Devourer of Books

Feather Man by Rhyll McMaster
“Feather Man” is another book generously provided to me from Literary Ventures Fund.  In some ways, it reminded me a bit of The Leper Compound, primarily because I again felt disconnected from the main character.  I’m starting to wonder if this is a trademark of authors from former British colonies.  Perhaps [...]

Monique and the Mango Rains by Kris Holloway
In 1989 Kris Halloway became a member of the Peace Corps and was sent to Mali in Africa. She went to help people, and immerse herself in another culture. She went and came back changed. Other than perhaps the fellow Peace Corps volunteer who would one day become [...]

The Last Queen: A Novel
C.W. Gortner
Ballantine Books
ISBN 978-0-345-50184-4, $25.00, Tentative Release date July 29, 2008
Reviewed by Jen Cardwell for Reader Views 04/08
Juana La Loca
4.5 Stars
C.W. Gortner’s “The Last Queen: A Novel” has all of the hallmarks of the typical historical fiction novel that is so popular today. Juana is a passionate woman who strongly desires [...]

The Venetian Mask was my March Early Reviewer book from LibraryThing. The book, originally published in the early 1990s, has been reprinted and rereleased by Three Rivers Press.
This is the story of Marietta and Elena, two orphaned girls who meet at the Ospedale della Pieta, essentially a Venetian orphanage/music school. Circumstance finds the [...]

Two of my coworkers are reading Diane Ackerman’s The Zookeeper’s Wife for their book club this week and they asked me if I had seen or read it before.  Since I had not, I looked it up and was fairly intrigued.  One of the ladies who was to read it for book club received her [...]

News of a Kidnapping is Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s true account of the kidnapping of 10 people in 1990 during a standoff in Colombia between the government and the drug trader Pablo Escobar. Marquez wrote this book at the behest of one of the captives and her husband.
I had a very difficult time getting into this [...]