local employment support agency, she finds that she’s not qualified for much. This is a major problem for her family, who she helps to support through her (albeit small) wages. Eventually, after some trial and error, and an unfortunate attempt at work in a chicken meat production factory, she winds up taking a job as a […]
While I did enjoy it, not a lot of the Twentieth Wife stuck with me. It was a decent historical fiction about the rise of Mehunrissa through her marriage to Jahangir, Emperor of the 15th century Moghul Empire. It’s perhaps the result of our history, but it seems like most historical fiction marketed to women are about the political maneuvering of a woman working her way through a harem, a sea of ladies in waiting, or a royal court of some sort and attaching herself to the […]