I read Jia Tolentino’s Trick Mirror and then immediately read So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo, because, I guess I don’t want to feel happiness ever again. Let’s start with the book everyone has been telling you to read since the moment it was off the printing presses in 2018: So … More So You Want To Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo
I’m in my twenties and I’m not an avid home chef, so it’s no surprise that I’d never heard of Ruth Reichl. When her latest memoir, Save Me the Plums was released last Spring, I wasn’t remotely interested in reading it. Then, as it happens sometimes when you’re browsing the “currently available audio books” on … More Save Me the Plums by Ruth Reichl
Washington Black is one of those books I heard about months ago and has been vaguely on my radar ever since. When I realized I’d be going to the Caribbean in January, I picked up a copy at a local bookstore because I like to read stories that are set in the places I’m visiting … More Washington Black by Esi Edugyan
A Russian fairy tale vividly brought to life like an intimate historical fiction, Katherine Arden’s first installment of her Winternight Trilogy, The Bear and the Nightingale appeals to a broad swath of readers. More fairy tale than High Fantasy, Arden doesn’t lean on huge feats of world building or sword clanging adventures. Instead, Bear is … More The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden
Moving, insightful, relevant: this novel from the perspective of one of Korea’s famous grandma free-divers, the haenyeo, took me by surprise. On the South Korean island of Jeju there is a tradition – nearly faded into myth – of female free divers who provide for and, in many senses are the heads of, their families. … More The Island of Sea Women by Lisa See
A book review of Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi Low-key spoilers ahead. In Children of Blood and Bone, Tomi Adeyemi brings the full force and breadth of a high fantasy adventure novel to Africa. High fantasy – typically described as fiction where action takes place in an invented magical world – is … More Fantasy, but Make it Yoruba
“I do not wish women to have power over men; but over themselves.” Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman It will come as a surprise to none people that Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, published 1792, was too dense for me to finish. I started reading it in January as the first of my self-imposed book club of one focusing … More A Vindication of My Rights Not to Finish this Book
Leonardo da Vinci joins the ranks of Walter Isaacson’s other Great Men – Steve Jobs, Albert Einstein, Henry Kissinger, and Benjamin Franklin – in this meaty 2017 biography of the eponymous Renaissance Man. Isaacson’s core thesis is that Leonardo’s ability to combine imagination and science is what galvanized his genius. Like most other people in … More Leonardo da Vinci by Walter Isaacson
I read Marisa de los Santos for the first time when I was a young teenager. The book was You Belong To Me and I have distinctly fond memories of it, but authors you liked in your teens don’t always stand up under the cynical gaze of adulthood. … More I’ll Be Your Blue Sky by Marisa de los Santos
The Death of Mrs. Westaway is the result of the successful marriage of insightful and engaging thriller with cozy mystery. Ware fills all of her novels with vibrant, relatable characters — even if they aren’t always likable. Orphaned Henrietta – Hal – Westaway is both relatable and heartbreakingly likable as she struggles to cope with her mother’s death. We … More The Death of Mrs. Westaway by Ruth Ware
The Ohioan 