Lessons by Ian McEwan
As in, I’m finding it hard to express my feelings about this book. Not because I enjoyed it (I didn’t). Eloquence is overrated anyway. The plot: a young boy in 1960s England is sent to boarding school, is molested by his (female) piano teacher, then has a relationship with her that lasts for years and hampers him for the rest of his life. We watch Roland Baines grow up, faff around, have a child, fall in and out of love. The red thread in the […]
The Night-Time Cat and the Plump Grey Mouse: A Trinity College Tale by Erika McGann, Lauren O'Neil
The Night-Time Cat and the Plump Grey Mouse: A Trinity College Tale is an illustrated kids book, but it’s actually got a good bit of interest for grown-ups of certain interests. The story itself is basically that Pangur Ban the cat escapes from the book where she lives to chase a mouse who has done the same (escaped the book for nightly wandering/adventure. She keeps running into the local ghosts, both literary and historical, and asks everyone if they’ve seen her prey (hint: they either […]
O.K. Is Gay: A Picture Book by Vincent X. Kirsch
Here Is a Book: A Picture Book by Elisha Cooper
There are few things as fun as a good book. Two of those books were found recently by me via online reader copies. The first by Vincent X. Kirsch is a contemporary story on how it is okay to be gay. And the other is a book about books. Or more accurately how a book goes from idea to your hands. I was a little skeptical about O.K. Is Gay: A Picture Book as it was mostly starting out as “just another it’s okay to […]
Carson McCullers: A Life by Mary V. Dearborn
CBR16 Bingo: Pride – McCullers and many people in her life were queer, one of the main struggles of her life was trying to come to terms with and better understand that queer identity, which also infused her writing. Carson McCullers is one of the most acclaimed authors of the Southern Gothic genre, but she was also a complicated woman with a messy personal life who constantly strove toward goals that, though she did not reach always reach them, created beautiful things along the way. […]
Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner
I’ve tried Rachel Kushner’s books before but they’re a little over my head. However, I’m on a spy kick and it just so happens that her new one is a critically acclaimed spy novel and, while knowing it would still be different from the usual pulpy thrill of typical espionage fare, I decided to try it. The cool thing about writing espionage is that we all desire to lead secret lives and espionage fiction allows us to explore that. The sad necessity of hiding human […]
All Things Are Too Small: Essays in Praise of Excess by Becca Rothfeld
Literary critic Becca Rothfeld argues against the modern inclination toward minimalism, and insteads advocates embracing all the messy and irrepressible things that make the human existence so rewarding. I am this book’s target audience, because like Rothfeld I wonder if in the process of streamlining our world we have reached an unpleasantly bland and bloodless zeitgeist. I enjoy colorful and unusual clothes and furniture. I find the aesthetic of minimalism boring. I love the over the top pulp literature of yesteryears. I don’t want the […]
