It is a bittersweet moment when you turn the last page of a world that has been such a vivid part of your life for the past five years. Spending over 900 pages in Colson Whitehead’s New York of the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s, with Ray Carney, Elizabeth and Pepper, has been one of the …
Book club alert!!! This book, about a wholesome family show that takes place in the 1960s, is a dream book club selection! It’s charming, engaging, and would give ladies sooooooo much to talk about!!! It’s about social expectations and restrictions, and the strain of judgment from others and ourselves. Very good! ~ Annette An enjoyable …
This is the kind of Macbeth retelling I’ve been looking for. Ava Reid crafts a Lady Macbeth both bound to the decisions of others as well as conniving in her own right. Every page was filled with female rage and impotence in the face of male dictators while also highlighting Lady Roscille’s brilliant mind. I …
A dryly darkly funny depiction of a modern family navigating close-quarters while on two separate vacations. Weiki Wang is an extremely sharp and astute writer of the intricacies of interpersonal relations in marriage (and all the extra people that come along with it). –Torrin, Queen Anne Book Company, Seattle, WA This is the story of …
Here is Willy Vlautin’s The Horse, which is the story of Al Ward, a man in his final years, who finds a horse on his doorstep one morning. He’s not sure if the horse is a hallucination, but its presence triggers a lot of contemplation of life—the one he had and the one he didn’t …
“These unbroken stretches of consciousness, days sometimes blurring into one another, seems just a feature of modern life, not worth complaining about,” an insomniac remarks to herself. Kim Fu’s Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century is a collection of short stories that captures the modern sense of malaise that is now more pronounced, more intense, as …
On a … whimsical note, here is Sosuke Natsukawa’s The Cat Who Saved Books, which is about a young bookseller and a talking cat. The cat has a mission, you see—a mission to rescue books from mistreatment, misappropriation, and general misuse. Naturally, the bookseller agrees to help the cat. Mysteries ensue. –A Good Book, Sumner, …
I absolutely loved this book; I read it in maybe 2 days! It’s like a hybrid of Percy Jackson and the Red Queen series, all brought together in a more modern take. The book begins with a mystery right away, then the romance, battles, and secrets pulled my interest immediately. What I really loved was …
The gorgeous writing, vivid setting, compelling characters, and engrossing story aren’t even the best parts of this novel. Instead, I just keep marveling at how Jess Walter takes events from history to illuminate our present while keeping them rooted in their own time, from the labor movement to class, race, and gender equality and civil …
Karl Marlantes once again brings us an epic that can’t be put down, this time set in the forests and on the rivers of southwest Washington, all soon to be engulfed by logging and fishing. Deep River combines the story of immigrant siblings (from Finland) and a larger Scandinavian community, the desires of families escaping …
