The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
“Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord, he is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath have stored…” Were you oblivious like me that these were the words in the first line of the Battle Hymn of the Republic? I’m not sure if these are the same grapes Steinbeck is referring to, but there is enough wrath in the world to go around, whether it’s the wrath of the Union army during the Civil War or the wrath […]
Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
This historic drama has all the elements I love about a book – great characters and a compelling story that we follow through several generations of the same family, from Korea to Japan and beyond. In the background of Pachinko is Japan’s occupation of Korea and the experience of Koreans in Japan before, during, and after this occupation. We begin in the 1880s in Korea. Hoonie is the son of parents who run a boardinghouse for fisherman. Their lives are meager, but stable. Hoonie eventually […]
City of Nightmares by Rebecca Schaeffer
I have to admit, this book gave me at least one nightmare. It wasn’t the worst I’d ever had, but it involved dead puppies, so it was pretty bad. It’s not that I found the book to be scary, per se, but the premise is a great one for a horror movie: For reasons unknown, if people have a nightmare, they will wake up and become their nightmare. This could mean a variety of things. Some people just disappear, so no one really knows what […]
Upgrade by Blake Crouch
GENE EDITING IS A FEDERAL CRIME #GPA ONE MISTAKE CAUSED THE GREAT STARVATION #GPA #NEVERFORGET These are billboards you would pass if you lived in Denver Colorado in the far enough future that gene editing technology is much further advanced, but not so far that hashtags aren’t still a thing. The benefits to this technology include clothes made with spider silk and improvements in medicine and agriculture. But there is also a darker side, where dolls can be wrapped in human muscle and skin and […]
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
This is a book that I feel like I should have read years ago, but somehow I missed that lesson in school. It’s one of those books that is referenced a lot in pop culture so I felt it was time for me to familiarize myself with the source material. It’s funny, after the first page, I thought, “I like this guy! He’s entertaining to listen to.” That lasted maybe…10 pages? If that? I gotta tell you, Holden Caulfield got old REAL fast. I realized […]
The Taking of Jake Livingston by Ryan Douglass
There is nothing in this book that I relate to. I am not a 16-year old, gay, black, male. And I definitely don’t see ghosts or ghouls. But Jake is and does. And as extraordinary as he is, he still deals with all the other ordinary things a teenager deals with. So Jake’s life is…complicated…to say the least. Jake’s ordinary life concerns living in the shadow of his big brother, growing apart from friends, and getting to know the cute new student at his school […]
