A.J. Finn’s The Woman in the Window is one of the most buzzed up books of 2018. It’s been on every “most-anticipated” list I read and has blurbs from Stephen King, Gillian Flynn, and Ruth…
All Joan, All the Time
I’ve read a lot of Joan Didion in my life, but sometime in November after seeing her nephew’s documentary about her, “The Center Will Not Hold”, I decided to read her again from start to…
I Can’t Breathe: A Killing on Bay Street
Eric Garner was a drug dealer. He had a temper and once beat a man for getting close to his wife. He was in and out of jail, abandoning his wife and kids. Eric Garner…
Get ‘Mean’
Myriam Gurba’s memoir Mean opens with the chase-torture-rape-death of Sophia Torres, a young woman described by some media as “transient.” Gurba and Torres are linked by more than a shared culture: Torres was raped by the…
An Ending So Nice, I Read it Twice
Back before I wrote a book myself, I used to be kind of an asshole when it came to endings. And by kind of, I mean a total, complete asshole. I’d often let a shitty…
I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter
When my sisters and I were younger mom used to wonder, aloud, if we’d ever get along. She would get really upset when we would say “I hate you” or “I hate her” to and…
Four Books Reviewed in 100 Words or Less
The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas This is one of those books that gives you an uneasy feeling of dread as you read it because you’re absolutely convinced something terrible is going to happen…
The Best Kind of People
The Best Kind of People by Zoe Whittall is a very timely book. What does a family go through when a loved one is accused of sexual assault? Science teacher George Woodbury is the prep…
Love and Other Consolation Prizes
Told between shifting storylines in the early 1900s and 1962, Love and Other Consolation Prizes by Jamie Ford follows Ernest, a half-Chinese boy auctioned off at the 1909 World Fair in Seattle. Abandoned by his…
How I Spent My Summer Vacation
Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney Every year, in the thick of August, I stumble on a beautiful book that completely matches my mood. It happened again with Conversations with Friends, a perfect book that…
Bluebird, Bluebird
Bluebird, Bluebird by Attica Locke is set in Lark, a small town in East Texas, where black people steer clear of a bar crawling with the Aryan Brotherhood and take solace at Geneva’s, a small…
The Children Act
I like Ian McEwan’s particularly British way of handling drama. By that I mean he picks smoldering topics – forbidden lust, crime, unreciprocated yearning – and presents them in a cool, tempered way. The hot-bloodedness…