I first read In Cold Blood years ago, so many that I couldn’t remember much about it except that I enjoyed it. I suppose the fact that I liked it shouldn’t be surprising; the book is a 20th century American classic, the progenitor of 364.1523, a number every public librarian knows (the True Crime section…
If there’s anything I love, it’s books about how people lived in the past. Since I work at a university library, I see a lot of them, but too many are written in dense jargon. I don’t want to read books that refer to homes, clothing and furniture as “texts”, I simply want to know…
For me, 2005 has been the Year of Nonfiction. For whatever reason – possibly because it’s easier to read with constant toddler interruption – quite a bit of it crossed my palms this past year. A month or so ago I read one of this year’s best-sellers, Freakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner. I…
The Russian Word for Snow is one woman’s true account of her Russian adoption. It’s the story of how she persevered through bureaucracy and corruption, fear and anxiety, to get her son out of a Russian orphanage and make a family of three out of herself, her husband and little Alex. The book’s title refers…
Phil Konstantin runs the History Web Ring and AAR is one of a thousand member sites. When LLB learned Konstantin had written a book about the history of native Americans, she thought it would be interesting to have it reviewed, particularly since so many readers ask about quality Indian Romances and decry who few seem…
I’m pretty biased as a fiction person, myself. I occasionally read other things, but only rarely. So it’s pure coincidence that, upon finding Spy Dust on the list of review options, I recognized one of the authors’ names as someone I’d read before, in his first book The Master Of Disguise (which, by the way,…
One of these days, when someone invents a practical time machine, I am going to spend a few days at Victorian and Edwardian parties. I don’t think I’d like to live there permanently, but it would be fun to dress up in silk and jewels and go to an elegant formal dinner back when dining…
It’s official: I’m a geek. I have progressed from reading about fictional Navy SEALs to reading about real ones. The Warrior Elite was reviewed in my local paper recently, and I picked it up from my library for a couple of reasons. First of all, I’ve read a lot of Brockmann in the last couple…
We, as romance readers, have a healthy respect, even an attitude of veneration, toward Georgette Heyer; it’s widely acknowledged that she invented the modern Regency. But what about those outside the “romance ghetto”? How do they see Heyer? Do they take her seriously? What do they consider is her contribution, if any, to literature? Georgete…
“An autobiography that begins with one’s birth begins too late,” is how Mary Lee Settle begins her memoir of growing up in rural West Virginia. Following through on that thought, Settle fills her autobiography with the history of her ancestors, from William Tompkins, a great-grandfather who made the family’s initial fortune in salt, to Addie,…