Great Reads
"Red Shifting" by Aleksandr Skidan.
Though Aleksandr Skidan has been publishing for years in Russia, "Red Shifting" is his first collection of poetry to be translated into English. Skidan has become fluent in American culture, and has carefully splayed it out in his poems. He deals with the subjects of censorship, displacement, and language with an unsettling ease, digs into himself and into his reader with abandon and uncovers things most of us would rather keep buried. Skidan's vocabulary of allusions requires many visits before it yields to the reader; his pieces alternate between a stark clarity and a calm aloofness that have few equals in their level of challenge. (Red Shifting, Ugly Duckling Press). - Blythe Boyer
Taking a break from the usual mystery and suspense writing, John Connolly presents his readers with a different kind of book called, "The Book of Lost Things". The book opens with a frightfully realistic way in which a child will view the way in which a terminal illness takes a life. Although David's mother dies from cancer, he finds comfort in her books because, as she always told him, books are alive and just waiting for someone to talk with them. David finds himself obsessed with this book in his stepmother's house. This book then takes him on an adventure of a lifetime in which he battles gnomes, werewolves, and finally the Crooked Man. -- Michelle Wittle
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