After my frank opinions in the May recap let’s start June off with some breezy family drama, shall we? Marrying the Ketchups by Jennifer Close is the story of the Sullivans, a restaurant-owning family in Chicago’s Oak Park neighborhood. The novel is cemented in place at the volatile end of 2016, when the Cubs win their first World Series in 100 years and America’s political ... Read More...
November Reading
November? Seriously, how is 2020 not over yet?! This year has aged me a decade and not just because I’ve stopped coloring my hair. Even my bookish news is not great—my November reading fell off. There was still some great nonfiction, but my waning attention span (thank you doom scrolling) made great fiction harder to find. I finally let go of trying to read diverse, ... Read More...
What I Need When I Read
When I read Claire Messud’s The Woman Upstairs I loved it. The protagonist was a middle-age, single woman who was angry about a lot of life. For some this anger was off-putting and there were reviewers who found the woman (Nora) disagreeable and depressing. I certainly felt sympathy for her situation but by and large, even when she made me uncomfortable, Nora was a character I ... Read More...
