For The Book Obsessed
Should you read that book you’ve had your eye on? Will it totally rock or sink like a stone? Check out these book reviews from book lovers like you to help you find your next great read!
[ad_1] Joma West utilizes a high-concept premise to amplify the importance of family and mother-daughter relationships in her newest novel Twice Lived. This is ultimately a story of two girls. Canna is a social butterfly with a close-knit friend group in her high school and a mother who also crosses over into the category of … Read more
[ad_1] Content Warning: This review discusses suicide, which may be a difficult topic for some readers. There is not one person on Earth that has been left untouched by grief. While it’s true that some of us experience it far more often than others, one’s grief is not something to be categorized or placed in … Read more
[ad_1] Born in South Korea, raised in Peru, and currently living in the United States, Ae Hee Lee is a citizen of the world, and of the word; and that’s reflected in Asterism, which was selected by the esteemed John Murillo for the 2022 Dorset Prize. It’s indicative of the collection that an asterism is … Read more
[ad_1] When a group of 89 protesters calling themselves Indians of All Tribes (IAT) occupied the remnants of Alcatraz Island in 1969, the former prison that sits on federally annexed land had been abandoned by the U.S. government for nearly six years. The IAT cited the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie as justification for the … Read more
[ad_1] In Tess Gallagher’s poem ‘Trace, in Unison,’ two lovers are lying in bed during a night of unrelenting rain when they are approached by a mystifying figure: ‘we rolled toward / the voice like one body and said / with our eyes closed, “Then weep, then / love.”’ The combination of tenderness and wilderness … Read more
[ad_1] How do we begin to talk about the past four years—or even farther back—where perhaps the most unprecedented thing is the unprecedented need to overuse the word unprecedented? Tell me about it! In The Great Wave, Michiko Kakutani’s latest—a part political, part historical, nonfiction ride of a book—she does just that, taking us on … Read more
[ad_1] Whenever I meet writers who are from my home state of Texas, I have an immediate desire to grasp their hands and talk for long hours about thunderstorms and cicadas and BBQ. And how these elements overwhelm the writing brain and find their way onto the page, regardless of any attempts otherwise. This is … Read more
[ad_1] When I began querying agents about my first novel, Plan Z by Leslie Kove, I faced a wall of “No!” And usually the reason included the phrase, “If J. D. Salinger were trying to sell The Catcher in the Rye in this day and age . . .” (the late 1980s), it would never … Read more
[ad_1] Where are your roots? How does language—that which you speak and that which speaks through you, if not literally then ancestrally—shift your identity and place in the world at large, and in your own community? Diego Báez’s collection Yaguareté White is an assured and intelligent debut that is lyrical and powerful, sharply examining such … Read more
[ad_1] Leslie Jamison’s Empathy Exams came to me nestled amidst a pile of Little Debbie’s Fudge Rounds—gifts my friends had chosen to soothe the pain of my recent miscarriage. I had no expectations of Jamison when I left my first chocolate smudges on the covers of her debut essay collection. My lack of preparation made … Read more