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The Book of Guilt by Catherine Chidgey
Finally! A dystopian novel for the gal who dislikes dystopian fiction.
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The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller
As I was reading, with a tight grip on my eReader, and a racing feeling, I thought, “So this is what makes these stories survive. This is what makes them immortal.”
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The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead
The Nickel Boys is a book I finished after midnight. It’s the type of book you read until you finish, even when that means having to be quiet in a sleeping house when you want to run to anyone and everyone to shout about the experience.
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House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende
This book was written 40 years ago, is explicitly current, and serves as a reminder that there have been women with the ability to put these cycles of injustice and violence into patterned perspective and to name it for us…
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Rememberings by Sinéad O’Connor
Rememberings is Sinéad O’Connor’s memoir. I don’t listen to many audiobooks. When I do, it is because it is narrated by the author. This one was and to great effect. Sinéad had an evocative voice. I find much of her most powerful music has extremely simple lyrics that become multifaceted when they come through her…
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The Quarry Wood by Nan Shepherd
Nan Shepherd’s Scottish hillside is one of the most beautiful places to which a novelist has escorted me. In the first book of The Grampian Quartet, she takes you right out of your book or eReader and into the wind and rain and mud and green and sky of her Scotland. I don’t mean that…
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Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Wanting to read all of the things, and needing to get away from books that touch too close to current events, I thought I’d visit my Russian literature “to do” list. Crime and Punishment has been parsed, studied, and discussed a lot. Summaries abound. Having been around so long, I thought it would be a…
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Eva Luna by Isabel Allende
Eva Luna by Isabel Allende tells many stories. It is full of eccentric characters and sparkling details. The main character, Eva Luna, also tells stories and does so throughout the book both as gifts and as barter. The characters in Eva’s life are as savory and diverse as those in her fanciful stories. Her life…
Hard Return 