I just need to get this out of the way first. I know the author of this book (her real name is not Maggie Preston). She works with me, and I really like her. We were out at happy hour one night, and she was like “oh yeah, I wrote a book.” So, being the Amazonwhore that I am, I immediately bought it. Like from my phone at the table. It’s only $4 for the Kindle edition (it looks like it’s only on Kindle). I’m […]
Gillian Flynn is the M Night Shyamalan of Literature
Because boy does she love her plot twists, and throwing plot twists in the middle of her plot twists. I probably would have enjoyed this book more when it came out, or before I had read any of Flynn’s other stories. Or before Gone Girl, and anyone who hadn’t read her books could remain ignorant of this reputation. But I have read some of her other stories, and I know all about her love of plot twists. I wasn’t really on the lookout for the […]
You Know What They Say About Unhappy Families
It’s not every debut novelist that can turn out a book that’s so masterful, so haunting, and so beautiful as Everything I Never Told You is. There’s a very good reason Amazon named it the best book of 2014. In fiction, I don’t always gravitate towards these kinds of books. It’s more of a cerebral, slow-burn of a novel. There’s not a lot of action that takes place over the few hundred pages, no big bombshells dropped that leave you gasping and turning furiously to the […]
Fun story. But fire the editor, please.
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 […]
Nada, a.k.a What Happens when A Family Lives Too Long Together Under One Roof
One of my reading goals for this year is to read one book written in Spanish by an Iberian-American author, for every book I read in English. I’ve been pretty bad at keeping up with reading in Spanish and I figure why not start something new? So where to start? I decided to start with a list of award winners from several of Spain’s publishing firms. I figure why not start with the best? Well due to the limitations of my library system, the newest […]
Better than expected
I’ve read, and didn’t particularly like, The Jane Austen Book Club, so I wasn’t especially interested in reading another book by Karen Joy Fowler. However, what happens so often these days occurred again: I saw a number of positive reviews of We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves (2014) on Cannonball Read, and they convinced me that I should give it a try. The story revolves around Rosemary Cook, a rather aimless college student at UC Davis with little to no friends. We know almost immediately […]
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