If I stop reading a book it’s for one or two specific reasons: I’m not in the mood (for example, if my personal life is real heavy I don’t want to be reading Kafka or…
Posts Published by Amy Abts
Must You Go? My Life With Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter was one of my favorite playwrights. We studied his play “Betrayal” and I wondered what kind of person could write such realistic dialogue with strong, almost mighty, subtext. Actors loved his plays because…
The Time In Between
I was looking for a big juicy well-written novel to start out my 2012. This wasn’t it. My first impressions were hopeful: big, yes, at 609 pages. Juicy? Yes – female lead character who starts…
The Writer’s Wife
How do you go about writing a character as large as Ernest Hemingway? If you are Paula McLain, you write him as a romantic from the view of his first wife, Hadley. Well, at first…
The Top 10 Books Amy Read 2010
These are the books that left the most lasting impressions on me this year. In no particular order: 1. Just Kids by Patti Smith — Just beautiful. 2. Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green,…
No Chicken Soup for the Soul Here
This series is the dim sum of anthologies. Short stories, lists, magazine articles and snippets of graphic novels are chosen by two groups of high school students. Where did they get such good taste at…
Tutsi Picnic
The cover is ugly. The spine features Jonathan Franzen’s name in big block letters, dwarfing the title. I was already sick of the whole Franzen phenomena before I started reading. I barely remember The Corrections,…
Duluth’s Dark Side
Duluth is the perfect place to set a murder. You’ve got Lake Superior, extreme weather, fascinating history, more lakes, bridges, lots of rocks, tourism and poverty side by side, and big (sometimes tall) ships. Every…
Hypnotiser of Ladies
I first got interested in J.M Barrie’s involvement with the DuMaurier family after I learned Daphne DuMaurier’s (the famous novelist of Rebecca among others) cousins were the boys Peter Pan was based on. I got…
The Best Books Amy Read in 2009
My list is not that original, you may find many of these books on other best of lists for 2009, but hopefully that’s because they are good books. I’m behind the times with two of…
Cassette From My Ex edited by Jason Bitner
Cassette mix tapes are a generational thing. My parents didn’t make them, probably because they had those crappy 8-tracks. At least they had vinyl. I made tons of mix tapes for practically anyone I met….
The Lost Symbol
note: no spoilers! When philosopher Samuel Taylor coined the term “suspension of disbelief” he intended it to be about the writer rather than the reader. Today, and in this review, it is geared toward the…