My older teenager tells me the series of the same name is what 'everyone' is watching: "It's the new favorite show," she insists. So when I found the book ("there's a book?" the daughter asks with surprise; there's almost always a book first!) available to...
Even though the Yoko Ono comment made by an angry daughter about her hapless father's extramaritally knocked-up girlfriend gets apologized for some 40 pages later – "'I called her Yoko Ono that night because she was the one who broke up the Beatles. Not because she's...
After traveling and drawing the world – Pyongyang, Shenzhen, Burma, Jerusalem – comic master extraordinaire Guy Delisle turns inward to his own family with a tongue-in-cheek look at the challenges of being a parent trying to keep his kids safe, supported, loved ...
Malcolm and I started out great here. We usually do. He's judgmental, opinionated, smart, questioning, and downright entertaining. Outliers remains my all-time Gladwell favorite, then Blink, then Tipping Point. I thought he faltered a bit in his last title, What the Dog Saw and Other Adventures, but those contents weren't...
Well, crud. In spite of making a list and checking it twice, thrice, and more, I read these in about as 'wrong' order as I possibly could. But before I offer two preventative options, some quick background: the full Cemetery of Forgotten Books by internationally bestselling...
Small-town Maine, where Elizabeth Strout was born and raised, has been home to her four novels. In her first title since she won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for her novel-in-13-stories, Olive Kitteridge, Strout returns to tiny Shirley Falls where she set her acclaimed, chilling debut, Amy and Isabelle. This time, in The Burgess...
Okay, so both Book 1 and Book 2 of this intergalactically stupendous series start out almost the same (Book 2 has an extra, well-placed, close-up "Gyaaaaah!" thrown in), but don't be misled into thinking you've already read it, done that, check! "What's next for Andy Go?" the...
In case you haven't planned your Turkey Dinner coming up in exactly a week (who, me? menu? what's that?), here's a collection filled with irreverently toothsome suggestions. Having grown up eating kimchi with every chestnut-stuffed bird or surreally spiraled pink ham (or both), I couldn't...
Before she is even a teenager, Saba Hafezi reveals herself to be quite the unreliable narrator. Telling stories, however, is what will save her youthful soul ...
In an unnamed conflict zone – not unlike the challenging, changing borders of Israel and Palestine – 13-year-old Joshua lives in a new settlement community, Amarias, surrounded by a guarded, barbed-wired wall. Too soon after his father's violent death, his mother desperately married Joshua's now-stepfather who considers...
*STARRED REVIEW Once revealed in context, this book's title alone is an astonishing feat of encapsulated genius from the inimitable Chang-rae Lee. Control, individuality, nature, perfection, reality, society – all that and more fill this dystopic treatise about a not-so-futuristic, ruined America. At the beginning, 16-year-old Fan simply...
Lan Samantha Chang is a literary success of countless accolades, from her Ivy pedigrees (Yale, Harvard) to coveted fellowships (Guggenheim, Stanford's Stegner, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study) to her directorship since 2006 of what many believe is the country's (the world's?) top creative writing program,...
In Susan Conley's debut novel defined by deep relationships, the most intriguing alliances get neglected and overlooked for the more commonplace and predictable. Willow – called Willie – moves to Paris to be closer to her peripatetic brother Luke who was most recently in China bringing safe...
Along the lines of Haruki Murakami's What I Talk About When I Talk About Running and Neal Bascomb's The Perfect Mile being running books, or Chris Cleave's Gold a biking title, or Thien Pham's Sumo and Gail Tsukiyama's The Street of a Thousand Blossoms sumo wrestling books, Katie Kitamura's debut is a boxing novel – or...
Monica Ali's latest novel which pubbed June 28, 2011, just before what would have been Diana Spencer's 50th birthday – July 1, 2011 – had "The People's Princess" lived. In case the cover wasn't enough of a clue, that date detail matters because Untold Story imagines that Diana left...
Although I can't recommend this book, I sure would like to find some readers who might want to discuss it. As it's apparently a "national bestseller" – so touts the cover of the paperback edition – perhaps a few of you who have already read it might...
Cath and Wren are twins – how they got their name is just too entertainingly clever. They've been each other's best friend their whole lives, sharing the same room which also serves as a near-shrine to Simon Snow (à la Harry Potter, who does get a...
At 22, Julie Wu had a “vision” about a sad young boy that she immediately rushed to capture in words. From those initial notes, she would take almost a quarter century to bring him to the page: at age 46, she “bloomed” as a first-time novelist....
Mysteries don't get any more substantially delicious than this: Vish Puri voiced by Sam Dastor as written by Tarquin Hall, with just the right balance of page-turning entertainment and sociopolitical insight. Before you partake, however, you should know that this is #4 in a series;...
Vision and Reinvention: Julie Wu’s The Third Son So how many detours can a writer make before becoming that writer? If you’re newbie novelist Julie Wu – who knew as a Harvard undergraduate in the 1980s that writing was what she wanted to do – the answer might include a Master’s program...
