One sometimes needs a palate cleanser. If that one is me, that is almost always a Romance novel. I am one of the millions of people who read, enjoy, and think about the genre, its tropes, and look forward to the reliability of a happy ending. (With the exception of a few descriptors I am an amazingly average Romance reader.) The world around us is falling apart quicker than we can patch the cracks. Sometimes we need to refuel with a guarantee. I finished this […]
“Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.”
I think I keep doing Book Riot’s Read Harder challenges because they do force me to look through my epic list of books to read and get out of my own comfort zone and read with more variety. I have many startling gaps in my reading history, and Virginia Woolf’s entire oeuvre is one. I have seen or read exactly one of Woolf’s works before reading A Room of One’s Own (Orlando at the Yale School of Drama about 8 years ago while a friend […]
Banned Book Week Selection: Are you kidding me this was the most challenged book of 2016? Has everyone lost their minds?
Each year, I try to read a frequently challenged or banned book during Banned Books Week (September 24-30). I have very particular feelings about the concept of banning or suppressing works of fiction because they do not fit into a particular worldview (I’m staunchly against it). Do I think every book should have an audience and be read? Probably not. However, I do believe in our ability to choose for ourselves what we should read, and that banning or challenging books which only serve to […]
A Gamache Cannonball
It turns out that this year’s Cannonball book is an Inspector Gamache book, and that seems oddly fitting. I have chosen to spread out the Inspector Armand Gamache books instead of mainlining them. I read them in the seasons they are set, and it always proves to be something to look forward to. Following the disappointment of In Praise of Hatred I needed a comfort read, and Gamache is that for me. Luckily enough, autumn in northern Quebec is now, so we were all set. […]
Allowing Humanity and Complexity to Coexist
I have read many reviews of Roxane Gay’s Bad Feminist over the past few years, and I still don’t know if I really understood what I was getting myself into. But that isn’t a bad thing. At its core, this is a book about Gay coming into herself, and owning exactly who she is, without reservation. She walks the reader through her outlook, her struggles as a woman in the world to live up to being a feminist, or not wanting to be associated with […]
Such a Disappointment
In Praise of Hatred by Khaled Khalifa
One of the rewards of being the book club maven is that I have to be on the lookout for books outside of my comfort zone. In my bio (which you can see just down there) I describe myself as someone who reads everything, just some types of books more frequently than others. That applies to proper Literary Fiction as well. More often than not, I’m rolling around in the genres. However, I try to give the people what they want and there were several […]
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