1Q84 by Haruki Murakami
I have a disclaimer in my CBR7 Review #8 that most of my books are in storage. Husband bought me 1Q84 and although it is a brick, I couldn’t put it in storage since it was a gift. I figured Cannonball was great motivation to tackle this beast of a book. Then I see on Amazon you can buy it as three books. Not only is it quite beautiful, you should buy it this way to get the bang for 3 books. And as one […]
Sweet Salt Air by Barbara Delinsky
Disclaimer: Most of my books are in storage. My husband and I are renovating our house in Washington DC and except for tools and two bicycles, we have an empty first floor. So, when I finished my last two books, I realize “I need to buy something for Cannonball!” And I was at Rite Aid waiting to pick up a prescription. I looked at the books and I knew Sweet Salt Air would be the kind of book I would hate to admit that I […]
California by Edan Lepucki
After loving Station Eleven, I wanted to roll the dice on another post-apocalyptic kind of book. This was a great book. It was a little more haunting to read because, unlike S11, the world known by the characters gradually fades away into a memory. Electricity gets too expensive. Gas gets too expensive. Mobile phones become “The Device,” as antiquated as a shoe form. People with money congregate into armed and protected enclaves called “Communities” and, like exclusive law firms, let in only the elite, those […]
The Worst Years of Your Life by Mark Jude Poirier
The back of this book tells you this collection of short stories is “delightful and terrifying” which immediately drew me in, because I can’t think of two better words that together, conjure up adolescence. In his introduction, the editor Poirier states the stories stem “from nostalgia for the intense and sometimes confusing emotions that we all experienced at this time in our lives.” The cover of the book has a drawing of a frog, belly side up, ready for dissection. This gave me an overwhelming […]
Number9Dream by David Mitchell
Eiji Miyaki is a young man in search of his father. In a modern, Japanese, coming-of-age tale, he doesn’t meet his father but if his goal in meeting him was to learn something about himself, well that happens in spades. Eiji’s father is fiercely protective of his paternity and keeps a watchdog lawyer and assorted Yakuza goons to keep Eiji from meeting him. The story meanders through derailments on Eiji’s journey. When Eiji hits a roadblock, or is planning a next step, he frequently diverts into […]
The Bird Artist by Howard Norman
I bought this book based on a recommendation at a local independent book store while in pursuit of a local author (Washington DC). Only in reviewing it do I realize it’s the first book in a trilogy, an allergy recently developed from Annihilation. Why did I read another book in a trilogy? It’s not an overly fair complaint, since I eventually enjoyed the book quite a bit. (And that it had nothing to do with Washington DC, but I took the recommendation without even reading the […]
