The press team on The Andalucian Friend is working their tails off to try and convince the general public that The Andalucian Friend is the Swedish thriller book equivalent of the second coming. I give them an A+ Nice Try paper plate award for their efforts. But they are wrong. Alexander Söderberg’s The Andalucian Friend […]
I. Wow. E.E. Charlton-Trujillo’s Fat Angie is a triumph and a mess and funny and brutally honest and gimmicky and clichéd and wonderful and a freaking thousand volts straight to the chest. It’s quite flawed and I could nitpick some of the style for years but. Dang. This book could be a lifeboat. I mean. […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
This is pretty much straightforward. I read a lot of books this year, and a huge proportion of those books were fiction. Sometimes realistic, some fantasy, some sci-fi, and some historical—but, in any case, a lot of fiction. These are—in no true order—my top five fiction picks of the year. The Dog Stars, by Peter […]
Being a 20something human with an intact soul and a love for the idea of children reading, it pretty much goes without saying that I love Harry Potter. I don’t love it as much as other people I know–I can’t name all the minor characters, nor can I recite any of the Sorting Hat songs–but […]