★★★★☆ | Literary Fiction | Digital | Own | StoryGraph | Goodreads
An innovative retelling of Huckleberry Finn from the perspective of Jim. There are some brutal, hopeless sections of this book that gutted me. There is some humor, but mostly this is a dark, dark book. The ending of vengeance and violence doesn’t feel consistent with Jim’s character, but a man can take only so much.
★★★★★ | Literary Fiction | Print + Digital | Own | StoryGraph | Goodreads
Stegner must be my spirit author. The Big Rock Candy Mountain affected me on a deeply emotional level because of the many similiaries from my own life that that novel explores. This one touched me as well, but for diffrent reasons. The narrator is 69, retired to his dream home in California, and deeply unhappy. He looks back on his life as pointless, a spectator.
…The truest vision of life I know is that bird in the Venerable Bede that flutters from the dark into a lighted hall, and after a while flutters out again into the dark.
★★★★☆ | Literary Fiction | Digital. | Borrow | StoryGraph | Goodreads
A fun, palate-cleansing read.
Themes: living with your mistakes and regrets, starting over. It’s never too late to begin again on your own terms. Also: how awful family can be. How awful people in power treat their subjects. The ending was jolting, but comforting in a way.
…★★★★☆ | Literary Fiction | Print | Own | StoryGraph | Goodreads
I’ll read anything that Amor Towles writes. He’s one of my favorite living writers. This collection of six short stories and a novella hit the mark, though each left me wanting more, to know happens next. A master storyteller.
★★★★★ | Literary Fiction | Digital | Borrow | StoryGraph | Goodreads
I loved everything about this book. Who knew it was possible to write a novel filled with intricate chess games and make them exciting?! Consider this:
…She steeled herself, kept her eyes from his face, and played the best chess she knew, developing her pieces, defending everywhere, watching every opportunity for an opened file, a clear diagonal, a doubled pawn, a potential fork or pin or hurdle or skewer.
★★★★☆ | Literary Fiction | Digital | Borrow | StoryGraph | Goodreads
The New York Times listed this book at the best novel of the 21st century (so far). I decided to hold off reading it until I had read David Copperfield by Charles Dickens as this book is a loose retelling of that story. That was probably a mistake.
…★★★☆☆ | Literary Fiction| Digital | Borrow | StoryGraph | Goodreads
I enjoyed the setting of the fictional small town on Puget Sound. I liked the premise of the story. I loved the octopus. But, in the end, the author was too young/naive to be inside the head of a grief-stricken 70-year-old woman. It would have been better had she let us imagine what she felt by her actions and words alone. Some big themes were drawn in magic marker when they deserved an artist’s paintbrush.
★★★★☆ | Reading and Books | Print | Own | StoryGraph | Goodreads
I read the first half of this short epistolary book as an excerpt in Stories of Books and Libraries by Jane Holloway. I bought the print edition because the library didn’t offer it and the Kindle version cost too much. I read the rest of it over the course of an hour or two. I suspected it couldn’t end on a bright note and I was right. I shed a few tears at the sudden ending. Such is the way of life. Helene, as the crazy, run-at-the-mouth American contrasts nicely with the British reserve of Mr. Frank Doel. We learn all these bizarre details about Helene’s life, but have to coax the smallest of things from Frank. The spare book without any explanatory text to accompany the letters worked perfectly.
…★★★★☆ | Literary Fiction | Digital | Borrow | StoryGraph | Goodreads
Sure, the plot was predictable. Yes, the genre here might be closer to chick-lit than I’m comfortable with. But, I still liked it. I liked the irritable, opinionated AJ Fikry, I liked his policeman friend, I kind of liked Amelia and Maya. Mostly, I liked the idea of an island bookstore owned by a cranky, book nerd. Oh, and all the literary references.
Spoilers follow …
…The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry by Gabrielle ZevinRead More »
★★★★★ | Literary Fiction | Print | Own | StoryGraph | Goodreads
I loved this short, spare novella. In 109 pages, Keegan puts you squarely in the mind and body of its protagonist, Furlong. You feel the pangs of long-ago childhood angst, the chill of an Irish cold spell, the ugliness of small town bigotry, the warmth of a coal stove, the despair over the human cruelty. The Irish dialogue felt more like music or birdsong, making me wish my own language wasn’t so ordinary and flat. I felt sad to leave Furlong’s side after so short a visit, but the tale and ending was told in just the right way, with just the right words.
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