Blogcritics Author: Maggie Ball

Book Review: The OK Team by Nick Place

Maggie Ball — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 11:07:14 EDT

With innovative, fast pace plotting, and plenty of humor, an ideal option for lovers of comics.
Hazy Retina has a problem. As his name would suggest, he’s out of focus. That's out of focus as in blurry, or hard to see. Blurry isn't a great look for a teenage boy, and not only is it the cause of some in-school bullying, it makes it hard for him to get a date. But haziness runs in Hazy's family, and there isn’t a lot he...

Book Review: Composition - A Fiction Writer's Guide for the 21st Century by Linda Lavid

Maggie Ball — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 03:59:41 EDT

A useful starting point and a reference you�ll find yourself going back to along the way.
Composition: A Fiction Writer's Guide for the 21st Century is a brief but illuminating read about how to write a book from concept to creation, and then get it out there. It’s super easy to read, and for a non-fiction book, fast paced and fun. It’s also a good example of the advice author Linda Lavid offers – a self-published...

Book Review: Sunny Side Up by Marion Roberts

Maggie Ball — Fri, 6 Jun 2008 05:29:47 EDT

A lovely, positive, first novel with great appeal for young teens.
I tend not to read books that fall into genre categories, and that includes such categories as literature for females (Chick-lit for example) and literature for males (boys-own, adventure stores or even the recent addition of boy-chik lit). But for a teenager, I can certainly understand why a gender split might be desirable. In both cases, issues...

Book Review: Kafka's Soup - A Complete History of World Literature in 14 Recipes by Mark Crick

Maggie Ball — Thu, 29 May 2008 06:31:01 EDT

A cute gift book for bibliophiles, if not food for thought.
Kafka’s Soup is an odd little book which has been designed to celebrate 14 of the world’s most famous writers. The book contains real recipes written in a style that parodies the work of Raymond Chandler, Jane Austen, Franz Kafka, Irvine Welsh, Proust, Marquez, Steinbeck, Marquis de Sade, Woolf, Homer, Greene, Borges, Pinter, and...

Book Review: Timbuktu by Paul Auster

Maggie Ball — Thu, 22 May 2008 09:31:35 EDT

Clever, funny, lighthearted and serious at the same time, this is a stylistic departure for Paul Auster which nonetheless makes full use of his gifts.
For those used to the almost psychedelic complexity of Auster’s novels, Timbuktu will come as something of a shock. It’s short, sweet, and utterly simple: a lovely and moving story of a dog who loses his master. The story is told in omniscient third person, but it takes the dog’s point of view and never wavers from it. There are...

Book Review: Anybody Any Minute by Julie Mars

Maggie Ball — Fri, 2 May 2008 11:33:08 EDT

A novel full of humour, introspection, and powerful characterisation.
There’s a tremendous intimacy in Julie Mars’ writing. It’s as if she were an old friend, confiding secrets. That isn’t to say that her latest book Anybody Any Minute doesn’t create a fictive dream. The protagonist Ellen Kenny comes across as real, and the story, despite its quirky turns, is also believable. As the...

Book Review: Tremolo - Cry of the Loon by Aaron Paul Lazar

Maggie Ball — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 14:20:43 EDT

Lazar's book cuts through genre distinctions to the heart of what matters in life.
Aaron Paul Lazar is more than just a storyteller. He’s the kind of generous writer that seems to have the reader’s enjoyment at the forefront of his mind at all times. It isn’t only that his stories are written in easy to read prose which manage to toe the line between literary panache and simplicity; it’s also that he has...

What's so Funny 'Bout Fiction: The Question of the 'Fake' Memoir

Maggie Ball — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 20:45:41 EDT

There are many different kinds of truth.
Another day, another literary scandal. First (Well maybe not first. See this listl) there was Helen Darville’s faked history behind her Miles Franklin-winning novel The Hand that Signed the Paper; then there was James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces; novelist JT LeRoy, who finally admitted to being Laura Albert; Nasdijj, the Navajo...

Book Review: Gleaner or Gladiator: the struggle to create by Lyne Marshall

Maggie Ball — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 06:33:45 EDT

An important addition to the aesthetic canon.
Lyne Marshall’s artwork is striking. In bold, modernistic strokes, it combines the beauty of nature with a humanistic sense of the greater intensity hidden below the surface of things. Her Gleaner or Gladiator is an interesting mixture between an art book which showcases her beautiful work — something you could easily display on a...

Audio Book Review: 3rd i by Basil Eliades

Maggie Ball — Sun, 9 Mar 2008 10:26:45 EDT

A turbulence to dive for: poetry and music as performance art.
I reviewed the book version of 3rd i about a year ago, and since then, have been given a CD version. Listening to the music after reading the book is a curious and altogether different experience. One of the key differences is that, when reading silently, I hear the work in my own voice. When listening, I'm struck by the forceful exuberance of...