Just breathe {The Selfless Act of Breathing by JJ Bola)
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Tuesday, January 09, 2024
book reviews
Showing posts with label book reviews. Show all posts
Small town, big life {F*ckface by Leah Hampton}
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Saturday, February 20, 2021
About F*ckface and Other Stories by Leah Hampton: F*kface and Other Stories is a brassy, bighearted debut collection of twelve short stories about rurality, corpses, honeybee collapse, and illicit sex in post-coal Appalachia.
The twelve stories in this knockout collection—some comedic, some tragic, many both at once—examine the interdependence between rural denizens and their environment.
A young girl, desperate for a way out of her small town, finds support in an unlikely place. A ranger working along the Blue Ridge Parkway realizes that...Of the great equalizer {Educated by Tara Westover}
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Saturday, March 30, 2019
Of the great equalizer, education.
About Educated by Tara Westover: Tara Westover was seventeen the first time she set foot in a classroom. Born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, she prepared for the end of the world by stockpiling supplies and sleeping with her “head for the hills” bag. In the summer she stewed herbs for her mother, a midwife and healer, and in the winter she salvaged in her father’s junkyard.
Her father forbade hospitals, so Tara never...Fictional true crime done right {Dark Places by Gillian Flynn}
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Tuesday, February 19, 2019
Fictional true crime done right: dark and twisted
About Dark Places by Gillian Flynn: Libby Day was seven when her mother and two sisters were murdered in “The Satan Sacrifice" of Kinnakee, Kansas.” She survived—and famously testified that her fifteen-year-old brother, Ben, was the killer. Twenty-five years later, the Kill Club—a secret secret society obsessed with notorious crimes—locates Libby and pumps her for details. They hope to discover proof that may free Ben. Libby hopes to turn a profit off her tragic history: She’ll...Be careful, it cuts deep {Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn}
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Saturday, January 26, 2019
Be careful, it cuts deep
About Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn: Fresh from a brief stay at a psych hospital, reporter Camille Preaker faces a troubling assignment: she must return to her tiny hometown to cover the murders of two preteen girls. For years, Camille has hardly spoken to her neurotic, hypochondriac mother or to the half-sister she barely knows: a beautiful thirteen-year-old with an eerie grip on the town. Now, installed in her old bedroom in her family's Victorian mansion,...Is seeing believing? {The Woman in the Window by A.J. Finn @ajfinnbooks}
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Sunday, January 13, 2019
Unputdownable peeping Tom tale
About The Woman in the Window by A.J. Finn: It isn't paranoia if it's really happening . . . Anna Fox lives alone--a recluse in her New York City home, unable to venture outside. She spends her days drinking wine (maybe too much), watching old movies, recalling happier times . . . and spying on her neighbors. Then the Russells move into the house across the way: a father, a mother, their teenage son. The perfect family....Let art speak to you. {The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt}
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Wednesday, March 22, 2017
Let art speak to you.
About The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt*: It begins with a boy. Theo Decker, a thirteen-year-old New Yorker, miraculously survives an accident that kills his mother. Abandoned by his father, Theo is taken in by the family of a wealthy friend. Bewildered by his strange new home on Park Avenue, disturbed by schoolmates who don't know how to talk to him, and tormented above all by his unbearable longing for his mother, he clings to one thing that reminds...The historic, horrific lives that the Forest built and destroyed {Barkskins by Annie Proulx}
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Saturday, February 18, 2017
Barkskins by Annie Proulx*: From Annie Proulx—the Pulitzer Prize- and National Book Award-winning author of The Shipping News and “Brokeback Mountain,” comes her masterwork: an epic, dazzling, violent, magnificently dramatic novel about the taking down of the world’s forests.
In the late seventeenth century two penniless young Frenchmen, René Sel and Charles Duquet, arrive in New France. Bound to a feudal lord, a “seigneur,” for three years in exchange for land, they become wood-cutters—barkskins. René suffers extraordinary hardship, oppressed by the...A journey into identity {Sula's Voyage by Catherine Torres}
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Wednesday, November 23, 2016
Holding the banner high for literature from my homeland.
About Sula's Voyage by Catherine Torres: Fifteen-year-old Sula has always known she is different. Even though her parents have shown her nothing but love and acceptance, she sees her dark skin as a reminder of how she doesn’t fit in with the rest of her family.
What’s worse is she also feels that her parents are hiding something from her. After getting expelled from school, Sula reluctantly goes to stay with her mother’s...Puny smuny. Sorrow smorrow. Anything but. {All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews}
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Tuesday, October 25, 2016
When the biggest irony is that I loved loved loved it.
