New Hampshire

The Opposite of Euphoria

Negative Space by B.R. Yeager

August 3, 2024 by Jake Leave a Comment

Read as part of CBR 16 Bingo: dreams. One of the main characters consistently has dreams that impact the plot of the story. CN: This book has many references to suicide, sometimes graphically. I won’t go into detail here but it’s impossible to review without mentioning it. If that’s something that makes you uncomfortable, sit this one out. Like many a child of the 80s and 90s, I’m a product of DARE’s Just Say No Culture. I never did drugs, was terrified of them as […]

Love Lies Bleeding

Rainbow Black by Maggie Thrash

June 26, 2024 by Jake Leave a Comment

What kind of book is Rainbow Black supposed to be? I speculate here because I finished it three days ago and still don’t know the answer or how I fully feel about it beyond, “I really liked it, loved it in some parts, wish I was moved by others.” It’s such a rigidly unsentimental book from beginning-to-end and I’m not sure if that’s what made me dock it or not because the writing here is so good. The book starts off with a bang. I was enthralled […]

“What seemed clear was this: in a town that refused to allow the government to protect it from bears, vigilantism seemed the only option. Just as the libertarians wanted, it was every man, woman, and bear for themselves.”

A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear: The Utopian Plot to Liberate an American Town (And Some Bears) by Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling

January 15, 2022 by narfna 2 Comments

Mind-boggling that this is a real place, with real people (and real bears). How does one begin to describe a book like this? I don’t know. If it wasn’t so early in the year, I might be tempted to review amnesty out of it and just point you in the direction of the many great reviews that have already been written about it, including one by our very own andtheIToldYouSos. Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling is a long form journalist who spent a lot of time in the […]

The Bearmuda Triangle

A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear: The Utopian Plot to Liberate an American Town (And Some Bears) by Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling

November 20, 2020 by andtheIToldYouSos 2 Comments

Something this dire – a town of people so opposed to paying taxes that they become a country-wide hotspot for bear attacks – should not be this funny. Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling carefully walks the line between Bill Bryson and a VICE documentarian while spinning this wild story of a Free Town and the beasts- man and animal alike, within. This collection of people, carefully and deliberately documented by Hongoltz-Hetling, shoot themselves in the foot so many times and with such ferocity that it is amazing the […]

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