Love is a Mix Tape by Rob Sheffield: Book Review
4 Stars. I’m not the most knowledgeable person when it comes to pop culture. I’ve always preferred to have my nose in a book, instead of going to school dances, watching TV, or reading pop magazines. But I’ve made my share of mix tapes (and later, mix CDs). So this title caught my eye. Rob is about a decade older than I am but […]
Even As We Breathe by Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle: Book Review
3.5 Stars. Even As We Breathe caught my eye because it’s set in my part of the world (Asheville, NC) and it’s written by a Cherokee woman. I wanted to add some diversity to my Southern Lit challenge so I picked it up. This was a beautifully-written coming-of-age story. Cowney (rhymes with county) is struggling to find his place in the […]
Heart of Iron by Ashley Poston: Book Review
3 Stars. This was pretty good but it never fully grabbed my attention and I can’t say why. I liked the main characters well enough, though the secondary characters weren’t very distinct in my mind. Ana was a bit too stupidly headstrong for my taste but I mostly liked her well enough to overlook it. I’m always a fan of found […]
Salt to the Sea by Ruta Sepetys: Book Review
4 Stars. Once again, Ruta Sepetys has found a forgotten corner of history and written a gripping historical fiction novel about it. I’ve read a few books that touch on Germans at the end of WWII fleeing the vengeful Soviet army, but none of them were about Germans evacuating by boat. The history was fascinating and gut-wrenching […]
The Light of the Midnight Stars by Rena Rossner: Book Review
3 Stars. I listened to this on audio, narrated by Ana Clements, and it just never grabbed my attention. I don’t have any major complaints or praise for either the story or the narrator, I just found it easy to tune the whole thing out–and did. The story rotates between three different narrators–the sisters, Hannah, Sarah, and […]
World War Z by Max Brooks: Book Review
3 Stars. You can imagine my surprise when I listened to World War Z and discovered that I was… a little bored. There. I said it. The format is very similar to that used in Devolution, with a fictional interviewer speaking with survivors of a catastrophic event. I think the difference for me was that Devolution also included a […]
Small Spaces and Dead Voices by Katherine Arden: Book Reviews
4 Stars. Let’s just take a minute to admire these two covers first, shall we? So spooky. So perfect! As I was getting ready to review Dead Voices, I realized that I’ve never reviewed Small Spaces. I decided to do a vague twofer. Ollie, Coco, and Brian are great characters. They each have their own strengths and weaknesses. They […]
The Necromancer’s House by Christopher Buehlman: Book Review
2.5 Stars. If I had read this in print, I think I would have rated it higher. Don’t get me wrong–I absolutely enjoyed Todd Haberkorn’s narration. But I don’t absorb detail as well when listening as I do in print so I need things to move along quickly without getting too complicated. And Andrew’s life is incredibly complicated […]
The Giver by Lois Lowry: Book Review
4 Stars. This was published in 1993, when I was 15 years old, and I must have just barely missed having it as assigned reading in school. While it’s probably a classic to many of you, this was the first time I’ve read it. I was surprised by how unsettling it is. Jonas’s world seems almost perfect at first. Everyone apologizes […]
Whiskey When We’re Dry by John Larison: Book Review
4 Stars. I’m not a huge fan of Westerns but this book caught my eye when a friend of a friend mentioned it on Facebook. I really enjoyed it. There’s no denying the Western background but the themes of family, love, and loss are universal. I would actually recommend this for a book club. Jess’s mother died in childbirth and Jess […]
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark: Book Review
4 Stars. This was a short, accessible classic but it packed a punch. I would love to discuss it with a book group. I looked around to find out if it’s ever been banned (references to “sexual intercourse” in a book published in the 1960s seems like a recipe for a challenge) but if it has, I can’t find evidence of it. The group of