At 65, Harold Fry is a quiet, solitary old man, retired from the brewery where he worked much of his adult life. Although he married Maureen – his one and only love – decades later, their days, weeks, years together are rather lonely and withdrawn....
Shimura Takako, a well-established manga artist recognized for her LGBT focus, continues her gender-bender series with sensitive honesty. That said, don't let the sweet, fuzzy cover fool you: Shimura knows well that protecting her two wide-eyed protagonists from their less-than-understanding peers will become less and...
Already designated “definitive political biography” on its back cover, The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks by Brooklyn College political science professor Jeanne Theoharis will reside in my personal reading history as the most difficult book I’ve ever reviewed. Never before – and hopefully never...
Let me start with what has been deemed as historical record. According to the Thomas Jefferson Foundation – which not only owns and operates Jefferson's legendary home, Monticello, but maintains the most comprehensive website focused on "Monticello, Jefferson, his family, and his times" – this is the official...
So, here's the last of the Lisa Genova oeuvre. If I had to rank her three titles thus far, the #1 slot – shelves ahead of her others – remains her stupendous debut, Still Alice, then continues with this, Left Neglected, trailed by her most recent, Love Anthony. Armed with their Harvard MBAs...
So enthralling was Lisa Genova’s Still Alice, I immediately went and got myself her other titles and hit 'play' one after the other. I don't remember the last time I read three books by the same author in such immediate succession. That I got through...
Life along the Silk Road – 19th-century style, imagined by and translated from a 21st-century Japanese original – moves onward west, meticulously detailed in creator Kaoru Mori's breathtaking manga. To catch up, make sure to read the first three installments; you definitely need the back story of young...
Three weeks into the new year, and I'm already so behind I surely wouldn't mind a do-over. I don't think I've ever been this tardy before with the latest annual installment of Oliver Chin‘s energetic, entertaining Tales from the Chinese Zodiac series, but hopefully this is a case...
I'm not quite sure how this 2009 debut novel actually ended up on my iPod (surely I ordered it at some point) and why I decided to click on it when I did. How ironic that missing memory quickly became a point of concern when...
The late Anthony Shadid is back in the headlines today with happy news: the double-Pulitzer winner's resonating memoir is one of the autobiography finalists for the National Book Circle Critics awards for the publishing year of 2012. House of Stone recounts Shadid's restoration of his great-grandfather's home...
Through the 13 intertwined, overlapping stories of her 2009 Pulitzer winner, Elizabeth Strout’s eponymous protagonist Olive Kitteridge emerges from multiple angles – captured in close-ups and faraway distances; her intimate portrayal is greatly enhanced by sharing the lives of her fellow residents in the small...
Both the inside and outside covers here are exactly the same: a mostly well-ordered, three-generation family tree ...
What do you do when your most cherished friend isn't real to anyone else but you? For Melody and her bestest buddy, "[t]hey had fun together every day and every night ...
As the mother of three young girls, Ellen Oh is constantly on the lookout for good books that showcase female empowerment. She's found a few here and there – say, The Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins, The Girl of Fire and Thorns trilogy by Rae Carson, The Hero and the...
The Japanese word, kokoro, means 'heart' ...
Thus far, mega-award winning Junot Díaz (also recently bestowed the "Genius" moniker by the MacArthur Foundation) hasn't written a book without his sort-of autobiographical stand-in Yunior de las Casas. Díaz's 1996 fiction debut, Drown, introduced Yunior through interlinked short stories; a decade-plus later, Díaz turned over full narrative control to his...
Need the verdict first? READ THIS. Stephen Dau's The Book of Jonas is one of those rare, shattering, lingering, breathtaking-at-unexpected-moments debut novels that arrive so perfectly formed you're left both haunted (wondering what you could possibly read next to dispel the terror) and grateful (utterly so, that...
Ready to ring in the new year? Sing with me now – I'm pretty sure you know the words to this one: "O beautiful for spacious skies ...
On this final day of 2012, this could easily be me (replacing 'Esther' with my name and 'her journey' with this year): "Though she would not have admitted to any fixed expectations, Esther is still confounded by what meets her at the end of her...
