Ballantine Archives - The Gilmore Guide to Books

Daisy Jones & The Six

Catherine — Mon, 11 Mar 2019 07:28:33 +0000

I came to hate that I’d put my heart and my pain into my music because it meant that I couldn’t ever leave it behind. Daisy Jones is the quintessential ‘70s rock ‘n roll dream girl—preternaturally beautiful, no inhibitions, and ready to party. Except that she’s got dreams of her own and an astonishing whiskey-soaked […]

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Unmarriageable by Soniah Kamal

Catherine — Wed, 06 Feb 2019 08:17:56 +0000

Unmarriageable is one of the winter books I was most looking forward to reading in January. Author Soniah Kamal takes Jane Austen’s beloved Pride & Prejudice and updates it to fit into Pakistan in the year 2000. Every detail is the same, but with an Eastern flair. The Bennetts are the Binats, Darcy is Darsee, […]

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A Spark of Light by Jodi Picoult

Catherine — Wed, 03 Oct 2018 07:33:03 +0000

Jodi Picoult is a seasoned pro at presenting both sides to highly charged and complicated issues—which is one of the reasons I love her books. She moves me out of my comfort zone and gives me perspectives that I might not come to on my own. Generally, she finds hot-button topics shortly after they’ve hit […]

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Love and Ruin by Paula McLain

Catherine — Mon, 07 May 2018 07:15:32 +0000

It wasn’t bravery when you did what you had to do. Paula McLain’s novel, Circling the Sun, was one of my favorites of 2015, largely because she portrayed Beryl Markham so well as a woman who wasn’t content to follow the norms of her times—get married, have children—but who understood that the only way […]

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Song of a Captive Bird

Catherine — Mon, 19 Feb 2018 08:34:50 +0000

Remember its flight, for the bird is mortal. -Forugh Farrokhzhad I was looking forward to learning about a time and culture, far away from my own, but I never thought I’d be so thoroughly seduced by Jasmin Darznik’s debut novel, Song of a Captive Bird. It is a fictionalized account of Forugh Farrokhzhad, the first […]

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June Reading Wrap-Up

Catherine — Mon, 03 Jul 2017 07:06:03 +0000

Quick disclaimer: it never got anywhere near warm enough in Seattle in June for outdoor swimming so this photo is fake news. There was no lounging and reading by the pool—I was wearing socks the last week of the month, but that’s all right for me. I spent three days in the 90° heat […]

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The Witchfinder’s Sister

Catherine — Wed, 03 May 2017 07:07:09 +0000

The Witchfinder’s Sister is Beth Underdown’s dark novel of dark times. It’s 1600s England and Alice is pregnant, her husband is dead and she must return to live with her brother whom she hasn’t seen in five years. Her brother who wanted to become a minister, but due to their father’s death had to […]

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It’s Monday, April 17th: What Are You Reading?

Catherine — Mon, 17 Apr 2017 07:35:09 +0000

Another Monday, a new week and a new start to my reading. I’m not going to get all pessimistic, but my April reading has been less than stellar so far. Lots of reading, but not a lot of things that I loved so much I couldn’t wait to share them. Backlist, previously released books, continue […]

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Ill Will: A Novel by Dan Chaon

Catherine — Wed, 08 Mar 2017 19:52:04 +0000

No doubt this must happen to everyone at a certain age: You look up for a moment and you’re not sure which life is read. You’ve split yourself into so many honeycombed parts that they barely notice each other—all of them pacing, concurrently, parallel streams of thought, and each one thinks of itself as […]

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Small Great Things

Catherine — Mon, 17 Oct 2016 07:13:43 +0000

Jodi Picoult is one of those authors I love for being entertaining yet educational. In each of her novels she takes on a subject and not only turns it into gripping fiction, but informs the reader. In her latest, Small Great Things, the subject is racism and as always she approaches it with a unique moral […]

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