During this last post-election month, I feel like my emotions are out of control and too close to the surface. Case in point, I was doing a first listen of my copy of the Hamilton Mix-Tape the other morning while making breakfast and basically was misty eyed during the whole first half. Songs about immigrants and rising up and writing your way out of bad circumstances hit close to home (and I’m a middle-aged white lady so I can only imagine how this CD resonates […]
A Book that Made Me Feel Old (or the kitchen in LeeAnn Chin’s was never like this)
Again, I picked up a book based on hearing the author talk about it on Fresh Air. Though there is some beautiful writing in Stephanie Danler’s debut novel and the topic is intriguing, I found myself never quite connecting with Tess, the young woman who narrates this coming-of-age story. In hindsight, this might be what Danler was after because Tess kind of drifts through much of her life until she washes ashore, all pretty and naïve, at a popular New York City restaurant and gets […]
A Book that I’m Pretty Sure Isn’t on Donald Trump’s Nightstand
I came into this novel expecting a lot. I had heard Colson Whitehead talking about it on Fresh Air and I had read reviews of it as well. I had high expectations but also was dreading it a bit since much like watching 12 Years a Slave, it’s hard to know what to say or do in the face of such inhumanity masquerading as “natural” and “necessary.” Still, I think this is an important novel to read and “not be able to digest” because I […]
Lake Holly Could Be My Town
Through NetGalley, I got an ARC of the third mystery novel featuring Jimmy Vega, a New York homicide detective. However, I decided to track down the debut story and that’s what led me to the novel, Land of Careful Shadows. Like most mysteries, this story starts when a body is found. The body of a young Latina woman is found by the river in Lake Holly, about 50 miles north of New York City. Jimmy Vega, a detective from the county is sent to help, […]
The Last Thing That Pandora Found
As post-apocalyptic zombie-infested horror novels go, I thought this was a well-crafted and well-paced read that both made me tense and made me sad. There are faint echoes of The Passage here with a young girl with a foot in both worlds (human and not human) though, unless I missed it, this particular zombie plague was not brought about by scientific hubris (though there is a lot of scientific hubris in this story). We are introduced to Melanie, a young girl with pale skin, who […]
American Dreams and Dreamers
I didn’t mean to read two memoirs in a row but NetGalley got my attention with this one too—about an undocumented woman who ends up earning six figures on Wall Street. [I’m not giving anything away. All that information is in the subtitle, “My True Story as an Undocumented Immigrant Who Became a Wall Street Executive”]. Working at a community college and living in town that is about 70% Latino, I am very aware of the issues that undocumented folks, especially students, face and I […]
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