This was a kind of a placeholder for me. I’m not allowing myself to reread American Gods again, because I reread it less than a year ago, and I love it too much, and the TV series is coming, and it’s my favorite kind of book, so I had to find a proxy, and this looked super interesting. And it was good, but not amazing (nothing is American Gods, goddamnit!). I think the hardest for me was that Ike is no hero, antihero, complicated scamp, […]
She had already learned the dangers of sincerity.
Faithful followers of my must-read, brilliantly executed, and always punctual reviews will know that I only recently discovered Roxane Gay last year, with Bad Feminist. And you will know that based on reading only that collection of essays, I will follow her to the ends of the earth, shout her name from the rooftops, aspire to be as articulate, hilarious, and honest as she, and never be dissuaded from my undying love for her. Difficult Women is haunting and beautiful. I was nervous. My expectations […]
Her life was no more than a ghostly pageant of exhausted endurance
In spite of this having been on a number of “best of 2016” lists, I walked into this book completely blind, and was fully shocked, disturbed, and yet driven by it. It’s a really tough read, not just psychologically, but because it’s brutally graphic in a way that doesn’t exactly require a warning, but is unusual for a Western reader used to a vaseline’d lens covering sex and violence. I really loved this, and it continues to haunt me a little bit. I can’t imagine […]
“I fear I may be forced to declare ‘shenanigans’!”
This is funny, guys! And well-written! (At least to me it is.) We have R. F. Jackaby, an American Sherlock type who can see things that others can’t. Not just notice things others don’t, but things others physically cannot comprehend. There’s magic here, and Jackaby has a gift. And just like Sherlock, a lot of people thing Jackaby is crazy. Or on drugs. “All the world’s a stage, as they say, and I seem to have the only seat in the house with view behind […]
The Bear and the Nightingale – a Russian fairytale
One of my favorite booksellers raved about “The Bear and the Nightingale” and chose it to be the featured for the month of January at my local independent bookstore. The high praise moved it up on my TBR pile. At the time of reading I was thoroughly captivated by this charming Russian fairytale but now that two weeks have passed and I’m sitting down to review, I find there isn’t much to say. The Bear and the Nightingale feels like a reimagining of an old […]
Jodi Picoult’s racism book . . . I have thoughts.
I’ve decided not to rate this book because my thoughts are so conflicted about it, but I do want to say some things. This is a book about a black nurse being prohibited from treating the newborn son of a white supremacist, and when the baby dies, he accuses her of murdering his son. I’ve never read a Jodi Picoult book before, because her books have always seemed like they were Issue Books, designed to be manipulative in a way that emphasizes the subject matter […]
- « Previous Page
- 1
- …
- 283
- 284
- 285
- 286
- 287
- …
- 434
- Next Page »