Tag: books
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Breathers by S.G. Browne – A Book Review
With all due respect to Mr. Browne, I simply couldn’t finish this book. After the first fifty pages, I knew it was a lost cause, but out of professional courtesy, I tried to press on. I trudged through half of it and simply had to call it quits. Breathers, a story about zombies trying find…
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The Easter Parade by Richard Yates – A Book Review
In The Easter Parade, Richard Yates delivers a well-crafted and well-written novel with the bluntness and mercy of a rusty scalpel. Yates allows us to follow the life of Emily Grimes all the way from childhood into her fifties. Her mother is a reckless, distracted woman who divorced Emily’s father when Emily was just a…
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You Remind Me of Me by Dan Chaon – A Book Review
You Remind Me of Me is a novel that slowly worms its way into the very fabric of your being. Chaon’s characters are so flawed and utterly human that the reader can’t help but accept them as part of everyday reality. Chaon also plays with chronology and perspective to the point that the book almost…
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Tales From Outer Suburbia by Shaun Tan – A Book Review
Comprised of fifteen short stories, this beautifully illustrated, ninety-six page book is aimed at an audience of twelve and older. Young people will love the magical realism of Tan’s charming stories, as well as the diverse and mesmerizing artwork. Older teenagers and adults will appreciate the above aspects also, but they will also treasure the…
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Iodine by Haven Kimmel – A Book Review
This book, appropriately enough, really has me split down the middle. One hand, I hated it. It encompassed all of the hipster “too-cool-for-everyone” characteristics in the protagonist, Trace, that drive me bonkers. All those songs and musicians that everyone who “dares” to be different listens to? Yep, there in here. The “I so don’t care…
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Cities of the Plain by Cormac McCarthy – A Book Review
In this third installment of The Border Trilogy, McCarthy brings together John Grady Cole from Book I and Billy Parham from Book II as they work together on a ranch. Though neither delves too deeply into the tragedies in Mexico they both suffered, their unspoken experiences seem to bind them in ways they can’t understand.…
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The Wettest County In the World by Matt Bondurant – A Book Review
This book is based upon the true story of Matt Bondurant’s grandfather and his grandfather’s brothers, a band of bootleggers who were a fearsome and almost preternaturally tough group of men during the Prohibition Era. In The Wettest County In the World, Bondurant presents an intriguing story at its core, but I’m afraid I found…
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