Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk
It was the Fall of 1999 and I was a junior in high school. I’d stayed after school for some reason, was waiting to get picked up by my mom, and was sitting outside on the concourse in front of the school cafeteria – probably reading a book – when a student walked up to me. I didn’t know the guy, but he started talking about a movie that just came out called “Fight Club”. He said it was amazing, and proceeded to describe the […]
Persuasion by Jane Austin
At the risk of sounding melodramatic, there is a feeling that I love, but don’t get to experience that often. It’s a kind of melancholic beauty, piercing in its intensity, with a haunted mien and nebulous structure that can be hard to pin down. It is the beauty of autumn rain, dark chocolate, and sad songs. The beauty of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, and Peter Heller’s The Dog Stars. The beauty of Joy Williams singing “Don’t Let Me Down”. The beauty of unrequited love, and […]
Truth of the Divine by Lindsey Ellis
For what was perhaps the first time in my life, I read a book with a trigger warning that I actually benefited from. I didn’t know, at the time, that I was going to be grateful for the warning, but it helped prepare me for the in-depth exploration of trauma and mental illness that followed. So this review, too, has a trigger warning. Self-harm and suicidal ideation feature prominently in this review, because they both feature prominently in the novel. Through some gift of fortune […]
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
I don’t consider myself particularly well-read. I’ve never read Faulkner. Only read The Great Gatsby last year (or the year before, I don’t remember). I’ve read Hemingway once, and didn’t particularly like The Old Man and the Sea. I’ve never read Austen, or Waugh, or Virginia Woolf, or Pynchon, or countless other important literary figures. But I’ve long flirted with the idea of being comfortable with books enjoyed by well-educated people with posh British accents who casually insert French into everyday conversation. (For the record, […]
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
John Steinbeck grew up in the first decade of the 20th century on some of the most fertile soil in the world, and as a teenager he spent his summers working on nearby ranches. More than 20 years later, he used these experiences to inform the story that would become this novella. Of Mice and Men is about two migrant workers, George Milton and Lennie Small, fleeing one farm and looking for work at another. Lennie is large, strong, and mentally disabled and George is […]
Hidden Figures: Young Readers' Edition by Margot Lee Shetterly
I’ve been struggling all summer to find a book to read with my 8 year old. He’s a smart kid, but he’s not really all that interested in the things I remember being into as a kid. I keep trying books I grew up on, and he’s not really been interested in any of them. That may be a maturity thing, though. I didn’t really get into reading until I was in middle school. But he loves math. At the end of last year, he […]
