Flood of Fire by Amitav Ghosh
★★★★★ Amitav Ghosh’s Ibis Trilogy has reached a worthy conclusion nearly a decade in the making with its cathartic and heartfelt final volume, Flood of Fire. Ghosh’s trilogy began in 2008 with the thrilling,...
Run Spot Run Book Reviews
The Gap of Time by Jeanette Winterson
★☆☆☆☆ William Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale may be his most confounding play. With a first act full of inconsolable tragedy, The Winter’s Tale derails into a pastoral comedy of forgiveness; it is an enigmatic,...
Keeping an Eye Open: Essays on Art by Julian Barnes
★★★★☆ Julian Barnes is a brilliantly versatile novelist, and with the essays in Keeping an Eye Open he proves that he can be just as erudite and intelligent in the world of art as...
Pacific by Simon Winchester
★★★★☆ To tell you what Pacific is about would be to make a list, as the number of things discussed in this book seem to proliferate per page. Incidentally this makes it hard to...
The Big Book of Sherlock Holmes Stories
★★★★☆ The pleasure begins while reading the Contents of The Big Book of Sherlock Holmes Stories. After noting an introduction by editor, Otto Penzler, and a brief essay on Sherlock Holmes’s death by Sir...
Magna Carta by Dan Jones
★★★★☆ The Magna Carta is the basis for the constitutions of Great Britain and the United States and a host of other countries. It is heralded as the seminal document that set into motion...
The Secret Chord by Geraldine Brooks
★★★★★ The story of David, King of the Jews, is widely known. One does not have to be religious to have heard that the shepherd boy David slew Goliath with his slingshot when none...
Quicksand by Steve Toltz
★★★★☆ Steve Toltz’s Quicksand is a maniacally funny novel about friendship, hope and the human condition; it is a work at once soul-lifting and spirit-crushing, capable of eliciting both uproarious laughter and inward cringe...
The Girl Who Slept with God by Val Brelinski
★★★★☆ The Girl Who Slept with God is Val Brelinski’s extraordinary debut novel, so perfectly formed that it feels like the work of a seasoned author in the prime of her career. It’s no...
