Posts Published by Claire

Zone One

Reader beware: Zone One gave me zombie nightmares. Admittedly, I am perhaps more sensitive than the average person, and this susceptibility was intensified by concurrent watching of “The Wire,” but it in no small part…

Read More

The Psychopath Test

“This is a story about madness.” So begins the delightful insanity of The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson. Ronson, a self-proclaimed sufferer of severe anxiety, admits that he is an odd choice for a renegade…

Read More

Claire’s Top Ten of 2011

While I study top ten lists somewhat obsessively, I haven’t defined the qualities necessary for a book to make my own “top” list. What follows are the first ten books I thought of when I…

Read More

Friday Night Lights

I bawled my eyes out for the entirety of the “Friday Night Lights” television series finale (and, to be honest, several preceding episodes), so I had been looking forward to reading the book by the…

Read More

Wonderstruck

If you don't like gushing, stop reading this right now and start reading Wonderstruck. If you don't mind gushing, read this first, then start reading Wonderstruck. Wonderstruck is the follow-up to Brian Selznick's Caldecott Medal-winning…

Read More

Kindred

Time travel rivals zombies for popularity these days, so I had to keep reminding myself that Kindred was written in 1979. While Octavia Butler does not include traditional zombies in this historical-fiction-meets-memoir-meets-science-fiction novel, she does…

Read More