Teresa

My TOB reading continues with Breasts and Eggs by Mieko Kawakami and translated from the Japanese by Sam Bett and David Boyd. It’s a long book, maybe the longest on the list this year, and I think it could have done...

This 1954 novel by Elizabeth Jenkins focuses on the disastrous marriage of Imogen and Evelyn Gresham. Imogen is beautiful and amiable, but, it appears, kind of useless to everyone in her household. She tries, but when...

The last book I read by Lydia Millet, Sweet Lamb of Heaven, was a sort-of thriller that never quite gave in to actually being a thriller (and was therefore not quite as good as it should have been). A Children’s...

A lot of the conversation about people and the planet centers on how we’ve done the Earth wrong, how nature would be better off without humanity wrecking everything. And indeed we’ve done a lot of wrecking. But...

This novel by Kawai Strong Washburn is another solid entry in the 2021 Tournament of Books. It’s not one I’d put at the top of my list when Piranesi, Transcendent Kingdom, and The Vanishing Half are in the...

As a child, Natsuki felt so out of place with her family that she escaped in a world of fantasy in which she had magical powers given to her by a stuffed hedgehog from the planet Popinpobopia. Her cousin, Yuu, who she...

Last year, I read and reviewed Hyperbole and a Half in anticipation of Allie Brosh’s new book. And now I’ve read the new book, which is just as delightful. Hooray! Like the previous book, Solutions and Other...

I didn’t really intend to read a pandemic book during the pandemic, but this novel by Ilze Hugo is on the TOB shortlist, and the more TOB books I read, the more fun the event is to follow. So here I am, having read a...

Victor LaValle is a pretty terrific horror writer whose books take the real-life horrors of racism and add monsters. The 2016 novella The Ballad of Black Tom is the third of his books that I’ve read, and they’ve...

I read the L.M. Montgomery’s Anne books in college (having missed out on a lot of children’s classics as a kid). I enjoyed the first few books in the series, but Anne’s personality was a lot once she became an...

I’m going to try to get back to regular reviewing again, instead of doing my time-consuming monthly posts, by once again writing about books as I finish but keeping it short.  Several friends have been enjoying We...

I don’t know about you, but I feel like November 2020 was simultaneously the longest and shortest month of the year so far. It was short in that it can’t possibly be December already (much less late December now...

I can’t quite believe we’re here at the end of October, just a few days away from the election we’ve been anticipating since November 9, 2016, and with no end to this pandemic in sight. I am cautiously optimistic...

Ten years ago, it seemed like everyone on the internet was in love with the art and storytelling of Allie Brosh. I certainly was. Like so many others, I was a faithful reader of her blog, Hyperbole and a Half, where...

After the blah reading month I had in October, picking up a pick Victorian novel like Our Mutual Friend seemed like a potentially terrible idea. If I didn’t have the attention span to read and enjoy short contemporary...

A new novel by Marilynne Robinson is always a cause for celebration, but the release of this novel is extra special because we finally get to learn more about Jack Boughton, son of Boughton, the Presbyterian minister...

Do you ever feel guilty for not loving a book? I sometimes do, especially when I have several middling reading experiences in a row with books that don’t have obvious problems because that’s when I have good reason...

It is amazing how much reading I can get done when there are no movies or live theatre to go to and no restaurants for safe dining out with friends or really anywhere much to go. It was even too hot for most of August...