The Gilmore Guide to Books

Connecting Books and Readers One Review at a Time

  • Home
  • About Me
  • Reviews
    • Reviews by Author
    • Reviews by Title
    • Reviews by Genre
  • Podcast
  • Policies
    • Review Policy
    • Cookie Policy
    • Privacy Policy

The Librarianist: A Novel

August 10, 2023

librarianist

Bob Comet has lived a quiet life, immersed in his one great love: books. A voracious reader he became a librarian, sharing that love with the patrons he helped. Now, in his early 70s, retired, but still living in the house he grew up in in Portland, Oregon he wants to share the joy of books again in Patrick deWitt’s quirky new novel, The Librarianist. It's the inadvertent ... Read More...

2 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: contemporary life, literary, senior life

Strange Sally Diamond

August 8, 2023

strange sally

In rural Ireland 44-year-old Sally lives alone with her elderly father. They seldom come in contact with the outside world because Sally is neurodivergent and interactions with people never seem to go well. When Liz Nugent’s novel Strange Sally Diamond opens her father has just died. Sally handles the situation exactly as he told her to, but the after effect of her actions ... Read More...

2 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: contemporary life, mystery, suspense

Banyan Moon: A Novel

July 28, 2023

banyan

The complex and delicate relationships between mothers and daughters is at the center of Thao Thai’s debut novel, Banyan Moon. Towards the end of the Vietnam War, Minh and her daughter, Huong, left Vietnam for America to settle in Florida. Huong’s daughter, Ann, is born there and the three live together in a decrepit mansion called Banyan House until Ann leaves home. Now, Minh ... Read More...

2 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, cultural, family saga

Juno Loves Legs

July 26, 2023

juno

With a personality as incendiary and out of control as her flaming red hair, Juno bursts onto the pages of Juno Loves Legs like a wildfire. She and Legs, her best friend, live in a housing estate in Dublin and in an abbreviated 300 pages the novel follows them from childhoods where even home isn’t safe to an adulthood that comes far too fast and too hard. And yet, through it ... Read More...

2 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: 1980s, Ireland, literary

The Swimmers: A Novel

July 14, 2023

swimmers

A beautifully composed, but unusual novel, there's not a lot of action in The Swimmers so if plot and pace are a criteria for your summer reading, save this contemplative beauty for the fall.  It's the story of a swimming pool and the group of swimmers who churn, wade, bounce, and glide through its lanes. In the first half of the novel the narrators are the collective ‘we’ of ... Read More...

6 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction

Mad Honey by Jodi Picoult

July 10, 2023

honey

I’d left off reading Jodi Picoult after disliking her last two books and so didn’t read Mad Honey until two readers I trust said I would enjoy it. I listened to them, but this may be the briefest review of a 4 star novel I’ve ever done. Not for a lack of thoughts, but because the plot twists in this story just keep coming until the very end. Given that each is substantive and ... Read More...

2 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, contemporary life, mystery, vacation reading

  • « Previous Page
  • 1
  • …
  • 30
  • 31
  • 32
  • 33
  • 34
  • …
  • 189
  • Next Page »
  • Bluesky
  • Email
  • Goodreads
  • Instagram
  • Substack

Save time and subscribe via email

No time to keep checking for new reviews? Enter your email address to subscribe and receive notifications of new posts by email. No spam!

Bookshop

Currently Reading

Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle
Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle
by Emily Nagoski
The Dutch House
The Dutch House
by Ann Patchett
Wild Game: My Mother, Her Lover, and Me
Wild Game: My Mother, Her Lover, and Me
by Adrienne Brodeur

goodreads.com

Affiliate Disclosure

I’m an affiliate for Bookshop. If you click on a link that takes you to their site and make a purchase I’ll earn a small fee, which goes towards the costs of maintaining this site. Your support is appreciated. Thank you!

Archives

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States License.

Theme Design By Studio Mommy · Copyright © 2026

Copyright © 2026 · Beyond Madison Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in