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Decade of Decay: The Lola Quartet by Emily St. John Mandel
If it’s true that your twenties are the “Defining Decade” – the crucial, formative years that determine how the rest of your life will go – then the troubled young adults in Emily St. John Mandel’s...
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A Thread of Sadness: The Untelling by Tayari Jones (AUDIO)
In The Untelling, an emotional roller coaster of a second novel by Tayari Jones, author of the critically acclaimed novel Silver Sparrow (Algonquin, 2011), only Aria Jackson’s prickly mother calls her...
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What It Means to Be Real: Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend by Matthew Dicks
Written from a clever point of view that it took only about fifteen minutes of listening to Matthew Brown’s reading for me to warm up to, Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend by Matthew Dicks is narrated by...
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Blog Tour: Heaven Should Fall by Rebecca Coleman
Heaven Should Fall, the second novel by Rebecca Coleman, author of The Kingdom of Childhood, opens with the striking scene of a young wife coming out to the shed behind the house to call her handsome...
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Art Geeks and Gardner Freaks: The Art Forger by B.A. Shapiro
With its intriguingly tangled plot and multiple timelines, The Art Forger by B.A. Shapiro is an entertaining peek into a fictionalized Boston art world – contemporary artists, dealers, and collectors –...
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Image and Identity: Look at Me by Jennifer Egan (Audio)
Everyone who liked Jennifer Egan‘s A Visit from the Goon Squad will probably like Look at Me, a novel published in 2001. Even if you weren’t crazy about A Visit from the Goon Squad because of all the...
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Surviving the Worst Fear of Parents: The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving...
The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving by Jonathan Evison, narrated by Jeff Woodman, will definitely go on my list of Best Audiobooks of 2012. It is a wonderful novel, narrated in an award-worthy...
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7 Audiobooks for Winter Holiday Reading
Looking for audiobooks to listen to while you wrap gifts, bake cookies, or drive around to stores for last-minute shopping? You could always go with Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol (I like the...
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Family Dysfunction, Maine Style: The Burgess Boys by Elizabeth Strout
Elizabeth’s Strout‘s fourth novel, The Burgess Boys, with its Maine setting and its themes of trust, home, and family, is as impressive and thought-provoking as her Pulitzer Prize-winning Olive...
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Ready Reader One: Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan
I’ve kept Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore, a first novel by Robin Sloan checked out from the library way too long (without breaking library rules, of course) and need to return it today without fail....
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New Parents in a Rut: The Sunshine When She’s Gone by Thea Goodman
Having a baby has divided the lives of John and Veronica into before and after in The Sunshine When She’s Gone, a first novel by short story writer Thea Goodman. Six months after the difficult birth,...
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One Year After a Death: The World Without You by Joshua Henkin
The World Without You by Joshua Henkin covers the territory of a wonderfully sprawling family saga while taking place over just one Fourth of July long weekend in 2005. It is an intensely emotional...
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2013 PEN Hemingway & PEN New England Awards Ceremony at JFK Library
PEN Hemingway & PEN New England Award winning books on display at the JFK Library, March 24, 2013. On Sunday, March 24, the annual ceremony to award the PEN Hemingway and PEN New England Awards was...
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Aging with Dignity However Old You Are: Life After Life by Jill McCorkle
Life After Life is Jill McCorkle‘s sixth novel, and her first in 17 years. It’s a story of interwoven lives centered around the Pine Haven retirement home in a fictional small North Carolina town that...
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Lives of the Gifted and Talented: The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer
I loved The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer. Jeffrey Eugenides, the author of The Marriage Plot, also loved it (see the blurb on the front cover) and reviewers love it, too, but I loved it in a special,...
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The #winditup2013 Read-Along Update: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (Book One)
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (Book One) By Haruki Murakami Translated from the Japanese by Jay Rubin Knopf, 1997 #Winditup2013 Readalong hosted by Ti at Book Chatter Enjoying the #Winditup2013 Readalong...
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Remembering a Life: I Married You for Happiness by Lily Tuck (Audio)
I listened to I Married You for Happiness by Lily Tuck all at once, in a big gulp, and went back later to listen to some of it again, more carefully. It’s a brand-new widow’s reverie, a retrospective...
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About a Writer: A Work in Progress by Brad Cotton @BradCott0n
If Toronto author Brad Cotton becomes a famous writer, I’ll be able to say I read his debut novel, A Work in Progress, before he hit it big. If not, I can still say A Work in Progress is a humorous...
View ArticleThe #winditup2013 Read-Along Update: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (Book Two)
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (Book Two) By Haruki Murakami Translated from the Japanese by Jay Rubin Knopf, 1997 #Winditup2013 Readalong hosted by Ti at Book Chatter I’ve been [...]
View ArticleLearning a Family’s Language: Lessons in French by Hilary Reyl
Lessons in French is Hilary Reyl‘s first novel, but it shows the fluency of long practice and careful editing. Lessons in French was sold to me (figuratively speaking) by a publicist with these words:
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