Goodness gracious! I have so much to tell you about this book! Allow me to lay out some pre-reading, preparatory directions: First, go meet Sarah Kay through her 2011 TED debut. She is so expressive and impressive both, that watching her once will give you the magical ability to...
*STARRED REVIEW Celeste Ng’s debut is one of those aching stories about which the reader knows so much more than any of the characters, even as each yearns for the unknowable truth. “Lydia is dead,” the novel opens – blunt, unnerving, devastating. She’s only 16, the middle of three...
The timing is horrifyingly surreal: capital punishment emerged as a major topic this week, from the tragically innocent, to the mistreated guilty – and somehow, unrelatedly, I managed to choose this title. Once begun, I couldn't stop until the final page. "In this world, you are either good...
You might consider duct-taping your jaw shut because Manhattan-based Singaporean author Kevin Kwan insists on the veracity of the excesses in his outrageous, hilarious, train-wreck tragic debut novel: "So many aspects of and stories in the book I actually had to tone down!" he told...
The title here is your first warning: Oxford Dictionaries describes 'double bind' as "[a] situation in which a person is confronted with two irreconcilable demands or a choice between two undesirable courses of action." Think on that, then brace yourself as you open the cover...
If you can get over the initially disturbing caricatures of a toddler and bearded man as the two married-to-each-other protagonists, you're in for some ingenious, goofy fun. [Having had a parent at our kids' school be convicted as one of the country's worst child pornographers...
The layers here are astonishing, revealed through the filtered lens of an unnamed narrator who gathers the shared experiences, memories, and words about an enigmatic, brilliant man who has lost his sanity by the time the narrator’s research begins. The subject is Rong Jinzhen – orphan, mathematical genius, unparalleled...
Check out this toothsome battle-cry: "The kimchi revolution: How Korean-American chefs are changing food culture" by Paula Young Lee for Salon.com. The article's first paragraph introduces a bi-coastal feast: Momofuku's NYC bad-boy David Chang (his signature cookbook is posted here) and L.A.-based Roy Choi. [The...
Each of Tom Cho's 18 stories in his just-over 100-page-debut is a surprise waiting to happen to you. Already lauded and awarded in Cho's native Australia, his Stateside arrival is sure to elicit gasps, guffaws, and more. Welcome to half a century of pop culture icons – before you...
Clearly, James A. Levine is a 21st-century Renaissance man. He's an endocrinologist and professor at the renowned Mayo Clinic, he co-directs Obesity Solutions, a project of Mayo and Arizona State University (where he also professors), he's credited with pioneering the treadmill desk, he NEATly Gruves ...
Salem Brownstone, once the proprietor of the Sit & Spin Laundromat, gets an ominous telegram (on Halloween, naturally) calling him to New Mecco City, Azania to "take immediate possession of his [late father's] house and the contents therein." His mourning – "[a]fter all these years of...
First, a few details to address before we get to award-winning Lauren Groff's down-the-rabbit-hole, delightfully convoluted debut novel ...
The day after Alice Hayward is baptized, she's found strangled in her own home; her husband George is on the couch with a bullet through his head. The apparent murder/suicide understandably has the couple's tight-knit small Vermont town in shock, especially causing a crisis of...
Ah, well ...
Comprised of just 27 pages which hold 14 poems, this collection feels more like a pamphlet than an actual book. That said, the spare verses by J.C. Elkin, a Pushcart Prize-nominated ESL teacher at a Maryland community college, are not without complexity and depth, inspired by...
"I am Fagin the Jew of Oliver Twist," begins the 'father of the graphic novel'-Will Eisner's 21st-century literary reclamation of the 19th-century classic. "This is my story, one that has remained untold and overlooked in the book by Charles Dickens," a tattered old man insists....
Thanks to Annie, her college roommate and best friend, Mae's escaped from her stupefying utilities job in her "wretched" hometown and entered the Circle, an enviable high-tech company (think Google + Apple + steroids) where Annie is one of the "Gang of 40"-power wielders. Mae begins...
"For any serious artist, it is a terrible feeling of surrender when you realize there is no place in the world for your voice, when all that you express seems marginalized or in vain ...
Just as her latest book was hitting shelves, the near-deified Isabel Allende opened mouth, inserted foot during an interview on NPR and set off a firestorm of negative reaction. On mysteries, she intoned, "I will take the genre, write a mystery that is faithful to...
Meg Wolitzer's latest bestseller begins with an intricate overview of the hierarchy of privileged teenagers. In the summer of 1974, six 15- and 16-year-olds meet in Boys' Teepee 3 at Spirit-in-the-Woods, an arts-focused summer camp for the entitled, and baptize themselves the titular Interestings. Four of the...
