From Cover to Cover

From Cover to Cover is a monthly segment at the Compendium where I read a book suggested by my readers, and then discuss my in-depth impressions of it right here. If you wish to suggest a book for me to look at, simply post it in the comments of one of the blogs below!


A Literary Call to Arms!
The origins and mission statement of this segment, as well as a full list of guidelines for book submissions. Will probably be updated as I gain more experience managing this segment, and figure out what works for it and what doesn't.

February 2014: A Shadow Over Innsmouth
H.P. Lovecraft's chilling 1936 short story of cosmic horror and fishmen. It features a nameless protagonist making a leisurely trek across New England to investigate his own family history, and generally doss about looking at architecture. Along the way he hears tales of a shadowy town called Innsmouth, and what he finds there throws both his life, as well his sanity, in the balance...

March 2014: The Ocean at the End of the Lane
Neil Gaiman's ode to his wife, Ocean is a 2012 novel about a man reliving his childhood as he stares out at the pond in the back garden of an old family friend. The story he recalls is as fantastical as it is terrifying, featuring a baby sitter from Hell, a coven of what may or may not be witches and a pond that is more than meets the eye.

April 2014: Wool and A Canticle for Leibowitz
The first book of the series that launched Hugh Howey's career in 2011, and a 1960 sci-fi classic from Walter M. Miller Jr, Wool focuses on a society holed up in a large, claustrophobic building-come-city called a Silo, and exactly what happens when you become too curious about the world outside it's walls. Meanwhile, A Canticle for Leibowitz tells the story of a small monastery, over the course of a millennia, in what's left of North America after a nuclear war. Tasked with protecting information that the world does not value any more, the story examines the consequences of this task, and how they come to shape both the monastery and the world. These are two post-apocalyptic novels published over five decades apart that have a surprising number of similarities and some very stark differences.

May 2014: Howl's Moving Castle
Coming Soon!