While I read Whiteout by a bunch of authors, I was unimpressed. It probably didn’t help that I didn’t understand what I was reading until much later. But as the book went by, I was charmed by the idea of it as well as the spirit of it. And some sections were written better than…
I can’t get away from references to James Baldwin. It seems he is a writer’s writer. And, unless there was a short story or essay somewhere along the line, I have never read him. Until now. I started with Giovanni’s Room simply because we were reading it for book club. Perhaps I should have read…
When asked at book club if I would read another book by this author, my answer was “No.” However, reading this Christmas cozy really got me wondering about possible (probable?) authors out there who write cozies but with a good (or great?) writing style. Because to tell you the truth, The Book Club Hotel by…
I thought the afterword to Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Jonathan Letham was rather clever. Among other things, he says, “Jackson is one of American fiction’s impossible presences, too material to be called a phantom …. too in-print to be ‘rediscovered,’ yet hidden in plain sight.” He goes on to…
I am ten days behind reminding you that it is time to start planning for Nanowrimo. So you better get on it. I have been deep, deep in edits, but thankfully I am going to write the second half of the novel I started last Nano in November, so I don’t have a ton of…
I loved reading North Woods. Not everybody at book club did. There were even DNFs. I suppose it’s not an easy book and it is rather literary. But I thought it was exciting, very beautiful in its prose, unique, and well-executed. I will be looking into Daniel Mason’s other books and waiting for the next…
I don’t know if there is any real accounting for how much I liked this classic YA book. The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier just struck me as a very well-written book, nailing the concept and the genre on the head while also feeling fresh, even 50 years after its publication. Even though it’s kinda,…
I had so many conflicted feelings when I finished this book. Then I watched the limited streaming series and had more conflicted feelings, but not the same feelings, exactly. And then the New York Times published their best books of the twenty-first century and then the people’s choice, and there was Normal People again, not…
(Head to the end of the post to see my picks.) Sure, there’s a bunch of political stuff going on, but the book news in the past week or two has also been blowing up, unpredictably so. It all began with a little list that the New York Times put out. They put book lists…
I enjoyed reading Universal Love by Alexander Weinstein. I would recommend it. (I did already, to my husband.) There are some things to mention, like how I know the author. There are other things, like how my husband has become a huge fan. (He doesn’t know the author.) If there is any part of you…
Way back in the spring, I went to a writing conference and didn’t tell. I wrote some notes for you, typed them up, and then got too busy with reviews and other things to share what it was like. North Carolina has a good writing network. I mean, there might be better, but there is…
Well, well, well… I have been out of town. On and off for a few weeks. So I missed my post for what to read in July, skipped right over the Fourth of July altogether. But I am still going to give it to you and maybe you can use it next year. Actually, I…
I think The States by Norah Woodsey is a good idea: a very light sci-fi approach to Jane Austen’s Persuasion featuring lucid dreaming, Ireland, and a filthy rich Manhattan family. Great. (I mean, I could do without the New York City or rich people bits, but for this they work as the Elliots.) The plot…
At the start of Empty Theatre by Jac Jemc, you are given the fuzzy demise of two royal cousins in the very late 1800s. Then you quickly pull way back and, over several chapters, both the main characters are born and placed in their shared world of wealth, power, rules, restrictions, expectations, intermarriage, prestige, excess,…
It was just a normal day and I was just driving my ’17 Forester (named Smokey) along the Triangle freeways and highways when the latest episode of The Writer Files came up on my podcast player. I was like okay, that sounds good, and Kelton Reid started telling me (in his deep, dulcet, and mellow…
Trust by Hernan Diaz took home the Pulitzer Prize, landing it on my TBR. And with all the mystery behind its structure? It’s a “literary puzzle?” Cool. But it was the subject matter that killed it for me: Wallstreet and finance in New York City in the 1920s-1940s or something. But also the characters and…
It’s summer! Or it will be this month. Some of you have already moved into summer schedules and others are soon to follow. I have a week left of driving my son to school, but I am beginning summer read #1 tomorrow (finishing up another book today). Personally, I like my summer reads to be…
I can’t help but wonder if what I didn’t enjoy in Jessica Anya Blau’s Mary Jane was just me being defensive. I mean, my book club mostly found it readable, believable, and open and fair to both families presented in it. Meanwhile, I came ready to say that it was yes, readable, but not believable…
Thank goodness I have finally returned to reading decent books. That’s not great books. But it’s an improvement over bad books. Which means, yes, I thought that Small Great Things by Jodi Picoult was a decent book. Not a great book. And thankfully not a bad book. It’s definitely a book club kind of book,…
A Good Man Is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Connor is bleak and difficult stuff. I was just drooling over it for its clarity, cleanness, style, innovation and trend-setting… but was dying inside due to its content. Satirical down to the word, nothing and no one in the world of the South in the early…
the starving artist 