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Thoughts on Part I of Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch (by Jill)
Donna Tartt’s long-awaited third novel came out late in 2013 and won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2014. I read her two earlier novels, The Secret History, and The Little Friend, years ago, and remember really enjoying them, … Continue reading
A Review of Bill Roorbach’s The Remedy for Love (by Bethany)
This book – the first of Roorbach’s that I’ve read – seems like a stage play that took a wrong turn in the Department of Genre Assignations (DGA) and ended up as a novel. This is not exactly a problem, … Continue reading
Final Thoughts on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s This Side of Paradise (by Bethany)
As I’ve made clear before, I did not enjoy This Side of Paradise one bit. I was a little surprised, because I imagined that Fitzgerald was so adept with language that any book he might write would be worth reading … Continue reading
In which Jill reflects on twenty years “in the Blood” and reviews Anne Rice’s Prince Lestat
I finished Prince Lestat tonight. I should have finished it on Thursday but I had to take a nap or two that day. And last night I fell asleep with thirty pages to go. It’s not that I was bored, … Continue reading
Progress Report on Anne Rice’s Prince Lestat (by Jill)
Remember how Anne Rice rediscovered Jesus and swore she would never write about vampires again? How long did that last? Eleven years? I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I will go on whatever adventure Anne Rice … Continue reading
Very brief final thoughts on Anuradha Roy’s The Folded Earth (by Jill)
The ending of this book punched me in the gut when I read it last night. It was so sad, and took me by surprise. I’m not going to say anything else spoiler-ish about the ending because I actually think … Continue reading
A Review of Ian McEwan’s The Children Act (by Bethany)
This novel is a slow, tidy, and compelling third-person-limited study of an aging family court judge. Fiona Maye’s job requires her to make shrewd, compassionate, and ethically sound judgments involving the welfare of children. The title refers to a 1989 … Continue reading
A Review of (Among Other Things) John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars (by Bethany)
I have a rule about books that involve dying children; that rule is DON’T READ THEM. The clichés, the dying requests – none of it can come to any good. I break this rule sometimes, of course – just often … Continue reading
You know something about reading quality literature that’s annoying? You can’t really read it while also watching TV and petting your cat.
Since publishing my post about The Folded Earth on Thursday, I have read maybe forty pages, and have about fifty to go till the end. I’ve been distracted by house cleaning and watching the last five episodes of Gotham … Continue reading
A Review of Benjamin Lorr’s Hell-Bent: Obsession, Pain, and the Search for Something Like Transcendence in Competitive Yoga (by Bethany)
I was the kid who watched Annie and wished I was an orphan. Even now, reading a book about Scientology makes me itch to sign a billion-year contract, and a documentary about the FLDS will send me off to … Continue reading
Postcards From Purgatory 