B Reviews / Book Reviews1970s / 1980s / 1990s / autobiography / British / diplomat / non-fiction4 Comments
This is the personal story of a diplomat’s wife which spans a thirty-five year period from the start of her husband’s career as the most junior member of an embassy’s staff ending many years later as an Ambassador. This is told from the wife’s point of view, writing with insight ... more >
B Reviews / Book Reviews1960s / 1970s / 1980s / autobiography / female writers / feminism / Hollywood / non-fiction / television / widow4 Comments
Rita Lakin was a pioneer a female scriptwriter in the early 1960s when Hollywood television was exclusively male. For years, in creative meetings, she was literally “the only woman in the room.” In this breezy but heartfelt remembrance, Lakin takes readers to a long-forgotten time when women were not considered ... more >
B Reviews1980s / dystopian / fiction with strong romantic elements / geek / geek culture / near-future / popular culture / video games / YA science fiction17 Comments
Dear Mr. Cline, Your 2003 2011 novel, Ready Player One, was aptly described by USA Today as “Willy Wonka meets The Matrix.” Much like Roald Dahl’s classic children’s book, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Ready Player One begins with an impoverished boy obsessed with a worldwide contest. Wade Watts loves ... more >
B Reviews / Book Reviews1980s / adolescence / code / coming-of-age / computer programmers / computers / First-Person / Young-Adult3 Comments
A dazzling debut novel—at once a charming romance and a moving coming-of-age story—about what happens when a fourteen-year old boy pretends to seduce a girl to steal a copy of Playboy but then discovers she is his computer-loving soulmate. Billy Marvin’s first love was a computer. Then he met Mary ... more >
B- Reviews / Book Reviews1980s / England / family relationships / librarian6 Comments
Who knows what secrets lie hidden in your family’s past? Southern England, 1982. At 25, single, and under threat of redundancy from her job in a local library, Emily feels as though her life is going nowhere – until the day when Carl comes into the library asking for books ... more >
B- Reviews / Book Reviews1980s / England / London / slice of life / working class3 Comments
A London hairdresser’s life begins to change dramatically when he meets two very different women at a party in this delightful social comedy. Thirty-one-year-old Gavin Lamb is a shy hairdresser in London’s West End. Self-educated, he likes Mozart and can quote Tolstoy, but being something of a late bloomer, he ... more >