Reviews of the 2022 time-travel novels Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel and This Time Tomorrow by Emma Straub — from someone who tried writing her own time-travel novel during lockdown.
Read MoreI reread Tamora Pierce’s Circle of Magic books, about four children with unusual magical powers, and think I actually liked them more the second time around!
Read MoreA tribute to my late friend Terry Teachout in the guise of a review of his Balanchine biography, All in the Dances.
Read MoreReviews of some Golden Age detective fiction: Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile and Dorothy Sayers’ Peter Wimsey short stories.
Read MoreReviews of two recent books that expose the failings of contemporary ballet culture: Georgina Pazcoguin’s memoir Swan Dive and Chloe Angyal’s journalistic Turning Pointe.
Read MoreReviews of two novels about children who stumble into the London theater scene and become stagestruck: Gary Blackwood’s The Shakespeare Stealer and Noel Streatfeild’s Theatre Shoes.
Read MoreReviews of two books all about arguing about Shakespeare: Ron Rosenbaum’s The Shakespeare Wars and James Shapiro’s Shakespeare in a Divided America.
Read MoreReviews of The Searchers and The Alice Network: two historical fiction novels that target very different audiences, but both involve an unusual duo searching for a missing girl.
Read MoreThe feminine urge to revisit a YA fantasy quartet that told you it was OK to be a smart, unconventional girl.
Read MoreI’m not the only millennial who has big overweening thoughts about the state of the collapsing world, while also being desperate to get my little bourgeois life in order!
Read MoreReviewing a new Great Gatsby adaptation that brings the sensibility of a queer, Asian-American speculative fiction writer into F. Scott Fitzgerald’s WASP-y world.
Read MoreA classic but mediocre Egyptology novel (Stoker’s The Jewel of Seven Stars) and an underrated but ingenious Egyptology novel (Phillips’ The Egyptologist).
Read MoreSix months late, I finally get around to blogging a list of the books & plays that helped get me through the strangest year in recent memory.
Read MoreReviews of a book of local history titled Spirits of San Francisco and a book about the (alcoholic) spirits of San Francisco.
Read MoreReviews of two 1930s books that satirize mediocre nightclub singers and the cities they inhabit: Gabriele Tergit’s Käsebier Takes Berlin and John O’Hara’s Pal Joey.
Read MoreReviews of two recent-ish novels that take place in the late 1800s: Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent and Brian Doyle’s The Adventures of John Carson.
Read MoreTwo novels that allowed me to journey to fantastical worlds and daydream of new adventures, even as I sheltered in place from Spring 2020 to Spring 2021.
Read MoreReviews of C.S. Forester’s Mr. Midshipman Hornblower and William Golding’s The Inheritors, two books that are each indebted to Ernest Hemingway in their own way.
Read MoreThree illustrated books that attempt to evoke the magic of Paris by focusing on small objects and exquisite little moments.
Read MoreOne year late, I finally get around to blogging a list of the books & plays I read in the Last Normal Year.
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