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.
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I 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!
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A tribute to my late friend Terry Teachout in the guise of a review of his Balanchine biography, All in the Dances.
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Reviews of some Golden Age detective fiction: Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile and Dorothy Sayers’ Peter Wimsey short stories.
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Reviews 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.
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Reviews 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.
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Reviews of two books all about arguing about Shakespeare: Ron Rosenbaum’s The Shakespeare Wars and James Shapiro’s Shakespeare in a Divided America.
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Reviews 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.
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The feminine urge to revisit a YA fantasy quartet that told you it was OK to be a smart, unconventional girl.
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I’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!
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Reviewing 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.
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A classic but mediocre Egyptology novel (Stoker’s The Jewel of Seven Stars) and an underrated but ingenious Egyptology novel (Phillips’ The Egyptologist).
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Six 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.
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Reviews of a book of local history titled Spirits of San Francisco and a book about the (alcoholic) spirits of San Francisco.
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Reviews 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.
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Reviews 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.
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Two 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.
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Reviews 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.
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Three illustrated books that attempt to evoke the magic of Paris by focusing on small objects and exquisite little moments.
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One 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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