Category: Book Review

The House on the Borderland

Book Review / Books and Reading

Classics Club Book #2: The House on the Borderland by William Hope Hodgson

The House on the Borderland is an eerie novel that ultimately leaves many questions unanswered. Written in 1908, it is often cited as an influence on writers like H.P. Lovecraft and Terry Pratchett, and it is listed in Fantasy: The 100 Best Books, edited by James Cawthorn and Michael Moorcock. It also becomes my second finished book in the Classics Club Challenge. I really wanted this book to be good. The beginning starts off promising: two men on a fishing holiday in a remote part of Ireland discover...

The Betrothed by Alessandro Manzoni

Book Review / Books and Reading

Classics Club Book #1: The Betrothed by Alessandro Manzoni

Strange to say, although in times of immediate danger, in face of an enemy, the image of death always breathed new spirit into him and filled him with angry courage, the same image appearing to him in the silence of the night, in the safety of his own castle, afflicted him with sudden dismay. For this time it was not death at the hands of a mortal like himself that threatened him; not a death that could be driven off by better weapons or a quicker hand. It...

To the Field of Stars

Book Review / Books and Reading / Spirituality

Review: To the Field of Stars: A Pilgrim’s Journey to Santiago De Compostela

To the Field of Stars: A Pilgrim’s Journey to Santiago De Compostela by Kevin A. Codd My rating: 5 of 5 stars I enjoyed every word of this gorgeous, honest, life-giving journey with Fr. Kevin Codd as he made his pilgrimage across Spain to Santiago De Compostela. Fr. Codd not only recounts the physical aspects of his journey, but–more signifcantly–he lets us in on the psychological and spiritual journey he went through as he trekked over 500 miles on foot. To the Field of Stars is a concrete...

With Fire and Sword

Book Review / Books and Reading

Review: With Fire and Sword An Historical Novel of Poland and Russia.

With Fire and Sword An Historical Novel of Poland and Russia. by Henryk Sienkiewicz My rating: 4 of 5 stars With Fire and Sword must be one of the greatest historical epics you’ve never heard of. Set in the 17th century, and told from the Polish point of view, it recounts a Cossack uprising against the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The historical backdrop serves as a grand canvas for the portraits of courage, love, and spiritual devotion that form the heart of the story. In print, With Fire and Sword...

The Knight

Book Review / Books and Reading

My Reaction to The Knight by Gene Wolfe

I finished Gene Wolfe’s The Knight today. My Wolfe gene must be missing, because I don’t get it. I understand that his books are often obscure on a first reading, and that this is just the first of a two-book series, but nothing in the book really moved me. Some of the scenes were beautifully written, and I liked the main character, Able of the High Heart, but the story left me flat. It just didn’t seem worth the effort. I thought I’d search the web for other...

Declare

Book Review / Books and Reading

Disappointed by Tim Powers’ Novel Declare

I finally had to abandon Tim Powers’ supernatural spy novel, Declare. I read over 200 pages into it and just couldn’t go any further. I really enjoyed Powers’ earlier novel, The Anubis Gates, and I had high hopes for Declare after reading reviews. But the book didn’t evoke any emotional reaction from me at all. I never really connected with Hale, the main character, and I didn’t care for the way Powers’ narrator alternated back and forth between the 1940s and the 1960s. I think part of the...

Lord Darcy

Book Review / Books and Reading

Lord Darcy: Sherlock Holmes Meets Jonathan Strange

If you, like me, find the Harry Dresden series not to your taste, but like the idea of a magic-wielding detective, you might enjoy the Lord Darcy stories by Randall Garrett. Mix together Sherlock Holmes and Jonathan Strange, and add in a little alternate history, and you have an idea of what the Lord Darcy stories are all about. What if Richard Lionheart didn’t die, and what if the Protestant Reformation never happened? Garrett imagines an alternate history where in the twentieth century the Plantagenet dynasty still rules,...

Storm Front

Book Review / Books and Reading

Harry Dresden Book One: Not for Me

I finished Storm Front: Book One of the Harry Dresden Files, and it wasn’t quite as good as I had hoped it would be, but it was still quite entertaining. In brief: What I liked: The setting: I particularly liked Harry’s house and office, and his idea about magic affecting complex machines The film noir elements combined with traditional wizard-lore Butcher’s conception of magic and how it works: a little Latin, a staff, some magical symbols, all the things traditionally associated with users of magic The action scenes...

Book Review / Books and Reading

Made to Stick Will Stick with You

I began Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood a few weeks ago, but I got sidetracked by a few nonfiction titles that grabbed my interest. That happens to me every so often. I’ll make up my mind to start a book, and then another one will grab me by the shirt and say, “NO! Pick ME!” That’s what happened with the Heath brothers’ Made to Stick, a fantastic exploration of what makes ideas memorable. I started reading it in the bookstore and couldn’t put it down. As I mentioned in...

Book Review / Books and Reading / Teaching

The Intellectual Devotional

I never buy new hardcovers because they’re too expensive, but I made an exception yesterday and bought two: The Intellectual Devotional and Made to Stick. At first I was a bit worried when I saw the title for The Intellectual Devotional, thinking it was going to be a kind of anti-prayer book for atheists, pitting faith against reason or science against religion. As I thumbed through the pages, though, it doesn’t appear to be any such thing. Like a devotional, it consists of daily readings, but rather than...

The Samurai

Book Review / Books and Reading / Spirituality

Book Review: The Samurai by Shusaku Endo

I just finished reading Shusaku Endo’s The Samurai, and it was eye-opening in so many ways. It is the story of two men: Father Velasco, the flawed but well-meaning missionary to Japan, and Hasekura Rokuemon, the quiet Samurai who only wants to do his duty. Both men have a mission, both of them are forced to compromise their integrity for the sake of that mission, and neither of them get what they want. In the end, however, The Samurai is a gentle reminder that God “writes straight with...

Book on the Bookshelf Petroski

Book Review / Books and Reading

Book Review: The Book on the Bookshelf

The ordinary is always more fascinating than we think. Chesterton knew this, and Henry Petroski knows it. Petroski’s The Book on the Bookshelf traces the development of the bookshelf as a reflection of the changing nature of books, and in the process he reminds us that nothing is too ordinary to be written about. The book is part history, part personal reflection and part social science. From descriptions of medieval libraries to debates about where to place bookshelves in a library, Petroski writes in an engaging and warm...