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] I’ve heard people claim that they wish that they were religious in the fundamentalist mode, because it would be so much easier. Easier, they mean, because while the non-believer is a grown-up person who understands that God—like Santa; or like notions of fairness and romance—is dead, the believer still trusts with childish naivety in … Read more
[ad_1] Maybe it’s odd to compare your husband’s cancer diagnosis to the plot of Lost. Maybe it’s odd to recognize the absurdity of death’s first partial hold on us in the structure of a television show. Yet this is precisely what Kathryn Davis does in her memoir: she sees that “the system governing [cancer’s] bestowal … Read more
[ad_1] In Rebecca Kauffman’s fourth novel, Chorus, family relationships, especially those between siblings, are dissected to expose all their messy and glorious complexities. Kauffman accomplishes her dissection of the Shaw family through a linked-story structure. The narrator’s role rotates among the seven Shaw siblings and their father and spans from 1911 to 1959, though not … Read more
[ad_1] “Branding.” Authors hear that word a lot: what’s your brand, how are you branding yourself, does X fit with your brand? Over the course of a writing career, many authors focus on a particular genre, era, or setting to brand their work. But even when you’re perfectly happy in your genre and your brand—like … Read more
[ad_1] My knowledge of Tamil is limited to my father’s voice. It is not his first language but it’s the one, to him, forever linked to literature. I recognize the lilt and sounds of the Tamil language but am unable to read it written, or even parse out individual spoken words. It is with gratitude … Read more
[ad_1] Some people live without needing literature. They summer in vacation homes, host parties, marry sweethearts with perfect smiles, bear children who will become not followers but influencers, and pass peacefully in their sleep with smooth faces. The rest of us read books. We chase romance at bonfires and dive bars, trudge through blizzards for … Read more
[ad_1] When we first meet Mira, the protagonist of Sheila Heti’s stunning, elegiac new novel Pure Colour, the universe is a roughly hewn first draft destined for the rubbish bin. Mira has just been accepted to study at the American Academy of American Critics. She works at a lamp store surrounded by bijoux glass. Her … Read more
[ad_1] As I approach middle age, my brain has started to shrivel into the pickled nostalgia that’s the birthright of every generation, and because I attended high school during the ’90s, I’ve relived fantasies of youth by continually playing the music that was popular then, even if I didn’t actually listen to that same music … Read more
[ad_1] Refreshingly, sociologist Danielle J. Lindemann, author of True Story: What Reality TV Says About Us isn’t interested in asking whether or not reality TV is “really real.” This question, she says, misses the point. The genre demonstrates that “all reality is socially constructed.” Unscripted programming plays a role in shaping the narratives we hold … Read more
[ad_1] Sasha Fletcher is a poet who has catapulted himself onto the fiction scene with his first novel, Be Here to Love Me at the End of the World. An unpolished description of the text could be the following: an absurdist, historical fiction love story set in the near future. Sam and Eleanor are an … Read more