by Barbara the Bibliophage | Feb 28, 2021 | RELAX: Historical Fiction
Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk is a stroll down memory lane, created by Kathleen Rooney. If you’re curious about the life of women in various decades of the twentieth century, this is for you. Especially if you love melodic language and poetry. Lillian is 84, or...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Feb 9, 2021 | RELAX: Historical Fiction
Shuggie Bain, the debut novel from author Douglas Stuart is a gut punch on nearly every page. It’s the story of a kid growing up in Glasgow, Scotland during the 1980s. He’s the youngest of three kids born to an alcoholic mother. His older siblings have a different...
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...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Sep 25, 2020 | RELAX: Mystery-Thriller
Alex Michaelides builds layers of psychological suspense in The Silent Patient. It’s tempting to think you’ve got it all figured out. But the maze of the characters’ minds is complex. In this drama of betrayal and therapeutic potential, Theo is a psychologist treating...
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...
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...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Mar 21, 2020 | RESIST: Feminism
The bestseller from Ronan Farrow, Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators, documents the process of reporting a huge story. And it shows how that story was like nailing Jell-O to the wall. Or herding cats. Everything conspired against Farrow...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Feb 24, 2020 | RELAX: Other Relaxation
Bernardine Evaristo writes a prose poetic novel, honoring a wide-ranging group of black British women in her 2019 book Girl, Woman, Other. The women represent many walks of life, various generations, and diverse personalities. They connect with each other, but the...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Jan 31, 2020 | RELAX: Mystery-Thriller
Olga Tokarczuk is a celebrated Polish writer and Man Booker International Prize winner. No wonder my IRL book group decided to read her work in January. And what a wintery, chilling book this is. Titled “Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead,” it references works...
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...
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,...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Oct 4, 2019 | RELAX: Other Relaxation
Laurie Frankel brings us inside a raucous and somewhat unconventional Wisconsin family in This Is How It Always Is. Rosie and Penn, respectively a doctor and a writer, are the parents of four boys when she gets pregnant again. Every time she’s expecting they hope for...
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...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Aug 10, 2019 | RELAX: Other Relaxation
Christina Baker Kline opens the doors and invites us into the farmhouse in Andrew Wyeth’s iconic painting, Christina’s World. This fictional work offers readers a chance to understand the world of the Maine residents he painted. It’s not about Wyeth very much,...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Jun 16, 2019 | RELAX: Historical Fiction
Lilac Girls from Martha Hall Kelly is an entrant into the crowded field of World War II historical fiction. She tells the story of three women, inspired by real life people and events. While everything about the book is appropriately tragic and inspiring, for me it...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | May 8, 2019 | RELAX: Other Relaxation
There There by Tommy Orange wasn’t the book I’d hoped it would be. Where Heart Berries was a deep dive in one woman’s psyche, There There is a shallow dip into the lives of many, many characters. That they both center on the varied experiences of Native Americans in...
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