- December 18, 2020
In 2016, at age 54, Dani Shapiro’s life took quite a turn. On a whim, she sent in a DNA test kit to a genealogy website. As it turned out, her father (or the man she identified as such) was not her biological father. Almost miraculously, some friends were able to use genealogy websites to ...
Read more… - December 4, 2020
Frederick Backman has a gift. He is at once an aloof observer and conspiratorial in his commentary, while challenging the status quo as absurd and celebrating life’s mundane moments. His works are though-provoking, funny, and just a touch melancholic. Anxious People is no exception.
The story deftly takes the reader to a police interrogation room, an ...
Read more… - November 20, 2020
I loved this book! It was the second selection for a book group I recently joined called “The Coven.” I was not optimistic when I realized that ALL of the titles we would read would most likely be in the SciFi/Fantasy genre, and I struggled with this book for the first 75 pages or so. ...
Read more… - November 13, 2020
At the beginning of this novel, Jack and Mabel are preparing for their first winter on their new homestead in Alaska in 1920. Still reeling from the loss of their baby, the couple struggles to connect with one another amid the brutal wilderness. On the night of the first snowfall, Jack and Mabel set aside ...
Read more… - November 6, 2020
In 1913, Laura Lyons lived in the New York Public Library’s superintendent’s apartment with her husband and two children. While her husband managed all of the caretaking duties of the busy and awe-inspiring library, Laura raised her children and wrote an amusing column for the library’s newsletter about her family’s experience living in the famous ...
Read more… - October 30, 2020
Nat Turner by Kyle Baker was an incredibly emotional and eye-opening experience. It is the true story of Nat Turner and his slave rebellion, which took place in Southhampton County, Virginia in 1831. Told in graphic novel format, Baker uses vivid, wordless images alongside excerpts of Turner’s confession to convey the brutalities of slavery and ...
Read more… - October 23, 2020
That Can Be Arranged is a lighthearted, funny, and colorful graphic memoir that details author Huda Fahmy’s love story, which happened to be an arranged marriage. Huda guides us through what it was like growing up as a Muslim woman and trying to balance both familial and personal expectations for relationships. The way she navigates ...
Read more… - October 16, 2020
Well, THIS was disturbing. Maybe not a book to read in 2020? I picked this up because the horror movie forums I follow were raving about Netflix’s new film version of it and I wanted to read it first. Now I can’t tell if I’m excited to see it or dreading it. Not really; I’m ...
Read more… - September 24, 2020
Mooncakes, written by Suzanne Walker and beautifully illustrated by Wendy Xu, is a young adult graphic novel about witch-in-training Nova Huang, who is apprenticing at home with her grandmothers. Together they run a magical bookstore with just about every magical book you could want to read, and more tea than you could probably drink in a ...
Read more… - September 18, 2020
I would recommend Max Brooks’ Devolution to anyone, but especially to fans of Brooks’ World War Z, Bobcat Goldthwait’s Willow Creek and the History Channel’s 2007 series, MonsterQuest. Told mostly through the firsthand journal account of Kate Holland, it’s interspersed with interviews with several people who either knew her or were involved in trying to piece ...
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