Alison Reads

This is a very strange book, quite original in concept. It’s a psychological thriller of sorts. One day Eric Sanderson wakes up and has no memory of who he is or where he is. He finds a letter addressed to “the second Eric Sanderson” from “the first Eric Sanderson” directing him to the office of […]

The author examines five plants that have changed the course of human history: quinine, sugar, tea, cotton, and potatoes. Quinine cured malaria and allowed European colonists to expand their empires around the globe. The increasing popularity of sugar in Europe required workers who could tolerate the tropical heat where sugar cane was grown, so black […]

The subtitle of this book is “true tales of faintly repulsive wildlife.” It explores the lives of creatures such as the little brown bat (which can live for 30 years or more), weasel, shark, porcupine, sloth, and others. Entertaining and instructive.

Jeffrey Archer is a best-selling British author whose books I have enjoyed. He spent two years in prison and these stories are the stories of some of his fellow inmates. Stories of con men and murderers, they are interesting and even likeable, but ephemeral. I read the book a couple of weeks ago and have […]

Mary’s beloved only child dies of meningitis at the age of five. A year later, Mary is still traumatized and can barely function. Her mother convinces her to learn to knit, and she relunctantly joins a knitting circle and begins to heal. My problem with this book was that every single member of the knitting […]

The author, her husband, and their daughters left Tucson for a farm in southern Appalachia, where they pledged to spend a year eating only locally-grown food, most of which they would grow themselves. They did it and survived quite handily. The book is a month-by-month chronicle of their year. I especially liked reading about the […]

Book-loving David’s mother dies when he is 12, his father remarries and they go to live in an old house in the country belonging to his stepmother. David soon has a little half-brother and has understandable feelings of anger, resentment and betrayal. He spends most of his time in his room reading old storybooks. One […]

In Blue Highways, Heat Moon chronicled his journey around the United States on back roads. This time he traveled from New York to Astoria by water over a four-month period carefully calculated to take advantage of the western snowmelt. He was able to travel almost all the way across the country in his flat-bottom dory […]

I chose this book because it’s about knitting, but I abandoned it half-way through because the writing is pedestrian and wooden. The author may be a competent knitter, but she’s not a very good writer. It’s about three 20-something women with little in common except knitting. I read it only a couple of weeks ago […]

This was recommended on a summer reading for adults list, but I didn’t much like it. It takes place in a small town in Portugal one summer. The action cuts back and forth among locals and tourists. While it was well written, I didn’t come to care about any of the characters.