June. What a month. Normally, this is a recap of my reading, but no matter how I try to stick to the subject of books my brain refuses to cooperate. By this time next week we’ll be starting the 2,200 mile trip from Ann Arbor to Seattle. The unending list of what needs to be done before then is one of the things that has me awake at 4am. But that’s not it, I can power through ... Read More...
This Time Tomorrow
I’ve had mixed success with time travel novels this summer (I’m looking at you, One Italian Summer) so I was a bit hesitant to pick up This Time Tomorrow. What swayed me is that it’s by Emma Straub, whose last novel All Adults Here was a favorite of mine. Thankfully, while I may not have loved everything about this father-daughter novel I did appreciate the relationship and how ... Read More...
10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World
A Turkish woman lying murdered in a rubbish bin hardly seems like the appropriate subject for a piercingly tender novel about the damage done to innocence in childhood and the bonds of friendship as family, but 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World is a singular work that defies labels. The same is true of the dead woman, Leila, who, at 40 years old, has been a prostitute ... Read More...
January Reading Wrap-Up
What to say about January? A month that went so fast, but didn’t seem to move at all. With subzero temperatures and a broken supply chain that left Costco with no Diet Coke (I can go without my meds, but no Diet Coke is a bridge too far). Those are the lows, but the important news is that January was an outstanding month for reading. Of the 14 books I read 9 were 4 stars or ... Read More...
My 6 Favorite Debuts of 2021
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...
Shiner: A Novel by Amy Jo Burns
Stories of contemporary Southern mountain men abound (Bull Mountain, The Line That Held Us), but examples of women are a bit harder to come by. The fact Amy Jo Burns brings three such women to life in her novel, Shiner, is just one outstanding element of many in this lush debut. Raised in isolation in the West Virginia mountains, Wren doesn’t know much of the outside world. ... Read More...
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