Iowa – Cannonball Read 17

A half-baked Taylor Swift fanfiction

Famous (A Famous novel, Book 1) by Jenny Holiday

August 5, 2025 by carmelpie Leave a Comment

Bingo square: Arts The MMC is an art professor and a painter. The FMC is a musician. Evan Winslow is an art professor at a liberal arts college in Dane, Iowa. After his father is exposed as an art fraud just as Evan was starting out as a painter, Evan fights to regain a scrap of respectability in the art world. He is a talented painter, but does not paint as he fears inviting comparisons between his father’s shady business and his own art. Despite […]

Marketed as a thriller, but it really isn’t

Don't Forget the Girl by Rebecca McKanna

September 23, 2024 by Ellesfena 4 Comments

The story: In the early aughts, Abby, Bree, and Chelsea were best friends and students at the University of Iowa. On Halloween night, they get in a fight, Abby runs off, and is never seen again. Her suspected killer is later arrested and convicted of another murder, but Abby’s death is never officially solved. Twelve years later, Bree and Chelsea have drifted apart but are brought back together as Abby’s suspected killer is soon to face the death penalty for his other crimes. The story […]

“There are new monsters now”

Universal Harvester by John Darnielle

January 20, 2019 by andtheIToldYouSos Leave a Comment

This novel sneaks up on you. You’re lulled into comfort with descriptions of old video rental places, suburban living rooms, and the polite peace of the Midwest before being startled awake by sudden glances of violence and fear. These shocks originate from movies. Movies within movies. Were they intended for you to see? Why are they here? Who spliced an almost still image of heavy breathing and a woman with a bag over her head into She’s All That? Uncertainty creeps around every corner- breeding fear, […]

Stunning photo project or exploitation?

June 19, 2017 by Blingle Bells Leave a Comment

The premise of The Oxford Project is simple, and I suspect it’s one that you’ll either get or really not get. In 1984, Peter Feldstein photographed every resident of Oxford, Iowa (I can’t recall if he ended up photographing every single resident, but if not it was extremely close). The photographs are simple and stark, with people rarely posing but just standing frankly in front of the camera. Sometimes they’re accompanied by a bicycle, a baby, a gun, a lion. In 2004, he went back […]

A book about the American character and the ties that bind

June 7, 2015 by Valyruh Leave a Comment

Thompson opened up an unfamiliar world for me inside my very own country, the world of the mid-West where change comes more slowly … but inexorably. Jean Thompson’s book reminded me a bit of Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections in that it offers a long view of a mid-western family’s trials and tribulations. And yet Thompson treats her characters with the poignancy and compassion that real, if flawed, people deserve, while Franzen’s characters were too often caricaturized and mocked for my taste. The Ericksons are a […]

Giving Rebirth is Not For the Weak

November 9, 2014 by ElCicco Leave a Comment

There are no harmless, compassionate ways to remake oneself. We murder who we were so we can rebirth ourselves in the images of dreams. Even 25 years after it was first published, the themes of this novel remain relevant: the immigrant experience of trying to assimilate into US culture and the particular experience of a young Hindu woman who chooses to defy traditional expectations and dares to remake herself. Violence, including murder, is a part not just of Jasmine’s personal story but of other women, […]

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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