Happy Monday and welcome to my first yearend best-of lists. Today is a favorite category: best debuts. Finding new authors is one of my greatest reading pleasures and 2021 proved to be a very good year. Of all my reading, 38% was debut authors and of those debuts I rated 36% 3.5 stars or higher, with 3.5 being my baseline for a book I’d recommend to others. Finally, of ... Read More...
No One Will Miss Her: A Novel
Everyone has their own understanding of what appeals to them in fiction. Something I love is a dead narrator. For some reason, this makes me implicitly trust them. It’s even better if they acknowledge their own unlikability as is the case with the unloved Lizzie Ouellette. No One Will Miss Her opens with her imagining an old drunk sitting around the local bar after her death ... Read More...
Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography
Suicide is always shocking to those left behind, but when it’s someone famous, someone with what looks to be a “dream” life, it feels even more inexplicable. This was the case June 2018 when Anthony Bourdain killed himself. Bourdain was a chef turned television personality who created the iconic No Reservations and Parts Unknown series. He traveled globally in search of great ... Read More...
October Reading Wrap-Up
My October reading was as mercurial as the month itself. Here in Michigan we had high humidity, heat, and mosquitos right up until last week, meaning I was cranky and battling hair frizz that made me look like the bride of Frankenstein. Now, I’m bundled up in fleece and socks. In the same way that the weather was unpredictable my reading ping ponged between wonderful ... Read More...
The Comfort of Monsters
Milwaukee in the summer of 1991 was focused on one thing only—the arrest and investigation of Jeffrey Dahmer. The scope of his crimes dominated not only the local news but national as well. For Peg and her family, it meant the disappearance of her younger sister got no media attention and only limited help from the police. The Comfort of Monsters moves between that hard, heavy ... Read More...
God Spare the Girls
What do you do when your entire family is perfect, but you’re 18 and confused? For Caroline Nolan, in God Spare the Girls, it’s an especially complicated question because her father is Luke Nolan, pastor of a megachurch in Texas. Her mother Ruthie is the perfect matriarch, calm and always perfectly coiffed. Worst of all, is her older sister Abigail, her father’s favorite for ... Read More...
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