Have you ever read a book that turned out to be really different from what you expected? For me, Dept. of Speculation was one of those. Jenny Offill’s novel was obliquely described on its book…
Posts Published by Will A
A Little Less, Please
Some actors are best appreciated in small quantities; they’re great in supporting roles, but wear out their welcome when they’re center stage. For me, Amy Poehler is one of them. I picked up her semi-autobiography,…
‘Last Night’ Won’t Leave Your Nightstand
Generally, I like short stories. More than that, I like short stories that enter and exit character’s lives suddenly, and I could read and enjoy work that’s nothing but endless descriptions of people falling in,…
For Your Consideration: ‘Bad Feminist’ As Required Reading
I don’t read a lot of nonfiction. Bad Feminist made me think I need to change that. Roxane Gay’s collection of essays spans a wide array of topics, but the most relevant ones, I found,…
High Expectations Work Against ‘The Visionist’
Was it fair of me to expect more of Rachel Urquhart’s The Visionist? I don’t know, but I did, and my experience with it suffered, perhaps unfairly, because of that. Every contextual clue about this…
One More Thing
I almost gave up on One More Thing, the new collection of short stories from “The Office” actor B.J. Novak. I’m glad I didn’t. It was evident early on that Novak has a cerebral, witty…
Well, that was… something else
Once, a friend of mine was struggling to describe something. She said, “It’s like thinking you’re going to Paris and then getting off the plane in Havana – still nice, but not what you were…
‘Very Recent History’
Nothing much happens in Choire Sicha’s ‘Very Recent History’ Now, a walk that has no intended destination isn’t bad if the scenery is nice, but that isn’t the case here. There just isn’t really any…
How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia
I waited for How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia to get better, to grow past melodrama and conventional wisdom. It never did. Because of that, Mohsin Hamid’s novel seems like it has benefitted…
Far short of enthralling
In Kate Atkinson’s Started Early, Took My Dog:l, disparate characters wheel through their respective universes, gently tapping into each other from time to time. What they don’t do is ever coalesce into a satisfying story….
Birds of a Lesser Paradise
When Megan Mayhew Bergman’s Birds of a Lesser Paradise is good, it’s very good. When it’s so-so, a bland and calculated sense of formula creeps into the equation. Luckily, that doesn’t happen enough to be…