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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...

This novel by Argentine author Agustina Bazterrica and translated by Sarah Moses is set in a future where all non-human animals have been infected with a virus that infects anyone exposed to them (or so they’ve been...

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...

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...

And so here were are at the end of another month in another year, a particularly strange month in a particularly strange year. I stayed in my own home for Christmas for the second year in a row. Last year, it was the...

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...

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...

Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell is one of my favorite books, and I’ve been longing for another novel from Clarke ever since I first read that masterpiece. (I haven’t read her  story collection, fearing that short...

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...

Happily, I was able to do much more reading in July than I did in June! A lot of it was an exploratory sort of reading — will I enjoy this? What about this? — and some of it was just for the pleasure of reading...