Little Brown and Company Archives - The Gilmore Guide to Books

Necessary People: A Novel

Catherine — Thu, 14 Nov 2019 08:55:41 +0000

It always seems as if being the friend of a really wealthy person would be fun—going expensive places, but never having to pay, exotic vacations, great gifts. But it never plays out that way in fiction. The last novel I read about a rich girl/poor girl friendship was Social Creature, which I disliked when its […]

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A Door in the Earth

Catherine — Fri, 20 Sep 2019 07:35:15 +0000

Parveen is like most young women her age—graduating college, but not sure what she wants to do with her degree in medical anthropology. Until she reads a memoir, written by a man who goes to Afghanistan and after a traumatic incident that left a woman dead from giving birth, founds and funds a women’s health […]

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The Pale King by David Foster Wallace

Catherine — Fri, 23 Nov 2018 08:58:13 +0000

I didn’t finish The Pale King. I tried. I really tried, but it is like a 400-level college English class—for majors only. And it’s almost 600 pages. The fact that it’s ostensibly about the IRS doesn’t help because if nothing else David Foster Wallace was a stickler for accuracy and cites copious amounts of tax code at a […]

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In the House in the Dark of the Woods

Catherine — Wed, 14 Nov 2018 08:03:40 +0000

Halloween may be over but the advancing winter weather still makes a perfect backdrop for creepy reading. Last week I wrote about Killing Commendatore, a Japanese novel that was oddly unsettling, but today I have another book that has truly left me flummoxed. It’s Laird Hunt’s In the House in the Dark of the Woods and […]

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Summer Fun Non-Fiction: Mini-Reviews

Catherine — Mon, 25 Jun 2018 07:19:44 +0000

As you well know I’m not a big non-fiction reader, but between friends’ recommendations and my library’s awesome Peak Picks program (brand new releases available without a hold list), I came across these three books that covered all my non-fiction needs. I have always cringed at movie critics who say a movie “made […]

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Circe: A Novel by Madeline Miller

Catherine — Mon, 09 Apr 2018 07:02:00 +0000

No matter what else you might think about them, no one knows how to do drama like the gods and goddesses of Greek mythology. And no one knows how to translate this drama for the modern mind like Madeline Miller. In her last novel, Song of Achilles, she showed the softer side of the god […]

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Mrs. by Caitlin Macy

Catherine — Wed, 21 Feb 2018 08:17:20 +0000

I’m not ashamed to admit that one of my go-to genres is Wealthy People Behaving Badly. There is just something about reading (or watching) people with stupid amounts of money acting foolish and, hopefully, getting caught doing it. It’s the small, petty part of my psyche, but I own it. When I read the synopsis […]

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The Power by Naomi Alderman

Catherine — Mon, 29 Jan 2018 08:06:03 +0000

It’s not too surprising that there is a flood of fiction hitting the market these days about women and their responses to generations of systemic subjugation and abuse. Maybe it’s time for a new genre—vengeance fiction? Whatever the genre, The Power by Naomi Alderman is a fierce and provocative novel about what happens when evolution (possibly […]

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Red Clocks by Leni Zumas

Catherine — Fri, 26 Jan 2018 08:29:42 +0000

From the very beginning reading Red Clocks is like looking through a very grimy window. Everything is tinged with dirt and difficult to see, much less see clearly. Four women, each speaking in alternating chapters and never revealing their names, only their most defining characteristic: the Biographer, the Mender, the Wife, the Daughter. In […]

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November Reading Wrap-Up

Catherine — Fri, 01 Dec 2017 08:41:46 +0000

Who knew November could be a blockbuster month for reading? I can’t go so far as to say the books were blockbusters, but I read a lot of them. The best part? I redeemed myself during Nonfiction November 2017 by reading 5 nonfiction books! That’s more than I’ve read in the last two years […]

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