Otherwise Elsewhere. . . The title is like reading an implied question. Filled with unwavering eyes, the cover art is abstract enough that you want to open it, if only because it feels like you…
Posts Published by Melissa Slachetka
Cringe-Worthy Fun
The Idiot Girl and the Flaming Tantrum of Death is absurd and hilarious. This is the kind of book you will want to read aloud to a friend while giggling spontaneously and ultimately loosing the…
Elements in Combat
Repetition, alliteration, personification, and a certain amount of attention deficit disorder flow through Steve Healey's newest book of poems 10 Mississippi. And like the uncertain river that flows through our Twin Cities, Healey's poems don't…
A Good Slice of Home Life
Some books of short stories are held together by a theme, but John Jodzio’s new book, If You Lived Here You'd Already Be Home, is held together by style. Darkly humorous and filled with unsettling…
A journey into the past
The Surrendered by Chang-Rae Lee is a novel of epic proportions. The book is set in the present tense, but very much of it takes place through remembering life during war. June and Hector are…
The Color Violet
Romantic chick-lit crossed with Japanese illustrated Manga is a fusion too good to pass up. Like exotic bubble tea that keeps popping up in local tea shops, you just have to try it, whether or…
Racing and Reincarnation
It seems like a recipe for failure to have your storyline told by a family pet, expound on the sport of racecar driving, and top it off with the idea of reincarnation. The fact that…
Sometimes it is the Destination
Off We Go into the Wild Blue Yonder is a new novel by Travis Nichols, with the title taken from a popular World War II bomber song. The story is told through a group of…
Girls Who Rock
Laurie Lindeen (who answered MN Reads 6 questions last year) sets us up for a solid rock-n-roll road-trip in Petal Pusher: A Rock and Roll Cinderella Story. With its sassy pink cover, this memoir will…
The weight on her shoulders
Bonnie Rough expertly straddles the fine line of too much information in her new book Carrier, Untangling the Danger in my DNA. Reality and memoir fill in the pieces to Rough's past as she writes…
All Sauced Up
Dreams of Sex and Stage Diving is the best Martin Millar book since Good Fairies of New York. It is uncouth, dirty, and a lot of fun. Millar taps into confused youths brave denial of…
Genocide and tears
Shocking and powerful: Mornings in Jenin by Susan Abulhawa is a history of heartache that will turn on the water-works. It is an intimate portrait of true loves' deep scars and generations of families that…