May is over? Are we sure? The last time I looked it was the 13th. Thankfully, all the gorgeous flowers and colors here were a distraction from what was another month of meh reading. It would seem I’m getting crankier as I age because I’ve already DNFed 13 books this year, almost as many as I did for all of 2022—and we’re only at the halfway point. I do have some bright ... Read More...
Winterland: A Novel
Does anyone else remember the USSR dominance in women’s gymnastics in the 1970s? When a name like Ludmilla Tourischeva might be the only Russian an American knew? A new novel, Winterland, takes place in the years when the balletic old guard of gymnasts like Tourischeva is giving way to fearless sprites like Olga Korbut. It’s the story of Anya, a young girl whose whole life is ... Read More...
NSFW: A Novel
I recently read NSFW a debut from Isabel Kaplan and I’m fairly certain my visceral reaction to the novel is a response becoming more and more common to me and to many of the women I know given recent events in America. Which is to say, I found the novel to be triggering in a way that I would not have felt so strongly in the past. NSFW’s narrator is unnamed—an interesting and ... Read More...
August Reading Wrap-Up
August, what a month for reading. Even better—not just quantity, but quality. All this despite the fact that I cancelled my second cataract surgery because I found the results from the first so unsatisfactory. I’m making do with the new fuzzy implanted lens and a contact lens in my other eye. Not where I thought I’d be, but I’ll have to get it figured out. On to the books! I ... Read More...
We Begin at the End
Somehow, in the past two weeks I stumbled into two novels that were antithetical to my usual, lighter summer reading. Both are standouts, but require the right head space. Monday was The Paper Palace and today it’s We Begin at the End—the story of Walk, a small-town chief of police, and Duchess, a teenage girl who’s developed a tough persona to deal with the bad hand that is ... Read More...
Dear Miss Metropolitan
I was a prisoner for so, so long. Years. How was that humanly possible? Why didn’t anyone find me? How had my page been torn out the book for so long? Sometimes, when I finish a book, the review flies right out of my mind onto the page. Then there are the books that need to marinate, where putting words and thoughts together cohesively takes more time. This is where ... Read More...
