There is something about reading a book that has familiar landmarks. Not even necessarily places that you’ve actually been to (though being able to actually visualize where you are in the book is fun), but places that you’re actively interested in, time periods you’ve spent scads of time researching. I’m currently reading The Lace Reader by Brunonia Barry, and while I love my ability to mentally follow Towner down Derby Street, up Hawthorne past the hotel and up to the Common, well… It reminded me of yet another book where it wasn’t quite the same, […]
Book Review: The Glittering Hour
This one was a bit heart-wrenching. The Glittering Hour by Iona Grey is the kind of book you pick up thinking that it is going to be sweet – and it is on a number of levels. Most of the story is told through the perspective of Alice, daughter of one of the “Bright Young Things” that everyone talked about in the 1920s. And certainly, it starts off sweetly enough. Alice’s mother has put together a treasure hunt for her. A treasure hunt to explain how Alice came to be. And then you find yourself […]
Book Review: The Alice Network
I’m spending some time this month going over the books I read in 2019 and thinking about whether I ought to fix the fact that I never wrote out a proper review for them. (If you looked at my post 2019 in Books: The Full Rundown, you’ll get a picture of everything that I read this year.) A fair number of those books were read for book club (better known as the CH Armchair Detective Society). The purpose of this book club was mostly for work – better team bonding, but doing so in the […]