In honor of the upcoming release of the cinematic rendition of Divergent (a book series I really enjoy, but don’t quite love), I figured I’d point out some under-explored gems of the Young Adult community for you to explore, preferably on a beach this summer with a margarita in one hand, an amazon kindle in […]
Vampires in the Lemon Grove is Karen Russell’s second collection of short stories. Her first, St Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves, and her first novel, Swamplandia!, received quite a bit of critical acclaim. Award nominations and whatnot. I didn’t actually get a chance to read Swamplandia! when it first came out, so I […]
I haven’t had a whole bunch of exposure to Jamaica Kincaid. I read Girl (which fairly blew my mind, GO READ THAT!), so there’s that, I guess. But I’m no expert. I’d never read one of her novels before See Now Then. I don’t know much about her life—I mean, I’ve heard that this particular […]
Hilary Mantel’s Thomas Cromwell series is fantastic. The series is planned to consist of three books, two of which are already out (Wolf Hall and Bring Up The Bodies). The series (at least, so far) tracks Thomas Cromwell, advisor first to Cardinal Wolsey and then to King Henry VIII, through the tumultuous political and religious […]
Falling somewhere on the scale between oddity and prodigy, Tim Ferriss is at it again with his third book of “personal experiments on lifestyle design.” First, he explored the realms of time and business in his book The 4-Hour Workweek. Next, he took physique to extreme levels of reader discomfort and follower transformation in The 4-Hour […]
The Fault In Our Stars is a book that goes exactly how you expect it to, and yet breaks your heart in ways you never could have guessed. In that way, it’s a lot like life. These are the kind of deep-but-not-really-but-also-kind-of sentiments the book makes you have. John Green’s highly publicized novel tells the […]
Teddy Wayne’s latest novel, The Love Song of Jonny Valentine, is about 11-year-old tween pop star, Jonny Valentine, and the circus that is his life. In the book, Jonny relates a few months of his second tour, sparing us nothing—the media hoopla, his infinitely complicated relationship with is mother-manager, daily tour business, his search for […]
Chad Kultgen’s latest novel, The Average American Marriage is the sequel to his provocative first novel, The Average American Male. The Average American Marriage is much like The Average American Male—both are carefully constructed shock-and-awe satires with strong language to provoke, to offend, to teeter just on the edge of memoir. And they are funny. […]