Hamnet and Judith, by Maggie O'Farrell In 1596, a young child dies in Stratford. The child has a twin, an older sibling, an mother thought to have special abilities, and a father who is becoming famous in London for his plays. The father is, of course William Shakespeare, but his name is never mentioned in … Continue reading Fiction Review: Hamnet and Judith (Women’s Prize for Fiction Shortlist)
The Dead Girl Under the Bleachers, by Donna M. Zadunajsky This book actually managed to put me in a reading slump for over a week. It should have been the kind of page-turner that I normally read almost in one sitting, but I ended up slogging through it just to get to the end. The … Continue reading Suspense Review: The Dead Girl Under the Bleachers
A big thank you to Odyssey Books for sending me a copy to review. When No One Is Watching, by Linathi Makanda Linathi Makanda's poetry debut with Odyssey Books is a luminous collection of verse, a meditation on tough topics expressed with grace and wisdom. Family, masculinity, and women's expectations and realities regarding relationships take … Continue reading Poetry Review: When No One Is Watching
War and Peace, by Leo Tolstoy. Translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. War and Peace is a novel that has become almost a punchline; it's used to indicate the tedious and impossible, the most herculean of reading efforts. It's a doorstop of a book, a Pandora's box containing decades of historical events, a large … Continue reading Tweeting Tolstoy: War, Peace, and Pandemic
In the past, I've been terrible about completing shortlist readings for literary prizes. Not because I wasn't interested in the prizes themselves, but because I always found out about the shortlist right before the prize was announced. And I am really not a fast reader, as I explain in part in my post on living … Continue reading Summer Reading Project: Shortlist for the Women’s Prize for Fiction
The Priest, by Tiffany Reisz The Priest is the ninth novel in Reisz's The Original Sinners series (which also includes several novellas and short stories). But it is, according to the official description, an entirely new arc in the series, and "the perfect jumping-on point for new readers." I certainly found this to be true: … Continue reading Romance Review: The Priest
