Toddled Dredge

I have loved McKinley’s work for years, and was excited to read her new novel. I waited eagerly all summer, and finished the book in three days when it finally came out.
Dragonhaven is the story of an adolescent boy who lives in North America’s last dragon preserve. In the world of the novel, […]

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When I try a mystery author unfamiliar to me, I rarely start with her first book. The first book is rarely the best, and I want to read the author’s best work first, if possible. I began reading Carol O’Connells’s series about detective Kathleen Mallory about eight years ago, and have enjoyed it […]

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I have a special place in my heart for Anne Fadiman’s essays. Several years ago my husband bought me her first collection Ex Libris, and spent my birthday reading “Marrying Libraries” aloud to me under a rose arbor in a favorite park.
When I saw her new book at the library, I had to read […]

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The famous author of the James Bond spy novels also wrote one children’s novel, a story about an unusual car rescued and restored by an eccentric family.
Caractacus Potts is an impecunious inventor who finally has a success with a new kind of candy. With the profits from his invention, he and his wife and […]

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Mitford wrote Pigeon Pie in 1939 and it was published a year later. This short, satirical spy novel describes the unexpected adventure of Sophia, an upper-class Englishwoman who spends her days idly amusing herself until the looming war draws her into action. I did not warm up to this book immediately; I was […]

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Felix Salten was a Hungarian Jew whose family moved to Austria shortly after he was born, when Austria offered Jews full citizenship. He wrote several stories featuring animals as main characters, and his books were banned by the Nazis in 1936.
I began reading Bambi for my Disney Reading Challenge. Based on the movie, […]

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Julia Sauer’s Fog Magic would probably not be published today. There are no bad guys or obvious conflict. The adults are all people worthy of trust. The magical experiences of the book are never explained. Even the heroine’s adventures away from her parents are accepted and subtly encouraged by them.
Most of […]

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Patricia Wrede frequently combines her fantasy novels with elements of detective fiction. This handily serves to move the plot along, but sometimes feels like I am reading two incomplete stories instead of one fully-developed one. I have read four of her novels now, and I always come away not quite satisfied, but thinking, […]

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Feel led to keep a diary. A sort of spiritual log for the benefit of others in the future. Each new divine insight and experience will shine like a beacon in the darkness!
Can’t think of anything to put in today.
Presented as a diary, Plass’s novel depicts an ordinary man in an evangelical church […]

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Look! There in the distance - is it an Ivory-Billed Woodpecker? A Tasmanian tiger? Perhaps a Crumple-Horned Snorkack? No, a creature even rarer than these: an actor who can write.
Hugh Laurie’s The Gun Seller is a comic take on the popular spy novel. The usual action and intrigue vie for […]

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