I occasionally write a review of a book I’ve read. These are those reviews.
The Power of More: How Small Steps Can Help You Achieve Big Goals by Marnie McBean My rating: 0 of 5 stars Well, that was a bummer. I borrowed the ebook from the Toronto Public Library, dug into it on a weekend I think, enjoyed what I read hugely, then promptly forgot about it after [...]
“Whisperer, The” by Donato Carrisi My rating: 5 of 5 stars Wow. I’m still reeling and trying to process what just happened at the end. This is a book that keeps on giving right until the last page, and it doesn’t use any ridiculous tricks to deceive and artificially heighten the tension either. The first [...]
Nothing but trouble by Roberta Kray My rating: 4 of 5 stars I won this book in a Twitter contest held by the UK’s The Crime Vault for for “What would you name your series character?” I came up with Inspector Everlast Forlorn. And I won ten books! I read the descriptions of all the [...]
The Consolations of Philosophy by Alain de Botton My rating: 3 of 5 stars I borrowed the ebook from the Toronto Public Library, and it’s, um, an interesting book. It has a ton of images in it, which in a regular kind of ebook as this was, are displayed strangely sometimes — image on one [...]
A Nation Worth Ranting About by Rick Mercer My rating: 4 of 5 stars Many of the rants were familiar to me, so I must admit I skimmed through those, but the Maclean’s articles were not, and some of the rants I just didn’t remember. I could hear Mercer ranting in my head as I [...]
Winter Study by Nevada Barr My rating: 3 of 5 stars It was a bit humourless to start with, which made it feel slow. Maybe the tone was right for the setting and what was going on, but I felt too oppressed by it. There was also a few preachy bits I skipped right over. [...]
The Harlequin Tea Set and Other Stories by Agatha Christie My rating: 3 of 5 stars I haven’t read Christie’s early works before, and it was interesting watching her development as a writer through reading this series of her short stories. Her writing here was very much in the style of the 1920s and was [...]
Fever Dream by Douglas Preston My rating: 3 of 5 stars This was not my usual kind of read in that I prefer to start mystery series from the beginning. But I saw this, liked the plot description, and borrowed the ebook from the library. It had good characterizations and action — both dramatic and [...]
Plot It Yourself by Rex Stout My rating: 5 of 5 stars Loved this book! I think it’s because Rex Stout had obvious fun writing it, and as a writer and long-time reader of Stout’s, I enjoyed the plot very much. He took swipes at publishers; he gleefully exploited the endless author-publisher tension; he was [...]
