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Mateo Askaripour: New Author Offers Insightful Novel, Black Buck (Book Review)

by Barbara the Bibliophage | Jan 14, 2021 | RELAX: Other Relaxation

Black Buck by Mateo Askaripour is many things—racial justice commentary, social satire about the sales industry, debut novel, and maybe even a morality play. But at its heart, it’s a good story with a compelling main character who indeed sold his ideas effectively to...

Jacqueline Woodson: Red at the Bone—A Novel of Family and Struggle (Book Review)

by Barbara the Bibliophage | Dec 31, 2020 | RELAX: Other Relaxation

Jacqueline Woodson does it again with Red at the Bone. In my opinion, there’s no other living author that imbues so much emotion and grace into so few pages. This story is all about family and self-realization at any age. It’s a story of Melody, a teen whose parents...

Rachel Mans McKenny: The Butterfly Effect is a Stellar Debut (Book Review)

by Barbara the Bibliophage | Dec 16, 2020 | RELAX: Other Relaxation

In the debut novel from Rachel Mans McKenny, The Butterfly Effect, Greta Oto is more a spiny caterpillar than beautiful butterfly. Even though she’s an entomology graduate student, specializing in the winged creatures. She’s not socially comfortable in most...

Taffy Brodesser-Akner Explores NYC Life in Fleishman Is in Trouble (Book Review)

by Barbara the Bibliophage | Nov 29, 2020 | RELAX: Other Relaxation

Taffy Brodesser-Akner shines a light into the darkness of dysfunctional marriage and divorce in Fleishman Is in Trouble. Set in the world of Manhattan’s social climbing thirtysomethings, we meet Toby Fleishman first. He’s experiencing the unstable world of newly...

Amitav Ghosh: Gun Island is Socially Conscious Storytelling (Book Review)

by Barbara the Bibliophage | Oct 6, 2020 | RELAX: Other Relaxation

Gun Island is my first Amitav Ghosh, but certainly not my last. I love his style and this book. I’m particularly drawn to Ghosh’s ability to weave various current news topics into a compelling story. It grounds the narrative solidly in our own time period, and...

Coming Soon from Jodi Picoult: The Book of Two Ways (Book Review)

by Barbara the Bibliophage | Aug 11, 2020 | RELAX: Other Relaxation

Jodi Picoult combines Egyptology and the work of a death doula in her new book, The Book of Two Ways. She even throws in a side helping of quantum physics and multiverses. The story is emotional, wise, and engaging but also sometimes a bit dry and hard to follow. Main...

From R.L. Maizes: A Feel-Good Novel called Other People’s Pets (Book Review)

by Barbara the Bibliophage | Jul 2, 2020 | RELAX: Other Relaxation

Only R.L. Maizes would have thought to combine burglary with animal empaths. And she does just that in her sparkling, feel-good novel, Other People’s Pets. (Publishing on 14 July 2020.) I loved her 2019 short story collection, so I’m not surprised I feel the same way...

Anne Tyler, Book Group and a Palate Cleanser

by Barbara the Bibliophage | Jun 25, 2020 | RELAX: Other Relaxation

The new book from Anne Tyler, Redhead by the Side of the Road, is a certified palate cleanser. At least that’s how it worked for me. In the midst of a history book about pandemics, and historical fiction about slavery, this was a small story about a few days in one...

Book Review: Play It as It Lays by Joan Didion

by Barbara the Bibliophage | May 19, 2020 | RELAX: Historical Fiction

Joan Didion invites us into late 1960s Hollywood in her novel Play It as It Lays. Maria (pronounced Mar-eye-ah) Wyeth is a struggling actress, whose fledgling career is in a stall. Although she’s married to a connected and somewhat powerful man, Carter Lang, they’re...

Book Review: Valentine by Elizabeth Wetmore

by Barbara the Bibliophage | Apr 18, 2020 | RELAX: Other Relaxation

Elizabeth Wetmore crafts a multi-layered debut novel in Valentine. To me, it reads like a book written by a more experienced author. She takes many points of view and melds them together into a narrative as slick and sticky as unrefined oil. Which is fitting since...

Book Review: The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

by Barbara the Bibliophage | Apr 10, 2020 | RESIST: Social Justice

Angie Thomas inhabits her main character Starr Carter’s voice in The Hate U Give. Starr is an African American teen living in a rough neighborhood. But her life is so much more than that. She’s got two younger brothers, plus a mom and dad who work their fingers to the...

Book Review: Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson

by Barbara the Bibliophage | Apr 2, 2020 | RELAX: Other Relaxation

Dear Kevin Wilson: Thank you for giving me something to laugh at while on lock down in my house. Nothing to See Here offered me hours of escape, into the world of kids who catch on fire and the pliable definitions of parental love and family. It was a life saver for a...

Book Review: Women Talking by Miriam Toews

by Barbara the Bibliophage | Feb 21, 2020 | RELAX: Other Relaxation

In Women Talking by Miriam Toews, a group of women sort life out after experiencing terrible assaults. What makes this unique is that the women are all conservative Mennonites living in the isolated, fictional colony called Molotschna. But this isn’t strictly a work...

Book Review: Disappearing Earth by Julia Phillips

by Barbara the Bibliophage | Dec 17, 2019 | RELAX: Mystery-Thriller

In Disappearing Earth, author Julia Phillips transports the missing girl trope to a unique location. On the Kamchatka Peninsula in Eastern Russia, life is hard. It combines both modern conveniences like cell phones, and long-established behaviors like misogyny. So...

Book Review: Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman

by Barbara the Bibliophage | Nov 21, 2019 | RELAX: Other Relaxation

Eleanor Oliphant is the oddest of odd ducks, created by Gail Honeyman in her 2017 debut novel, Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine. Thanks to my IRL book group for suggesting it, as I probably wouldn’t have read it without them. Eleanor has a way with words. In fact,...

Book Review: The Overstory by Richard Powers

by Barbara the Bibliophage | Sep 18, 2019 | RELAX: Other Relaxation

Richard Powers weaves the stories of nine disparate people’s lives together like tree branches on the ground after a strong storm. There’s a college student, a software genius, an engineer, a soldier, an artist, a researcher, a scientist, an actuarial attorney, and a...
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