by Nathan Hill This title is essentially a love story, but also the story of modern marriage and the current obsession with health, pursuit of personal happiness, and how our beliefs shape experienced reality. Jack and Elizabeth meet as young college students involved in the early 90’s art scene (a lot of super relatable places […]
by Anne Enright This title is beautifully written. A mother and granddaughter struggle to reconcile the gorgeous poetry and international renown of their father/grandfather with his abuse and abandonment of the family. Alternating chapters told from the perspective of the granddaughter and mother, sandwiching a chapter told from the poet from his boyhood. The book
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by Sarah Stankorb In Disobedient Women, Stankorb weaves her own story of familial abuse and resulting spiritual journey in between the stories of women that suffered extensive, life-long abuse at the hands of their respective churches. The book began to come to fruition upon Stankorb discovering online blogs and support groups of women detailing harrowing,
by Laura Redniss Oak Flat follows two families: the Nosies, an Apache family whose daughter is an activist for the preservation of Oak Flat, and the Gorhams, a mining family that spans across generations. While Redniss kept a largely neutral stance and presented both sides of the conflict, the book serves to highlight the continued
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by Safiya Sinclair Award-winning poet Safiya Sinclair writes of her childhood in Jamaica in a Rastafarian family. Despite poverty and being part of a despised minority religion, Sinclair remembers a vivid, joyful early childhood, until her father’s increasing paranoia, contempt for outsiders – known as “Babylon,” and control of his family grew unbearable. A beautifully
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by Maria Bamford Comedian Maria Bamford has always been drawn to structured, rigid self-help and recovery programs. From childhood Suzuki violin lessons to Debtors Anonymous to institutional metal health facilities, Bamford chronicles her attempts to find a place to belong throughout life in weird, delightful, and moving ways. Structured like a For Dummies self-help book,
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by Andreina Cordani Twelve days of Murder is about these snobby, pretentious, insecure, out-of-touch rich kids that you could have sworn, throughout the book, that you were reading about teenagers, but no, They’re all in their 30s. They all have petty secrets to hide but it’s their ignorance that makes them victims of a classic
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by Luke Dumas The Paleontologist is about a curator of paleontology named Simon Nealy that has a lot of trauma to work through and desperately needs professional help. But it’s easier to focus on dino bones and COVID despite how much he complains about all his woes and how his problems are leaving him lonely
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by John Scalzi I love John Scalzi. I think he’s worth every cent of his 10-year, multi-million dollar contract with Tor books. This one was brief. Short, and stand-alone. Didn’t hold a candle to his Old Man’s War series, but few books do, and overall I was much entertained. Charlie’s rich and reclusive uncle has
by Martha Wells Martha Wells has been around the Sci-Fi/Fantasy community for a long time, but it was only relatively recently that she burst into super-stardom (relatively speaking, at least . . . I mean . . . books) with the publication of her Murderbot series. In Witch King, Wells returns to her swords and
