I loved Egan’s Pulitzer Prize-winning A Visit from the Goon Squad, although now, nearly 12 years later, I didn’t remember much about the book. Maybe I should have reread it before reading the sequel, The Candy House, but instead I read it much like a stand-alone book. Maybe that’s why I had trouble connecting with it. Both…
This week’s topic, hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, is the Top Ten Books I Meant to Read in 2018. There’s a whole lot more than 10, but I’ve already written about backlist books I want to read and challenge books I want to read, so I focused here on the literary releases in 2018…
There’s a lot to recommend about Tommy Orange’s There There, and I can see why it was nominated for so many awards. It’s the story of twelve different characters getting ready for a powwow in Oakland, California. Orange is looking to dispel stereotypes about Native Americans by showing many different types of characters, struggling with…
The Bailey’s Women’s Prize for Fiction is an award given by the UK to the best novel each year written by a woman. Authors may come from any country. Each year the Bailey’s judges nominate a longlist of 20 books and a shortlist of 6 books. Bailey’s Prize winners include some books I’ve really liked…
This is the rare kind of book I can see recommending to almost anyone. Kent Haruf is such a beautiful writer, and while I loved Plainsong, one of his earliest books, this one had more depth. Haruf writes in a deceptively simple way. Not much happens in this book, and on the surface these characters…
This week’s Top Ten Tuesday, hosted by The Broke and the Bookish, is about authors you always buy when they release a new book. I can’t say I really auto-buy anything, since I don’t have time to read half of what I want to. But these are the authors I’ll always add to my shopping…
It seems like all of my favorite authors are coming out with something new this fall. I have review copies of the new books by Atwood, Mitchell, and Allende from NetGalley, so I’ve got lots of reading to do! Plus we get a final Tiffany Aching book from Terry Pratchett, and new series from Deanna…
Last November, the Classics Club posted a survey with 50 questions. I didn’t want to post 50 questions all at once, so I thought I might take them ten at a time. I’ve been slacking on the classics lately but meaning to dive back in. 1) Share a link to your club list: https://thebookstop.wordpress.com/2015-reading-challenges/ 2) When…
This year I’m participating in the Literary Giveaway Blog Hop, hosted by Leeswammes’ Blog. Please check it out and visit some of the other participants and enter to win free books! All giveaways will be literary fiction or nonfiction. I’m offering two books in the Giveaway. Rules for entering are below. First is a new…
I’m participating in the Literary Giveaway Blog Hop, hosted by Leeswammes Blog. This is a fun event where 42 bloggers have signed up to give away a book with literary merit. Please check out the list of participants below and visit as many as you can. For this event, I’m giving away two “gently used”…
Once again I’m participating in the Literary Giveaway Blog Hop hosted by Leeswammes’ Blog. This means you can enter to win literary books of all types from the bloggers listed at the event site. Since I mostly read e-books, I don’t have a pile of gently used favorites to give away. But I like to…
The Sisters Brothers doesn’t seem like a book a lot of people have read – but those who’ve read it loved it, including the geeky-cool Wil Wheaton, who said “I had to restrain myself from reading The Sisters Brothers in one sitting.” The Sisters Brothers was selected for the Man Booker shortlist in 2011. The…
The Book Stop 