Another year come and gone and what a year! I began in Portland and am now writing from Seattle. Thankfully, it’s another city that appreciates books and reading so I imagine we’ll get along just fine. On to the reading! I may end up saying this every year but…this was a wonderful year for readers. Good enough that I had to create a separate list for debut authors. As I look ... Read More...
Favorite Debuts of 2013
If you’ve stumbled on this because you’re looking for the prettiest (and/or richest) debutantes of 2013 then you’ve got the wrong blog. Which doesn't mean you can't stay (please do!) but although I love all things girly and fashionable I’m writing about the best debut authors of 2013. So, even though there is bling in this list, it is the literary sparkle of outstanding writing ... Read More...
The Death of Bees
There are times when what is needed is a story so utterly foreign that it plucks us out of our own world and drops us into one for which our background leaves us completely unprepared. I found this with Lisa O’Donnell’s debut novel The Death of Bees: A Novel. Set in Glasgow, it encompasses the world of Marnie and Nelly, two teens left on their own when their parents die. Well, ... Read More...
Farewell, Dorothy Parker
Have you ever played the history game where you can choose points in history you’d like to visit? For me, the era of the Algonquin Round Table in Manhattan is one such time. Men of great wit and intelligence drinking cocktails and being dominated by one of the greatest wits of all: Dorothy Parker. Given that choice, finding Ellen Meister’s novel, Farewell, Dorothy Parker was ... Read More...
The Lion Seeker
The son of Lithuanian Jews who left the country in the 1920s and moved to South Africa, Isaac Helger grows up believing the only way to have self-worth is through money. “Working” for a living, as his watch repairman father does, is embarrassing. As the protagonist in Kenneth Bonert’s novel, The Lion Seeker, Isaac embraces his mother’s credo of “Are you a stupid or a ... Read More...
Too Bright to Hear Too Loud to See
And that’s how it happens. Like a broken record, warped and scratched. Once I was music, now I am just noise. It requires a special gift to bring forth a largely unlikable character who can also evoke sympathy but Juliann Garey has done just that in her debut novel Too Bright to Hear Too Loud to See. Greyson Todd is from one of the most unlikable genres of men in fiction ... Read More...
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