From the category archives:

Reviews

Elle Newmark: The Book of Unholy Mischief

by Rachel Baker on August 23, 2010

I love food – good food, flavorful food, color food and aromatic food. I’m not a fan of raw onions…they make me gag, actually – same with raw broccoli. I also love the smell of food – even onions, I love the color of vegetables – even broccoli; and I’m convinced that any conflict probably could be resolved with food. I know… probably naive.

Because of this love of food, reading The Book of Unholy Mischief was really enjoyable. It may sound like an exaggeration, but I actually contemplated cutting open an onion, closing my eyes and tasting it…you know, like try to taste it for the very first time without the childish knowledge of how it tasted when I was five. When push came to shove, I couldn’t do it…but I thought about it, and that for me is like winning 1st place in the Next Food Network Star competition. By the way, I did try Shallots recently…and LOVED the way they smelled (raw) and tasted with my roasted potatoes. [read more…]

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David Finkel: The Good Soldiers

by Rachel BakerAugust 19, 2010 Reviews

It takes fifteen months to break the most optimistic of men. Fifteen months. It began at the five month mark, but he was able to brush it aside, keep it to himself, and continue showing bravado. It took a total of fifteen months for Lt. Col Kauzlarich to go from gung-ho to we’ve done our [...]

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MJ Rose: The Hypnotist and the Reincarnationist Series

by Rachel BakerAugust 13, 2010 Reviews

I started writing this review by looking for my thoughts on MJ Rose’s The Reincarnationist.  To my surprise, I never did one.  I remember liking the book, and then cracking the spine on The Memorist a day or so after I finished The Reincarnationist.  I vaguely remember I read both these books over a week.  [...]

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Doug Glanville: The Game From Where I Stand: A Ballplayer’s Inside View

by Rachel BakerJuly 8, 2010 Reviews

I like some baseball books.  I like the little tidbits one can pick up about how major league ballplayers live and the struggles they strive to overcome.  I don’t necessarily like to read the baseball books about a winning team and I don’t like to read the “tell-all” books that some baseball players write about [...]

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Cheryl Landmark: Wind and Fire

by Rachel BakerJune 12, 2010 Reviews

I have recently had the pleasure of reading Cheryl Landmark’s first novel, Wind and Fire.  Despite some technical challenges, this is a very admirable first publication. The story is set on a fantasy planet called Tellaron, in the year 2310. Our heroine, Tenya, is sold by her step mom to an evil minion of Zardonne, [...]

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Stephen King – Short Stories Made Into Movies

by Rachel BakerApril 21, 2010 Reviews

A week ago, I told you I was going on a Stephen King reading spree.  If you’ve never gone on a reading spree, I highly recommend it. I wanted to give you an update on what I’ve read this week and some thoughts while reading. Stephen King Goes to the Movies: This is a mass [...]

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Kathy Cano-Murillo: Waking Up in the Land of Glitter

by Rachel BakerApril 13, 2010 Reviews

I like glitter!  I have since I was a little girl doing those silly craft projects in early elementary school.  You know which ones I’m talking about – the ones that pre-school and early education teachers have their students do every holiday so that the kids’ moms and dads have something hand-made from their children.  [...]

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David Cristofano: the girl she used to be

by Rachel BakerMarch 11, 2010 Reviews

I liked the girl she used to be by David Cristofano; and to go a bit further, this is one of the better “first novels” I’ve read in a long time.  Cristofano attempts to answer questions surrounding identity by introducing two characters who are damned to live lonely lives because of the identity of their [...]

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Per Petterson: To Siberia

by Rachel BakerMarch 7, 2010 Reviews

Let’s play a little word association game for a minute: If I say the word Siberia, what do you think of?  For me, the words would be Cold, Desolate, Punishment.  I suspect for most of us, that’s what we conjure in our minds when we hear the word. Not for the sixty year old narrator [...]

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