I can’t recommend this book to the casual reader, but if you read Krakatoa and enjoyed it, and you are a history buff who wants to understand the effects of the Tambora volcanic eruption which was far worse than the better-known 1883 explosion of Krakatoa you will enjoy this book.

Dark, strange, mysterious, interconnected, very unsatisfying endings. Three interconnected stories, excellent writing. Some of it doesn’t make sense or cohere. A lot is left to the imagination.

This is a quick read: 53 short meditations on reading. If you are an avid reader, you will not find much new here, but it’s still nice to read about reading and how a fellow avid reader feels about books. This one gave me some new book ideas and made me think about going deeper with my reading.

Sobering. Frightening. A very informative book that I think everyone should read. We all need to understand where the world is at in reference to biological warfare.

This was Claire’s second collection of short stories, following Antarctica. Seven stories in all (in this edition that I read, some say there can be eight). I liked five of them and loved two. Worth buying the book just for the two alone.

Wry Writer wrote on her blog about the Great British Bake Off Book Challenge. Here is mine.

A wonderful short story about a woman who fears she’s failing as a painter and as an artist seeks inspiration from one of her favorite poets, finding something even more wondrous, but also more impossible to capture in her art.