Most people visit this site to read book reviews and to discover titles and authors that might interest them. Add your comments and come back often.
We hope this site will give you the same enthusiasm and knowledge you expect from a community bookstore. We review a broad range of genres, choosing those titles we believe worth reading.
The book club meets here at Bookin’ with Sunny every day, and the second Monday of each month at the Clayton CA Community Library at 7:00 p.m.
MEMORIZING SHADOWS, INSPIRATION FROM THE ARIZONA TRAIL AND STONE WISHES ON THE COLORADO PLATEAU Because we couldn’t go hiking together in red rock country this
IN DEPENDENCE The title of Sarah Ladipo Manyika’s novel, In Dependence, captures the thematic subtleties presented in its pages. Is twentieth-century Nigeria seeking independence, or
SPEAK NO EVIL Occasionally I encounter a novel that leaves me speechless. Uzodinma Iweala’s Speak No Evil left me not only speechless but breathless, too.
Hollow Kingdom Are you a nature lover? A hiker? A botanist? A stargazer? A bird watcher? If so, please consider Kira Jane Buxton’s debut book,
BLACKOUT You probably shouldn’t read (as I did) Marc Elsberg’s thriller, Blackout, while cable news is concentrating on the catastrophic outcomes of a spreading coronavirus.
REBEL CINDERELLA Adam Hochschild renews my faith in biographers and the art of biography. Rebel Cinderella models the very best of this sort of intellectual
THE PAINTER OF BATTLES A book worth reading is a book worth talking about, but not always. Arturo Pèrez-Reverte is Spain’s popular author of literary
THE FENCING MASTER Spanish author Arturo Perez-Reverte and his translator, Margaret Jull Costa, have created a novel that may best be described as a
ORDINARY WOLVES Not long ago in Bookin’, I described Susan Orlean’s nonfictional achievement, The Library Book, as a moving meditation coupled with journalism and research.
MY KITCHEN YEAR Ruth Reichl: My Kitchen Year was reviewed by Ann Ronald in Bookin’ with Sunny in 2016. Ann’s review set the stage for
STAR OF THE NORTH D.B. John’s thriller, Star of the North, pulls back the curtain on North Korea’s secretive milieu. The novel explores the terrain
MERCY HOUSE Alena Dillon’s novel, Mercy House, uniquely blends laughter with tragedy, pain with redemption. Its setting is a Bedford-Stuyvesant shelter for abused women. Run
DOG ON IT Please don’t wait for the dog days of summer to read Spencer Quinn’s Dog On It. Based on our present pandemic restrictions,
ALWAYS HOME The subtitle of Fanny Singer’s Almost Home delineates the content—“A Daughter’s Recipes & Stories.” What begins as a paeon to Fanny Singer’s famous
THE PERFECT HORSE The Perfect Horse by Elizabeth Letts, author of The Eighty Dollar Champion, was the perfect book to review for the Concord Clayton
A TALE OF TWO MURDERS Heather Redmond has begun writing a new detective series featuring a youthful Charles Dickens pursuing multiple murderous clues and figuring
ONLINE AUTHOR EVENT – BAD INDIANS Today’s pandemic stay-at-home order means many families must deal with online schooling for their children. Back in April 2013,
The Poet’s Corner — Poem by Poem Storm Warnings The glass has been falling all the afternoon, And knowing better than the instrument What
THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD Is it true that Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Underground Railroad “traces the terrible wounds of slavery,” as Michael Schaub wrote
We welcome questions and comments, as well as writing, editing, and distribution requests.
Since 2011, the very best in reviewing – connecting good readers with equally good writers
