Mattie and Luke Spenser hardly know each other when they marry. Soon after marrying they take off from Fort Madison, Iowa in a covered wagon across the Great Plains to establish a homestead in Colorado Territory. Lacking any close friends or family nearby, Mattie confides in her journal and writes of the trials they face on the prairie and her loneliness and frustrations as she learns about her new husband and her role as his wife.
The Daylight Gate was a whim I picked up that fit neatly into my October/Halloween/Witch reading theme, and that delighted me more than I expected. I read Winterson years ago for a post-structuralist college class and only remembered her fondly to feel smarter about myself. This time, I picked her up for the shiny cover and, yes, the promise of witches.
The improbably-named Cormoran Strike, a war-wounded vet with overdue bills to pay, has an equally improbable day; his fiancé dumps him, he accidentally hires a new secretary, and the biggest case of his career walks through the door. This is how Robert Galbraith’s (aka J.K. Rowling’s) book The Cuckoo's
Confession: post-apocalyptic stories are not my favorite genre and can be really hit or miss with me. Despite the overall rave reviews, I've never read Cormac McCarthy's The Road because it sounds too grim and bleak for me. I watched the first season of The Walking Dead and gave up when I found it too depressing. (And I'm a fan of the Cure and Joy Division, so it's not like I only like things bright and cheerful.) Station Eleven by Emily St.
In Star WarsCrucible, Marvid and Craitheus Qreph, lifelong enemies of Han Solo, stage a hostile takeover of Lando Calrissian’s asteroid refinery operation. Han steps in to help his good buddy Lando and prevent a galaxy-wide domination.
With 408 skill tips broken into 5 categories (camping, fishing, hunting, survival, and challenge) this complete outdoor manual covers all the basics and then some. Most of the tips are less than 4 paragraphs long, so the book works very well as a reference manual (though full page and even double page spreads are given to subjects that require it, such as track identification and fire starting techniques)for those who enjoy the great outdoors. There are some basic tips like seasoning a dutch oven, or identifying drake mallards, that will be redundant to people who have been camp
Beautiful Malice by Australian author Rebecca James immediately made me think of a teenaged take on Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl, except Malice came out first. Katherine has been keeping a secret about her dark past. Her very popular and pretty new best friend Alice has a lot of secrets, as well.
Taken from interviews with 33 well-known filmmakers, “Directors” is fascinating to watch for anyone interested in the behind-the-scenes of movie making. The directors discuss their journeys to becoming top directors, the complexities of the industry, stories of some of their best-known films, and their legacies. The result is an impressive collection of honest insight into the passion that underpins the business of Hollywood.
I’ve long enjoyed reading Charlaine Harris’s Sookie Stackhouse series. So long that I barely remembered what happened in the first book, Dead Until Dark. Instead of rereading it, I decided to listen to the audio. I’m glad I did.
The narrator, Johanna Parker, captures the essence of Sookie in all her different moods – perky, angry, scared, nervous, ecstatic, and so on. It was a treat to hear Sookie come alive.
