The Wall
The pace is nearly perfect, and the author is a master at giving just enough information and placing clues and events in the right places to keep the reader turning pages.
All Book Reviews
Hargrave reads voraciously and diversely — mostly antiquarian and classic books in translation. These are her book reviews.
While she reads more books than she could possibly write about, she does consistently post weekly reviews. New reviews are posted on Mondays.
Looking for one of the books that have been reviewed? Want to find some vintage treasures of your own? Second-hand and used books are unique and eco-friendly, and can be found at your local independent bookseller. If you’re looking for an American bookseller, you can check here. UK booksellers can be found here.
If you’d prefer to buy books online, many vintage and rare editions can be found at ThriftBooks.
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All Book Reviews
The Dead Girls
What drew me to this book initially was the simple fact that my local independent bookstore had it in stock and it was a mystery published in the late 1970s that was dubbed a classic.
The Pickwick Papers
When I think about our little car and the time spent in it, I have a hard time imagining what it must have been like travelling by coach across the England.
Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog)
The views of the river and the details of the water winding its way through the sleepy countryside makes the reader want to rent a boat immediately and get to any water close by.
Free Air
Claire Boltwood is on such a trip across the country — driving herself and her father from Minneapolis to Seattle in a very nice car on some not very nice roads. Lewis describes not just the scenery but also the reality of flat tires, car repairs, getting stuck in mud, and unpleasant hotels.
On The Road
This book goes beyond a road trip, because what it provides is more of a historical snapshot of what the roads and landscape were like over a half-century ago.
Travels With My Aunt
I didn’t plan on not being able to finish this book — but I didn’t finish. So this unreview is part of the journey, a bump on the literary road trip.
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
On the surface, he’s travelling with his attorney and a trunk full of drugs in order to document a racing event and later on to attend a convention for law enforcement on drugs and drug culture. Below the surface, it’s a journey to figure out the purpose of journalism, idealism, and its role in the shifting tide of American culture. This is a review of Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
The Copenhagen Trilogy
Chapters, paragraphs, sentences, and words flow into each other, but at the same time there are images and concepts that stand out and become touchstones for the work as a whole. This is a review of Tove Ditlevsen’s The Copenhagen Trilogy.
Bel-Ami
A critique of journalism and the complex politics and corruption present in the newspaper industry in Paris at the turn of the last century, this is a review of Guy de Maupassant’s Bel-Ami.