Vintage Archives - The Gilmore Guide to Books

My 9 Favorite Books in 2024

Catherine — Fri, 27 Dec 2024 08:18:40 +0000

As I started reviewing my reading year there was one stat that jumped off the chart at me. Of the 13 five-star books I read this year my favorite 9 were backlist (published before 2024). I’m sure publishing analysts could provide an easy explanation (fewer books published in an election year) or a psychologist something […]

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Ghosts by Dolly Alderton

Catherine — Mon, 09 Dec 2024 08:38:24 +0000

A successful food writer, Nina Dean is happy with her life. She has close friends, her own apartment in London, and her breakup with her longtime boyfriend was amicable. She’s happy being alone, but a partner would be nice as well, so with her sense of self-esteem mostly in place she makes the foray back […]

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July Reading Wrap-Up

Catherine — Tue, 01 Aug 2023 07:51:26 +0000

Goodbye, July. It was a busy month of travel, family reunion, and not-so-fun adulting, but overall there was some great reading to be had amongst the gorgeous weather here in Seattle. I’m sorry for you lovelies who struggled with sweltering. One week in Colorado in the 90s was enough to make me overjoyed to return […]

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June Reading Wrap-Up

Catherine — Wed, 30 Jun 2021 04:11:45 +0000

What an odd month June has turned out to be. Partly summer and partly more spring with lots and lots of rain—the kind we usually get in April and May. We traveled at the beginning of the month so that felt weird and then I hit a hard reading slump that was only cured […]

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We Are Never Meeting in Real Life

Catherine — Mon, 25 May 2020 04:46:35 +0000

Samantha Irby is a 36-year-old, black, lesbian living in Chicago. She also grew up broke-ass poor—all of which she lets you know from the get-go in her essay collection We Are Never Meeting in Real Life. But her biographical details are the least interesting thing about her. What really matters is that she is wildly […]

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Heat by Bill Buford

Catherine — Mon, 27 Nov 2017 08:24:15 +0000

I’m not sure how seriously I can take a man who is foolish enough to invite a world class chef into his home for dinner, but I decided to give Bill Buford a chance. His invitation to Mario Batali leads him to ask if he can work as an intern in the kitchen of Mario’s […]

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Dystopian Summer: Mini-Reviews

Catherine — Fri, 04 Aug 2017 03:25:10 +0000

The title of this post might make you think I’m alluding to the dumpster fire that is current American politics, but you’d be wrong. Although the generalized anxiety so many of us are feeling is likely caused by the chaos, I’m only referring to two novels I recently read. Summer might not seem like the […]

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DNF: The Dreaded Did-Not-Finish

Catherine — Fri, 18 Mar 2016 07:38:56 +0000

Much like the political noise that is sweeping our country right now there is a topic in the bookish world that tends to split itself into party lines. For some it is something they are proud of and shout from the rooftops. For others it is a personal failure and something they’d rather not talk […]

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Boo: A Novel

Catherine — Wed, 15 Jul 2015 07:13:37 +0000

You are thirteen; standing in front of your locker at school one morning and the next thing you know you wake up in an austere white room and are informed you’ve been ‘rebirthed’ into Heaven, although it’s not called Heaven it’s called Town. For most 13-year-olds this would be fairly traumatic but for Oliver, the […]

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Above the East China Sea

Catherine — Fri, 01 May 2015 07:03:40 +0000

How has he not had it drummed into him that brats don’t whine? We don’t plead. We don’t need. We require nothing. Not even real roots. We’re air ferns. In Sarah Bird’s new novel Above the East China Sea the island of Okinawa is the centerpiece of a multi-generational drama that plays out […]

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