It happens in personal relationships and it happens with reading: A book simply does not hold my interest, float my boat, whatever metaphor you want to use. But if the writing is good I’m reader enough to admit: It’s Not You, It’s Me. I’ve always been a fan of South Asian authors so approached these novels with high hopes. In both cases the writing was well done, but the ... Read More...
Mrs. Houdini
Bess Rahner met Ehrich Weiss the summer of 1894 at Coney Island where both were performers—she a singing and dancing girl and he doing an escape act with his brother. Little did she know that this brash, confident young man would become Harry Houdini and she would be his wife. Mrs. Houdini, by Victoria Kelly, looks not only their life together, from their beginnings in ... Read More...
March Library Checkout
Three months into a new year may be too soon to call a trend, but accuracy has never been a strong suit for me so I’m going to say it: My library reading has significantly outperformed my upcoming-release reading. My March library reading seems to seal the deal. I’m not sure why this is, but an early analysis makes it clear that either 2016 is going to be a slow year for GREAT ... Read More...
The Nest
The Nest is contemporary-family-behaving-badly fiction—a genre I generally enjoy. Oh, who am I kidding- I like any family behaving badly in fiction! I mean, why not; it’s so much more fun. Sadly, what makes The Nest contemporary is its all-too-realistic theme: people living out their material dreams through credit. In the case of Leo, Jack, Beatrice, and Melody Plumb the credit ... Read More...
The Sellout: A Novel
How do you review a book when you’re not quite certain that you should or even that you should have been allowed to read it? This was the question in my mind after finishing Paul Beatty’s The Sellout. The novel is set in a ghetto outside Los Angeles called Dickens and is about a young black man whose childhood is spent being homeschooled and basically tortured by his father, a ... Read More...
The Train for Crazytown Stops Here
Kind of an aggressive title for a book review post, yes? Honestly, it was the first thing that popped into my head when thinking about the two books today. Based on their titles I thought they would be snack food reads—high in calories but with almost no nutritional value, salty or sweet, and not good for you, but which we all crave from time to time. Instead, both made excess ... Read More...
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