There There: A novel, by Tommy Orange Brilliant. Innovative. Lyric. Tommy Orange’s stunning fiction debut is all those things, but trying to describe this eclectic, personal novel doesn’t do it justice. Called “groundbreaking, extraordinary,” by The New York Times, and garnering praise from People Magazine to Entertainment Weekly, and awarded […]
Science fiction, fantasy, mystery, suspense and horror novelist Rachel Caine lost her battle with soft tissue sarcoma on November 1. She was 58. First diagnosed in 2018, Caine, whose given name was Roxanne Longstreet Conrad, was born in West Texas, April 27, 1962, and published several series and novels under various […]
Thunderstruck & Other Stories, by Elizabeth McCracken Early on in Elizabeth McCracken’s extraordinary story collection, Thunderstruck, a grieving mother instructs her seventeen-year-old son to seal up the room of his dead sister. This, she imagines will somehow purge the house of the evil that caused her daughter’s lymphoma. “Don’t touch […]
Car Trouble by Robert Rorke As Car Trouble opens, it’s one a.m., and the novel’s young protagonist, Nicky Flynn, is driving backwards through the streets of Brooklyn in a Chevy Impala. The car, nicknamed the Blue Max, operates only in reverse, due to a jammed gearshift, and belongs to his […]
Sophie’s Choice, by William Styron In 1979, John Gardner wrote in his review of Sophie’s Choice, “guilt is everywhere,” a jolt in an otherwise positive review. He called the book a “splendidly written, thrilling, philosophical novel on the most important subject of the 20th century.” The assertion must have seemed […]
Middlemarch, by George Eliot The first thing I knew about Middlemarch, George Eliot’s classic novel, was the ending. The year after the BBC’s series based on the book appeared, it came to public television in the States, and one evening, I caught the final scene. I’d seen none of the […]
Earn It! by Cinders McLeod This is the perfect book for young readers on your list, because it’s never too soon to learn financial literacy. Knowing how money works, and having the skills to make informed decisions about personal money matters, is said to be a concept best started early. […]
The Night’s Chosenby EE Hornburg(The Cursed Queens Series, #1)Published by: City Owl PressPublication date: October 6th 2020Genres: Adult, Fairy Tales, Retelling, Romance SYNOPSIS: CHOSEN OF THE MOON GODDESS. DESTINED TO RULE. FATED TO MARRY. A QUEST TO SAVE HER FAMILY, KINGDOM, AND HEART. In this retelling of Snow White, for the past five years Princess […]
Space Opera, by Catherynne Valente Having recently watched the surprisingly good Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga on Netflix, I’ve been thinking a lot about Catherynne Valente’s novel Space Opera. The book is in the same vein as the movie – funny, weird, occasionally touching – but being […]
If you’re devoting some of your stay-at-home to a work-in-progress, here are three classics of writing craft to see you through. Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them, by Francine Prose In this collection, comprised of a series […]
On this day, December 3, in 1857, Joseph Conrad was born in Berdichev, Imperial Russia (modern
Ukraine, then a part of Poland). While he settled in England and wrote in English, he always considered himself a Pole. Heart of Darkness, one of the most famous of his 20 novels (which explores colonialism and the attitudes regarding what constitutes a barbarian versus civilized society) is considered one of the best English novels of the 20th century, as is his novel Lord Jim, which chronicles a crew’s abandonment of its disabled ship. Conrad died in England in 1924 at age 66.