About All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews*: You won’t forget Elf and Yoli, two smart and loving sisters. Elfrieda, a world-renowned pianist, glamorous, wealthy, happily married: she wants to die. Yolandi, divorced, broke, sleeping with the wrong men as she tries to find true love: she desperately wants to keep her older sister alive. Yoli is a beguiling mess, wickedly funny even as she stumbles through life struggling to...Lie in it! {Where Angels Fear to Tread by E.M. Forster}
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Tuesday, October 18, 2016
You made your bed, now lie in it.
Synopsis of Where Angels Fear to Tread by E.M. Forster: When attractive, impulsive English widow Lilia takes a holiday in Italy, she causes a scandal by marrying Gino, a dashing and highly unsuitable Italian twelve years her junior. Her prim, snobbish in-laws make no attempts to hide their disapproval, and when Lilia's decision eventually brings disaster, her English relatives embark on an expedition to face the uncouth foreigner. But when they are confronted...Unexpected, unrealistic and lots of heart {The Unexpected Everything by Morgan Matson}
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Tuesday, October 04, 2016
When the unexpected is the best thing that could ever happen.
About The Unexpected Everything by Morgan Matson*: Andie had it all planned out.
When you are a politician’s daughter who’s pretty much raised yourself, you learn everything can be planned or spun, or both. Especially your future.
Important internship? Check.
Amazing friends? Check.
Guys? Check (as long as we’re talking no more than three weeks).
But that was before the scandal. Before having to be in the same house with her dad. Before walking...Let the waterworks begin! {The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman}
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Wednesday, September 28, 2016
Crocodile tears? I couldn't get suckered into this one. Sorry.
Synopsis of The Light Between Oceans by M. L. Stedman: After four harrowing years on the Western Front, Tom Sherbourne returns to Australia and takes a job as the lighthouse keeper on Janus Rock, nearly half a day’s journey from the coast. To this isolated island, where the supply boat comes once a season and shore leaves are granted every other year at best, Tom brings a young, bold, and loving wife,...Pinoys, start waxing poetic {Mariposa Gang and Other Stories by Catherine Torres}
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Saturday, September 24, 2016
Vignettes of alienation. Vignettes of Philippine life.
Synopsis of Mariposa Gang and Other Stories by Catherine Torres: A maid packs her bags after learning that her employer values her less than a murano vase. A young man enters the priesthood when he is spurned by the woman he loves and is sent on a mission to the backwaters of West Bengal. A pampered heiress goes on exchange study in Tokyo to prove her independence and finds herself stuck without heating in the...Call the Midwife. I need book 2 stat. {Call the Midwife by Jennifer Worth}
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Sunday, August 28, 2016
Screen, paper: do them both!
Synopsis of Call the Midwife by Jennifer Worth*: London's East End in the 1950s was a tough place: the struggles of post-war life - bombsites, overcrowded tenements, crime, brothels - bred a culture of tight-knit family communities, larger-than-life characters and a lively social scene.
It was into this world that Jennifer Worth entered as a trainee midwife. But docklands life was tough, and babies were often born in slum conditions. In funny, disturbing and heartbreaking stories, Jennifer Worth recounts...You can mess with my mind anytime, Ms. Flynn! {Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn}
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Wednesday, August 17, 2016
Ms. Flynn, you got me.
About Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn*: On a warm summer morning in North Carthage, Missouri, it is Nick and Amy Dunne’s fifth wedding anniversary. Presents are being wrapped and reservations are being made when Nick’s clever and beautiful wife disappears. Husband-of-the-Year Nick isn’t doing himself any favors with cringe-worthy daydreams about the slope and shape of his wife’s head, but passages from Amy's diary reveal the alpha-girl perfectionist could have put anyone dangerously on edge. Under...How does one stay whole, sane, live with integrity amidst contradictions? {Snow by Orhan Pamuk} @ReadNobels
How does one stay whole, sane, live with integrity amidst contradictions?
About Snow by Orhan Pamuk: Dread, yearning, identity, intrigue, the lethal chemistry between secular doubt and Islamic fanaticism–these are the elements that Orhan Pamuk anneals in this masterful, disquieting novel. An exiled poet named Ka returns to Turkey and travels to the forlorn city of Kars. His ostensible purpose is to report on a wave of suicides among religious girls forbidden to wear their head-scarves. But Ka is also drawn by...·
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