There was a span of time in the early to mid-aughts where I would buy every man I was romantically interested in a copy of An Invisible Sign of My Own by Aimee Bender. I probably hold the record for buying the most copies of this book. I could probably write a memoir called Books …
Hilary Jordan’s novel When She Woke is a modern day mashup of The Scarlet Letter and The Handmaid’s Tale. In this futuristic United States abortion has been banned because some weird STD called The Scourge has left many women sterile and the birthrate around the world has plummeted. Apparently in the future we’ll have solved …
Just like many pop culture nerds, I too like to impost arbitrary rules on any list I make. I think it imbibes the list with some significance, importance, or something else that lists of crap don’t have naturally. For this year’s list of Favorite Reads, I gave myself two rules. One, I couldn’t include books …
It’s ironic that a book about bullying can be so full of cruel, negative stereotypes that it verges on bullying itself. Lucky Linderman, the teenage protagonist of A.S. King’s young adult novel Everybody Sees the Ants, has been routinely bullied by an asshole named Nader McMillan since he was seven years old. Nader’s antics grow …
After reading The Family Fang by Kevin Wilson I have come to the conclusion that I enjoy reading novels about art and artists entirely more than I enjoy art. To back up my argument I’d also submit into evidence What I Loved by Siri Hustvedt and The Cheese Monkeys by Chip Kidd. Art is hard …
Why are you unhappy? That’s the question thirty-something midwestern Zeke Pappas asks his subjects. He’s gathering answers for his magnum opus, a study of American Unhappiness. When the novel opens we’re nearly finished with the Bush administration, seven years after 9/11, and Zeke is hoping to figure out what it is that makes Americans unhappy, …
If you want to read another glowing review about the majesty and mystery of Craig Thompson’s much-awaited, much-ballyhooed new graphic novel Habibi, you should probably just skip this one. Before I get too far in here, I want to say that this book is beautiful. The art is spectacular. The care and attention that it …
There’s a few things I need to say before I start frothing at the mouth about how much I enjoyed reading (well listening to, actually. Come on, the audiobook is narrated by Wil Wheaton, how could I resist?) Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. First, my nerdiness skews more books (duh) and music than it …
A few weeks ago I was having a discussion with Christa where I posited that big New York Publishers like books about New York where characters just wander around in their New Yorkness being all New Yorky with the utmost New Yorkitude. My prime example: Netherland by Joseph O’Neill which tons of people loved the …