I have a bone to pick with Jane Young/Aviva Grossman. In 1999, you could not just flop down on the bed of your dorm room with your laptop (which would have had to been plugged…
Browsing Category Fiction
Well, That Was Offensive
I’m not sure why so many people who read Mona Awad’s collection of linked short stories, 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl, found it so funny. What was hilarious? The way the main…
Eleanor Oliphant is Okay at Best, Annoying at Worst
One thing to know before you crack into Gail Honeyman’s novel Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine is that it’s very voicey. You are immediately and wholly ensconced in Eleanor’s world and her voice drives and…
Three Quickie Reviews
Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi One of my weaknesses as a reader, and as a human, is that I’m not too keen on history. I don’t like to read about olden times. If a book takes…
Ballad of the Sad Middle-Aged Man
There are times when there’s a comfort to cliched material. It’s pleasantly familiar, devoid of the unexpected – like a favorite meal or well-worn sweatshirt, it holds only satisfaction, not surprise. One Last Thing Before…
Feeling Wisconsin
Recently, a friend pointed out on Twitter that a book he was reading would drive me bonkers because it touched upon very many of my literary pet peeves. “Dick Lit to the extreme. Selfish, sad-sack,…
How I Spent My Winter (in words)
Ill Will by Dan Chaon Insomnia isn’t my thing, but on the one night I woke during the witching hour and couldn’t fall back asleep, I magically had this weirdo mess of creepiness to keep…
The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley
There’s something of an old west feeling about Hannah Tinti’s novel, The Twelve Live of Samuel Hawley even though it a lot of the book takes place in the here and now. There’s no time…
My Favorite Novel of 2017 (So Far)
So far this year I’ve finished reading nineteen books, eighteen of them have been novels. I know we’re not even six months into 2017 and there’s still a lot of reading ahead of me. But…
Everything You Want Me to Be
The first thing I will tell you about Mindy Mejia’s mystery Everything You Want Me to Be is that when the big reveal comes, when whodunnit is revealed, I gasped because I did not see…
