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January Reading Wrap-Up

February 1, 2019

january

I feel as if "wrap-up" is the appropriate word both for my January reading and for everyone who is shivering in the Midwest and Northeast. I'm happily ensconced in Seattle with 40 degrees and sunshine, but cringe looking at the weather station, knowing that this time next year I'll huddled inside in Ann Arbor, cursing the cold. Let's try and forget the weather and talk books! ... Read More...

7 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Feature Tagged: historical fiction, mini-reviews

Radiant Shimmering Light

January 30, 2019

radiant

Lilian is trying to live her best life, but utilizing her ability to see animals’ auras while painting pet portraits is not working out. She can’t even earn enough to pay the rent on her Toronto apartment. She feels stymied and trapped so when her cousin Eleven (formerly Florence) Novak invites her to New York City to attend one of her famous female empowerment seminars she ... Read More...

1 Comment
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: Bloomsbury, contemporary life, debut, satire

Becoming by Michelle Obama

January 28, 2019

becoming

Leave it to Michelle Obama, an untested writer, to achieve something that has never happened in my reading history. I finished her memoir, Becoming, on January 15th and had no hesitation in ranking it 5 stars. This makes it not only the first time I’ve found a 5-star book in January, but the only time my first 5-star rating of the year has been given to nonfiction. I just don’t ... Read More...

20 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Non-fiction Tagged: book clubs, marriage, memoir, politics, Random House, social issues, women

Annelies by David Gillham

January 25, 2019

annelies

As much as I love historical fiction, there are some people who should be left to history rather than brought back in fiction. After reading David Gillham’s Annelies I believe Anne Frank is one of these. She is too deeply imbued by her own writing, the writing she left behind to be reconsidered by another writer. Gillham uses the premise of Anne surviving Bergen-Belsen and ... Read More...

3 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: Europe, historical fiction, Holocaust, Viking, WWII

The Current by Tim Johnston

January 23, 2019

current

What begins as a novel about a car going into a frigid river and only one of the occupants making it out alive turns into a multi-layered story about a small Minnesota town and how the past doesn’t always stay in the past. Audrey is the girl who survives the crash that killed her friend, but she is still faced with seeing her father in his final days as he’s dying of cancer. A ... Read More...

6 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: Algonquin Books, literary, suspense

Descent by Tim Johnston

January 21, 2019

descent

All her life 18-year-old Caitlin has been a runner. It is who she is and in running she moves in a world of her heart, her blood, her muscles—all working in sync to do what she loves to do. How then could something at the core of her being that brings her such joy lead her into a nightmare? Because if she hadn’t insisted on going running in the early morning in the Rocky ... Read More...

5 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: Algonquin Books, family, suspense, thriller

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