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 chapters not their own, ... Read More...
5 Star Week: Before the Wind
There's no better way to wrap up a week of fabulous 5 star reading than with one of my favorite books of 2016. Jim Lynch is a Seattle author and this lovely book about a quirky family of sailors works even if you hate water. It just came out in paperback so I'm talking it up all over again. At the most basic level Jim Lynch’s new novel Before the Wind is the ... Read More...
Your Heart is a Muscle the Size of a Fist
Your Heart is a Muscle the Size of a Fist is one of those novels that runs on pure adrenaline. Author Sunil Yapa drops the reader into the chaos of the 1999 WTO protests in Seattle with such force that the fight or flight mechanism kicks in and there is no choice but to keep reading. The stream of consciousness style he employs means full immersion in each of the ... Read More...
Nonfiction November: Book Pairings
This week the Nonfiction November folks (Katie at Doing Dewey, Lory at Emerald City Book Review, Rachel at Hibernator’s Library, Julz at Julz Reads and Sarah at Sarah's Book Shelves) asked for reading pairings—book that complement each other in the way of other pairings like food and wine, clothes and accessories, chocolate and well…chocolate. Here are a few that came ... Read More...
It’s Not You, It’s Me: Today Will Be Different
If Herman Koch is the master at writing all the unpleasant things we might think about our fellow man, then Maria Semple is the heart behind the tough things we think about ourselves. In her newest novel, Today Will Be Different, that angst is directed at not being nice enough and not being present in life. Every day. All day. It’s a tall order, but one Eleanor Flood is ... Read More...
Shelter in Place
Alexander Maksik doesn’t waste any time getting to the meat of his new novel Shelter in Place. The first chapter is a small paragraph introducing Joe March with three facts: his mother beat a man to death with a hammer, he fell in love with a woman named Tess and he battles a black weight that fills him, sometimes taking the shape of a large bird. Joe also lets us ... Read More...
