The first time we read American Gods, C said to me “This is why I can never write a book, because I could never be this good.” The truth is, there are very few people who are as talented at writing as Neil Gaiman, and The Ocean at the End of the Lane continues his tradition of authorial excellence. I cannot truly give a summary of the plot without giving too much away. I think it is best to say this is a book about memory, childhood, and the way how we view the world changes as we grow older. It is also a book about friendship and sacrifice, and…

The Amazon description of The Bees by Laline Paull starts thusly: The Handmaid’s Tale meets The Hunger Games in this brilliantly imagined debut set in an ancient culture where only the queen may breed and deformity means death.   I’ll be honest, it never even occurred to me to think of the book as some dystopian society, because it is a book about bees, that gets bee culture fairly accurate. Now maybe this is because as a girl, I read all those horse and other animal books that took the point of view of an animal in their societies. Now, there was a lot of humanization in the books I read as a…

The Girls of Atomic City by Denise Kiernan is my favorite kind of history book. It takes the backdrop of a major even in history – in this case the creation of the atomic bomb – and puts in front of it the stories of everyday people who were involved. This is not the story of Oppenheimer or Fermi, though they are in here. This is not the story of Roosevelt or Truman, though they are obviously part of it. It is the stories of a few young women (and men) who worked in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, not even knowing what it was they were working on, and how those…

I honestly am not certain how to review The Country of Ice Cream Star by Sandra Newman. I found it via Slate’s Underrated Books of 2015 list and saw that it was a YA dystopian novel. That’s perfect for me. Sara Goldsmith, who recommended it on Slate, thought that perhaps the reason it was underrated was the invented dialect in which people speak. I am here to tell you that is the number one reason to read the book. The dialect is beautiful. It may take a few pages to really get into it, but once you do, it just seems perfect. I cannot tell you how many times, while…

Uprooted is the story of a young woman taken by the local wizard to live in his tower for the next ten years. I feel like say more is to rob the reader of the joy of discovering the story on their own. Naomi Novik has written a lovely kind of fairy tale, and old fashion fantasy, filled with knights on horseback, wizards in their high towers, and lovely maidens be stolen away. It is a fairy tale, but one in which there is nuance, where evil is evil, yes, but something more, too. Where enemies come from multiple directions, and not all from evil, but perhaps with competing priorities.…

To Kill a Mockingbird was one of those rare books I managed to fall in love with despite my freshman English teacher (who was just certain our entire class was lying about not being bothered by Scout and Jem calling their father by his first name). I still own a copy and have re-read it a few times in the last 25 years. So when Go Set a Watchman came out, I knew I would read it. Go Set a Watchman is not so much a “coming of age” novel as it is a “becoming an adult” novel, because those really are two separate things. Scout has grown up. She…

The real reason to read The Golem and the Jinni is for the writing, and by that I mean, for Helene Wecker’s use of language, and the way she combines ordinary words into something fantastical. I do not mean to take away from the story, which is good, or the characters, who are likable and (mostly) fully realized. But this is not a story which will blow your mind. These are not characters you will be aching for “more” about. What stands out in this book is the writing itself, and it is beautiful. The story is pretty basic. There is a Golem. She is brought to life on the…

It is the end of the year, and that means all sorts of “year’s best” lists are coming out. I like to troll the lists of books for any that seem interesting, that I may have missed. It was on one of those lists that I came across Mr. and Mrs. Disreali: A Strange Romance by Daisy Hay. This is a non-fiction book. It is kind of a biography, kind of not. I very much suspect that the majority of it was Hay’s dissertation, or something similar. This book traces the lives and relationship of Mr. and Mrs. Disreali. Do you know who they are? I did not, not before…