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The dedicated members of Our Lady of the Frontispiece have found a unique way to enshrine every book the group has enjoyed discussing. Those books the group has disliked have been consigned to the “Snowball’s Chance” list.

When my library book group recently discussed A Case of Two Cities by Qiu Xiaolong, some participants were surprised that, even though the book was billed as a mystery novel, it offered virtually nothing in the way of thrills or suspense.  The main character, Chief Inspector Chen Cao of the Shanghai Police Bureau, doesn’t actually corner [...]

Expecting a cozy, comic mystery, I found a wolf of a book in sheep’s clothing. Three Bags Full by Leonie Swann poses as a crime novel, told from the perspective–here’s the kicker–of a flock of sheep. As a mystery, it’s OK–the crime is slowly unveiled more than truly solved–but if you’re reading this for the [...]

David Nicholl’s very buzzy new novel One Day got some of its inspiration from Billy Bragg’s evocative song “St. Swithin’s Day.” It’s the kind of song that stays with you and one you should watch or listen to right now if you don’t know it. Here are links to a Bragg performance and a Dubstar [...]

I recently finished Dan Baum’s wonderful nonfiction book Nine Lives: Death and Life in New Orleans. The book follows the lives of nine diverse residents of New Orleans from the events of 1965′s Hurricane Betsy up through 2005′s Katrina. The book was less a detailed account of Katrina than I expected (although that terrible storm [...]

At a recent book discussion, it became very clear that no one present liked the book.  (I did have two no-shows who emailed me to say they enjoyed it… but that didn’t help at discussion time!) I wasn’t too bothered by this, even though the book was my choice.  After all, no one was attacking [...]

What if we found our way into a magical world, but were still weighted down by our mundane personalities?  That’s the question at the heart of Lev Grossman’s engrossing mix of realism and fantasy, The Magicians. Grossman is the book critic for Time magazine and hasn’t published in this genre before, so I knew not to [...]