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] Sometimes the separation between the lived experiences of neighbors can be just as profound as if they grew up on different planets. Privilege, opportunity, and access can be shifted by the smallest geographic space, a city street, or a country’s border. Few understand this truth better than the protagonist of Micaiah Johnson’s debut novel, … Read more
[ad_1] As coronavirus locked down cities across the country and work from home orders liberated office workers from daily commutes, many people suddenly found themselves returning, either temporarily or permanently, to the suburbs so many of them had fled. Jason Diamond’s new book, The Sprawl: Reconsidering the Weird American Suburbs, arrives just in time to … Read more
[ad_1] Like many of his generation, which he identifies as younger Gen Xers and older millennials, Jason Diamond grew up in the suburbs but chose to settle as an adult in a large city, reversing the movement of his parents and grandparents from the cities to the suburbs. For Diamond, questions about the geography of … Read more
[ad_1] Winter Counts opens on Virgil Wounded Horse in a parked car outside a bar biding his time before he beats the hell out of local predatory rapist. Virgil is Rosebud Reservation’s local enforcer, the only one willing to put his body on the line to make sure his community is protected and sees justice, … Read more
[ad_1] Great historical fiction reaches beyond the era it explores to tell truths about our current moment. Kathleen Rooney achieves this in just the opening sentence of her new novel, Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey, as she writes “monuments matter most to pigeons and soldiers.” Her story follows Charles Whittlesey and homing pigeon Cher Ami, … Read more
[ad_1] Climate change may be a planet-wide problem, but novels about the subject can be deeply personal. Case in point: Australian author Charlotte McConaghy’s transporting debut, Migrations. It tells the story of Franny Stone, who seeks out the last flock of Arctic terns in Greenland and then follows them on what might be their final … Read more
[ad_1] Last week I saw the groundhog for the first time. He lumbered across the patch of lawn at the bottom of our garden, looking much like a muskrat or a beaver but for his tail—the muskrat has a tail, unsurprisingly, like a rat; the beaver of course has his paddle; whereas the muskrat’s tail … Read more
[ad_1] Transition is often met with uncertainty. Changes in life challenge our perceptions, our emotions, and the way we feel about ourselves. In Shruti Swamy’s debut story collection, A House is a Body, a thread of internal change weaves throughout the twelve stories. Characters accept and face the consequences of unavoidable circumstances in life, and it’s … Read more
[ad_1] Picking up a sequel to a book as original as Gideon the Ninth is a little scary—the first book set an incredibly high bar. Tamsyn Muir’s second novel, Harrow the Ninth, thankfully, clears it with room to spare. Returning to that preposterous but somehow organic blend of black magic and science fiction, Harrow the … Read more
[ad_1] Writers don’t need to have supernatural abilities to foretell the future; we just need vivid imaginations, intense curiosity, and the ability to logically extrapolate what comes next and next and next. The world we’re writing in always has some differences from the world our books are released into, resembling the current world more or … Read more