Flamethrower by Maggie Estep
Can’t believe it’s been four years between me reading books 2 and 3 of this series. I greatly enjoyed the first two but I kept forgetting about finishing the series. When I did remember, I’d have to get it on an interlibrary loan and it would take the loan too long to get in and eventually I’d lose interest. But then I saw it at a used bookstore and huzzah! Let’s finish this one. And it’s sad because this is the book I always wanted […]
Horse by Geraldine Brooks
I didn’t realize I could or would enjoy a book about horse racing, but here we are! I’m a bit bummed I missed my library book club meeting about this book because it would be fascinating for a discussion. In 2019, a master’s student of art finds a painting of a horse in his neighbor’s trash pile by the side of the road. He is intrigued and takes it to see what he can learn about it. Maybe it can be part of his thesis? […]
Twice Shy by Dick Francis
CBR14 BINGO: Dough, because it centers on horse racing and gambling BINGO: Series, Funky, Star, Verse, Dough My husband has a collection of Dick Francis novels, most of which he inherited from his grandfather, so they have sentimental value. When I was pondering what to read for the “Dough” category, he suggested giving one of them a try since they focus on horse racing and gambling. Dick Francis was a British steeplechase jockey who, post-career, wrote a weekly racing column and then branched out into […]
National Velvet by Enid Bagnold
I remember reading National Velvet multiple times when I was younger. I was one of those horse crazy girls – show me a book about a horse and I’d read it. I recently decided to give it a re-read, and I think it holds up pretty well. The main character is Velvet Brown, youngest (age 14) daughter of a butcher father and a mother who had famously swum the Channel years before. Velvet has a quirky imagination that is tolerated and even supported by the […]
Heathcliff Redux: A Novella and Stories by Lily Tuck
We have a Heathcliff problem. We fantasize on the regular about a brooding hulk smoldering just out of view. He’s there- he’s part of the nature of the area, and we are going to conquer that nature. We are going to nurture the brutish man. We are going to fix him, and he’s going to rescue us. Except, we know the truth. We are going to ruin ourselves trying to capture him, and it isn’t going to change him in the slightest. Our narrator in Heathcliff […]
Gargantuan by Maggie Estep
Maggie Estep lived a fascinating life. Novelist, poet, MTV correspondent. I think it would have been quite something to have known her when she was alive. Sadly, she passed (seemingly unexpectedly) in 2014. Hex, her first book in the Ruby Murphy took me two tries to get into, not because it’s bad or complicated but because her style is so unique. Each chapter happens from the POV of a different character, and each character is infused with a lived-in personality. But the plotting happens at […]
