Dusty Highway – Page 4 – Cannonball Read 17

Sometimes you can do everything right and things will still go wrong

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

February 3, 2019 by Dusty Highway Leave a Comment

This won’t be a long review. I don’t have anything substantive to add to what’s already been written and said about Angie Thomas’s The Hate U Give, and I’m not sure it’s appropriate for me to say anything at all. As a middle-aged, middle-class white guy from the very white Deep Midwest, I’m several degrees of separation from this book’s intended audience, but that’s exactly why it’s an important read for people like me. Starr lives in a rough neighborhood where everyone knows her because […]

He kisses . . . like someone who has just learned a foreign language and can only use the present tense and only the second person. Only now, only you.

Less by Andrew Sean Greer

January 29, 2019 by Dusty Highway 2 Comments

The Pulitzer Prize for fiction tends to be more miss than hit for me, especially in the last several years, so when I heard the announcement last spring about Andrew Sean Greer’s Less, I didn’t pay much attention. I didn’t know the author by name, hadn’t heard anything about the book, and figured I could safely skip this one. But then I read a brief synopsis: gay novelist in his 40’s, heartbroken and struggling with his work, runs away and something-something-I-don’t-remember because I stopped reading […]

The unbearable like-likeness of the so-so book review

My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite

January 26, 2019 by Dusty Highway Leave a Comment

I used to be much more impulsive about buying books. I kept a short wishlist mostly just bought by mood and feel and sometimes even by cover art. I’d browse through my favorite authors for something I didn’t already have, look through the new and sale racks, and I ended up with a lot of great reading . . . and a fair amount of not-so-great, but I’ve learned I can’t be pleasantly surprised without taking any risks. I also ended up with a too-homogeneous […]

I’ve read this story before, and so have you (but it’s still pretty great)

Normal People by Sally Rooney

January 22, 2019 by Dusty Highway 3 Comments

For years, being a (now recovering) literary fiction snob with a preference for British Commonwealth authors, I’ve followed the Man Booker Prize long- and shortlists as a way to find new books, and since I still need a regular fix of literary fiction even as I explore new genres, I’ve started to look to other prizes to expand my library. With Sally Rooney’s Normal People appearing on the Booker longlist and winning the Costa Novel Award, it was an obvious choice, especially as I continue […]

I taught you better than to open doors you can’t close

An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon

January 20, 2019 by Dusty Highway 2 Comments

Rivers Solomon’s An Unkindness of Ghosts is yet another great example of the kind of book I would have missed had I not started reading more speculative fiction and diversifying the voices in my library. That would have been a pity, because this complex, powerful novel may very well end up at the top of my 2019 favorites list. After Earth suffered an unnamed cataclysm 300 years ago, the remnants of humanity were crowded onto the spaceship Matilda and launched toward some long-forgotten destination. Humanity […]

She thought that maybe, just maybe, if she was beautiful, things would get better

The House of Impossible Beauties by Joseph Cassara

January 16, 2019 by Dusty Highway Leave a Comment

I’d heard for years that I should watch Paris is Burning, the groundbreaking documentary about the New York’s drag ball scene in the 1980’s, but I never quite got around to it for one reason or another. It wasn’t until a few years ago, when a friend told me just how much that movie influenced Rupaul’s Drag Race, that I finally forced myself to sit down and watch it. Needless to say, it’s brilliant and unforgettable, and shame on me for not watching it sooner. […]

Zirza on A Gothic Classic for a ReasonIt's one of those wish-you-could-read-it-again-for-the-first-time books. I loved it.
Emmalita on “It came to something when you found yourself hoping that the footsteps you heard were ghosts.”I loved the ending! I don’t think it’s been out long enough to talk about why though.
Dixie on Track Her Down by Melinda LeighI am just starting Track Her Down and I have read them all in order till now and thought I...
Roland of Gilead on How can you give us the gift of a crazy character named Rando Thoughtful and then just as suddenly take that gift away? We need to talk, Uncle Stevie.I came across this randomly years after it was written because I was searching "Random Thoughtful. But I have the...
Emmalita on “Only you, Em, would refer to heartbreak as a distraction. I think I would have a more sympathetic response if I asked to marry a bookcase.”Oh my goodness, Gallifrey was beautiful. I’m sure her mittens were gloriously murdery.

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