This was the May pick of the Slow Food Chicago book club, one of the four (five?) book clubs that I am in. I sometimes lament that I have given away some choice in my reading to these clubs. Luckily this book was one I wouldn’t have picked up on my own, and I found it both interesting and inspiring. That is what I call a resounding success in the world of book clubs. This is a equal parts cookbook, historical text, and flavor bible. […]
Buckle up, Saunders is gonna blow your mind right out of your butt
I heard about this book on my beloved podcast, Literary Disco, as they gushed about Saunders, both in general as an acclaimed short form writer, and for this, his debut novel. It tells the real story of the tragic death of Abraham Lincoln’s young son Willie, but veers into the extraordinary as Willie is in a sort of limbo, surrounded by fantastical and verbose ghosts. He is visited by Lincoln in the graveyard, hence the title, and is struggling with whether to stay in this […]
Lawyering, fast and loose, like old times
Back in the day I devoured John Grisham books like candy. The “classics” I remember fondly, aka, The Firm, The Client, The Pelican Brief, The Runaway Jury, and, a departure from the thes, A Time to Kill. For no real discernible reason, it’s been about a decade (whoa) since I have picked one up and a quick pass over the “hot and new” section at my local library grabbed my attention as unsurprisingly, John is still at it. A few of my book clubs are […]
A hilarious and heartwarming book. J/k, it’s Margaret Atwood.
This is the May book club pick of my local library, and I was a little disappointed only because I wasn’t looking forward to rereading it. I am a huuuuuge Atwood fan and was hoping to dig into something new. Well, the joke is on me because I realized that I had somehow conflated this book with Anita Diamant’s “The Red Tent” and I had somehow never read it. For shame. And how appropriate to kick off a review of “The Handmaid’s Tale” with a […]
Or just read “Girl on the Train” instead
I was a little late to the game on Flynn’s “Gone Girl,” but like many, I’m a huuuuge fan. I enjoy a good psychological thriller and was excited to dive in to this one. Luckily, a pal of mine said that in her opinion, this was her least favorite of Flynn’s books. This tempered my expectations and I am glad it did because I did not love this book. This is a story of rural America in the 1980s, a failing farm, a slain family, […]
Summertiiiiiiiime and the living is drearyyyyyy (for women)
I am a fan of Edith Wharton. I enjoyed Age of Innocence, Ethan Frome, and House of Mirth. Her writing is straightforward and is a time capsule of the turn of the century. She paints stark and vivid stories centering on women and the ways that they are boxed in by the circumstances of the time. Though she often focuses on the tiresome lives of the wealthy, Summer follows Charity, an orphan of mountain people, who is living her life of few opportunities in a […]
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