Related Post: I’ve been blogging about books since the late 1990s. During that time I’ve thought a lot about why I blog but not so much about how—or rather, how I approach reviewing a book. I’ve put off writing this post for quite a while as I looked back over past reviews I’ve written, especially […]
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For the past few years I’ve set aside September as a month for rereading works that I’ve continued to think about since I first read them. I don’t remember exactly when I started doing this or even why, but knowing that it will eventually come up gives me comfort all year. And once I started
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The Best Dystopian Novels Although I’m a bit more hopeful since the arrival of Kamala Harris at the top, I’m still quite anxious about the upcoming election here in the U.S. Having lived through the turbulent yet lively 1960s working toward change, I fear an impending regression in not only politics, but also in morality
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Related Posts: Trust by Hernan Diaz © 2022 Date read: 1/31/2023 The four-part structure was initially what drew me to Trust. By the time I got to this novel, I was used to novels divided into sections that presented either various points of view or various time periods. But Trust was different from other novels
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Related Posts: Babel by R.F. Kuang © 2022 Date read: 1/22/2023 Other than Lord of the Rings and the Harry Potter series, I don’t read much fantasy. I picked this book up because its underlying premise is brilliant: bars of silver, when imprinted with pairs of words with similar meanings that demonstrate what is lost
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Related Posts: All the Missing Girls by Megan Miranda © 2016 Date read: 4/17/2017 Like Drowning Ruth, this novel demonstrates yet another way narrative structure can work to build suspense and meaning. Here the protagonist must come to terms with an event that happened earlier in her life. The only way she can unravel past
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Related Posts: #9 Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn © 2012 Date read: 7/10/2012 I read this book the year after I got my psychology degree focusing on life stories. Life story writing is nonfiction, but in Gone Girl I immediately realized that Flynn uses life story elements to build the characterization of her two main
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Related Posts: #8 The Drowning People by Richard Mason © 2000 Date read: 2/1/2001 Richard Mason showed me how imagery and atmosphere can carry a novel and contribute to its meaning while also building tension and suspense. The concept of drowning that appears in the title recurs frequently with imagery about the sea, crashing waves,
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Related Posts: #7 Drowning Ruth by Cristina Schwarz © 2000 Date read: 2/1/2001 Many of the themes that I’d been reading about since Portrait of the Artist come together in this novel: how childhood informs the adults we become, how people who share the same experience react to and remember it differently, how time and context
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Related Posts: #6 The Short History of a Prince by Jane Hamilton © 1998 Date read: 2/24/2000 This book would not have the same effect on me if I read it now for the first time as it did when I read it more than 20 years ago. Some issues that we now take for
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