Box Nine by Jack O'Connell
Life has been a lot lately — nothing too bad, just new developments — and it’s affected my reading. Usually, I knock out around 10-12 books a month. This month, I’ll get to maybe 7 if I’m lucky. Hopefully, I’m back on the horse by next month when my library’s summer reading bingos begin. At any rate, part of why I read so fast is not just retention but also so I can keep up with the momentum of a story. When I don’t have […]
Mystic River by Dennis Lehane
“Will anything save me from this months-long reading slump I’m in?” so I cried. Deepti Kapoor’s Age of Vice came close but I think that was largely due to the fact that I haven’t read many stories set in India so I didn’t know the familiar tips and tricks Stateside writers do. Aside from that one, I’ve read a lot of good stuff this year but I’ve also quit a lot because…well I don’t know the “because.” Have my standards gotten higher? Am I just tired of […]
Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the End of America's Childhood by Jane Leavy
Greenwich Park by Katherine Faulkner
The Stranger by Albert Camus
The Man Who Liked to Look at Himself by K.C. Constantine
The Secrets We Kept by Lara Prescott
Bang the Drum Slowly by Mark Harris
Inside the Empire: The True Power Behind the New York Yankees by Bob Klapisch and Pete Solotaroff
Gone Tomorrow by Lee Child
Finley Ball: How Two Outsiders Turned the Oakland As into a Dynasty and Changed Baseball Forever by Nancy Finley
Sea Change by Robert B. Parker
The Hunting Wives by May Cobb
The Pallbearers Club by Paul Tremblay
Ms. Tree, Volume 1 by Max Alan Collins
Some extra books I read in August. What a miserably hot month… Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the End of America’s Childhood**** Less a conventional biopic on The Mick and more a look at his life vis-a-vis his legend and the backdrop of postwar America. Not as thorough as I would’ve liked but still riveting given how Jane Leavy presents her subject. Greenwich Park*** Again glad I slept on my review. I really liked how this started but after a while, it morphed into […]
Helltown: The Untold Story of Serial Murder on Cape Cod by Casey Sherman
Had mixed feelings on this one, though I ultimately liked it and found it compelling and readable. And I say that as someone who doesn’t care for serial killer stories, fiction or not. The good: Sherman knows how to weave a yarn. He keeps this smooth, while integrating the many historic events happening around the Cape Cod murder case (the moon landing, Chappaquiddick, the Tate-LaBianca murders, good Lord, the 60s were quite the time to be alive). All of this while two world famous writers […]
Why Longfellow Lied: The Truth about Paul Revere's Midnight Ride by Jeff Lantos
Why Longfellow Lied: The Truth about Paul Revere’s Midnight Ride by Jeff Lantos. This review is based on about me being half finished with the book. That does not mean the book is bad. In fact, it is the opposite. However, it is a bit on the slow side, making it a bit hard to finish the book in one or two sittings. You must be a fan of non-fiction and/or history to be the right audience. Plus, you should probably be at least 10 […]
We Ride Upon Sticks by Quan Barry
A losing field hockey team is sweating themselves half to death. They are being pummeled by every other group on campus; a collection of high school teams from allover New England living the exciting existence of a pre-college summer program. They haul their broken bodies back to the dorms of the UNH campus, exhausted physically and spiritually. The goalie is DONE with this exhaustion. She wants, needs, and expects more for both herself and her beloved team. She, like many teen girls before and after, […]
