The Sea Priestess by Dion Fortune My rating: 4 of 5 stars Publisher Weiser Books’ description: The Sea Priestess is the highly acclaimed novel in which Dion Fortune introduces her most powerful fictional character, Vivien Le Fay Morgan- a practicing initiate of the Hermetic Path. Vivien has the ability to transform herself into magical images, and here she becomes Morgan Le Fay, sea priestess of Atlantis and foster daughter to Merlin! Desperately in love with Vivien, Wilfred Maxwell works by her side at an isolated seaside retreat, investigating these occult mysteries. They soon find themselves inextricably drawn to an ancient cult through which they learn the esoteric significance of the magnetic ebb and flow of the moontides. NB: Should you choose to read this…
Posts tagged “book review”
Caraval by Stephanie Garber My rating: 3 of 5 stars Note: I read both Caraval and Legendary over the past couple of nights, so this review discusses both novels in a general way. I think I have avoided plot spoilers though and stuck to what I liked and disliked about the books. Oh my stars! Someone needs to give Garber’s editor a sound thrashing. Why, you ask? Because today I have a hangover from bingeing on buckets of broken stars; mismatched lovers that cling to hope like lost kites over frozen lakes; silver-blue sadnesses that feel like skyfall-peonies rotting in an autumn wind; amber skies smelling of lost dreams and broken promises; betrayal that wreaks of old love letters inked on torn…
Hangsaman by Shirley Jackson My rating: 5 of 5 stars This is a quote from Shirley Jackson’s NYT obituary: “Because Miss Jackson wrote so frequently about ghosts and witches and magic, it was said that she used a broomstick for a pen. But the fact was that she used a typewriter–and then only after she had completed her household chores.” Jackson had an abiding interest in magic, myth, and ritual. She collected grimoires and cats, and allegedly enjoyed gossip about her being a witch.* Whatever spells she used, the typewriter under the influence of Jackson’s magic fingers produced spooky masterpieces, of which Hangsaman is a shining example. I feel that way about The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived…
Let Me Sing You Gentle Songs by Linda Olsson My rating: 5 of 5 stars Come, sit by me, and I shall tell you all my sorrows; we shall talk to each other about secrets. p. 63 quote from Edith Sodergran’s Sorger (Sorrows), 1916. As the title suggests, this is a gentle song of a book. It’s a quiet story about two women, one in her thirtieth year and the other decades older, helping each other through terrible losses merely by being present to one another. Veronika and Astrid meet as new neighbours who are situated on a hillside overlooking a mountain town in Sweden. Each is isolated in her own silent, aching grief, and together, they are isolated from the rest of the…
The water is again rising at an alarming rate in Houston, in Texas, in Louisiana, Mississippi, etc. And on a Halloween Saturday at that. Unfortunately, there’s no candy to be found in my house–trust me, I’ve searched–but there are always books and (as long as the electricity stays on) coffee. If you, like me, are planning to turn off the lights, stay in tonight, and maybe read a spooky story, I have a few suggestions: Ghost Summer: Stories – Just a tip: don’t download this to your e-reader late at night and immediately start reading it. It’s not conducive to sleep and the stories will suck you into Tananarive Due’s fictional Gracetown where ghosts and monsters may be part of everyday life, but shouldn’t be mistaken for…
Outline by Rachel Cusk My rating: 5 of 5 stars Here is the book blurb from Goodreads, for those wondering what it’s about: “A woman writer goes to Athens in the height of summer to teach a writing course. Though her own circumstances remain indistinct, she becomes the audience to a chain of narratives, as the people she meets tell her one after another the stories of their lives … Outline is a novel about writing and talking, about self-effacement and self-expression, about the desire to create and the human art of self-portraiture in which that desire finds its universal form.” It says something about Rachel Cusk’s extraordinary talent that despite most of her characters in Outline being, at best, tedious and…
The Towers of Trebizond by Rose Macaulay My rating: 5 of 5 stars “‘Take my camel, dear’, said my Aunt Dot, as she climbed down from this animal on her return from High Mass’.” This wins as my favourite first line of any book I’ve read (so far, at least). The Towers of Trebizond was not what I expected — though, now I think of it, I am not quite sure what it was I expected. Let me think … Well, for one thing, when I bought it, I thought it was nonfiction, which it is not; however, those who knew her say that much of Rose Macaulay’s own life is written into it, and that seems true. For another, the little I…
The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann My rating: 5 of 5 stars I am not going to review this book in any serious or analytical way. It’s been reviewed by many clever readers already, over several generations and sprawling continents. It hardly needs my support. I am just going to offer my entirely subjective comments about what a great and thoroughly enjoyable read it is! The plot should be familiar to Western readers by now, as this classic is a century old and much discussed in literary circles. However, in case you missed out, here’s the synopsis from Goodreads: In this dizzyingly rich novel of ideas, Mann uses a sanatorium in the Swiss Alps, a community devoted exclusively to sickness, as a…
This Crowded Earth by Robert Bloch My rating: 1 of 5 stars I don’t usually give one-star ratings, for the simple reason that I rarely finish a book that I dislike enough to rate that low. I stuck with this one, because I was interested in the premise and because this is the fellow who wrote Psycho. (I never read Psycho but, of course, it was a brilliant Hitchcock film.) For reasons I cannot explain even to myself, I kept expecting this book to get better. The premise of this book is interesting. In each chapter of This Crowded Earth, Bloch illustrates a list of stupendous social ills caused by humans, in an effort to improve their lot. Each attempted solution creates…
Religion for Atheists: A Non-Believer’s Guide to the Uses of Religion by Alain de Botton My rating: 4 of 5 stars There are many things to like about Botton’s book, for both religious and irreligious readers. He has a beautiful way of noticing and explaining the value of religion, and why it is a great loss to humanity to toss out the wisdom and traditions of the Church, along with beliefs in the Divine. His argument is that one need not embrace the supernatural in order to benefit from what religion has offered human beings over many centuries: a life of unified purpose, a sense of community, a focus on others that distracts us from our natural egocentricity, an idea of love that…