I couldn’t be happier that Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet won this year’s Women’s Prize. I love O’Farrell but I worried that this book couldn’t live up to my expectations, after all the rave reviews. It absolutely did. Hamnet is about William Shakespeare, though he’s never actually named in the book. It’s 1596, and 11 year old Hamnet…
I wasn’t sure what to expect from this book, but I ended up finding it both fascinating and moving. I knew it was about a true-life group of people in the Appalachians with blue skin, and it was also about the historic Packhorse Librarians, women who delivered library books on horseback to families in the…
I didn’t expect to like this book. In fact, I started it as an audiobook and found it meandering and a little pretentious. I don’t love the idea of a novel about writers, especially when our narrator, Casey, describes how all of her once-writer friends have given up on the craft and taken real jobs…
This week’s Top Ten Tuesday, hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, is ten books I loved that I haven’t reviewed. I don’t review nearly as many books as I read, and often the more I love a book, the harder it is to review it well. Some books almost demand to speak for themselves. So…
This was a fantastic historical novel about World War II that is even greater because it is nearly all true. Author Lawhon gives us the story of real-life hero Nancy Wake, an Australian who serves as a British special operative in World War II, working with French resistance fighters. As with many historical novels, Lawhon…
If you’re trying to avoid thinking about the pandemic, this will NOT be the book for you. Otherwise, it’s another fantastic novel from Emma Donoghue, author of Room and The Wonder. This is a historical novel set in Dublin in 1918 during World War I and the devastating influenza pandemic. Julia Power is a 30-year old nurse in…
To date, David Mitchell hasn’t written a book I didn’t like, and this one is no exception. In fact, it will be one of my favorites because of its subject matter. I don’t always fully understand Mitchell’s work, especially the horology storyline that runs through his most recent books. But I love the way he…
I started reading this book a few months ago, and then decided I needed to wait until I was in the right frame of mind. This is a tough read that will take you right back to September 11, 2001. It’s a vast collection of eyewitness accounts of what people experienced that day in New…
You may know I’m not a huge fan of mini-reviews. All three of these books deserve a full review. But given limited time, all three were really great reads so I wanted to share my thoughts. The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich I loved this book, which tells the story about the Turtle Mountain tribe…
I didn’t know if I’d like this book, but I found myself listening to it at every opportunity and I couldn’t stop thinking about it. It’s the story of Vanessa, a fourteen year old in a boarding school in Maine who has a sexual relationship with her English teacher . Years later, when other victims come forward and they look to her for support, she doesn’t know how to respond. This is her story, told over 17 years.
I’m finding it much harder to describe this book than I thought I would, because the words we use for sexual abuse (like rape, and victim, and power) are so important, and that’s what makes this book so interesting and so challenging. Vanessa loves Strane and refuses to see herself as a victim — yet Strane is clearly manipulating her, and the effects on Vanessa as both a teen and an adult are absolutely devastating. As are the many ways school authorities and even Vanessa’s parents fail her.
This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic is actually something I’ve thought a lot about: books I wish I’d read as a child. There’s something so completely different about reading a book as a child — really falling into the story and characters and making them your own. Reading as an adult simply can’t replicate that. …
I’m adding this book to my list of nonfiction books I wish everyone would read. It addresses the many misconceptions about domestic violence, like: It’s a relationship issue, not a crime. It’s not that bad, or she would leave. He doesn’t seem like a violent guy. People are killed by domestic violence all the time,…
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