@bookstodon My #review of You Dreamed of Empires by Álvaro Enrigue, trans. Natasha Wimmer is now live! A fascinating Borgesian take on a crucial historical event, that makes the reader think about storytelling, fact, fiction, and the fluidity between them.
@bookstodon My #review of Mobility by Lydia Kiesling is now live! An infuriating read - but in the good way that makes you ask some hard questions with potentially uncomfortable answers.
@bookstodon My #review of Singer Distance by Ethan Chatagnier is now live! Loved the language, but the plot and the ending really undermine the whole thing.
The first our 2024 books is making its way down the pipe - @MichaelJDeLuca's THE JAGUAR MASK! If you're a reviewer looking for surrealist literary fantasy critiquing neo-colonial resource extraction in the global south, our reviewer list is open! https://forms.gle/JAPqG7L89t5b9cJo6
@bookstodon My #review of Rouge by Mona Awad is now live! Darkly beautiful and intensely bittersweet, this actually managed to make me cry towards the end. That is VERY much a compliment.
@bookstodon My #review of The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry is now live! Expected a gothic or maybe folk horror story, but instead got a story about how our connections to others can change the people around us, for better and for worse. Very much a pleasant surprise.
@bookstodon My #review of The Night Ocean by Paul La Farge is now live! This was a really compelling read in ways that I hadn’t expected, but was pleasantly surprised by.
#AmReading this as #Israel commits #genocide in #Palestine and the world watches the erasure of a peoples. Salt Houses is the story of four generations of a fictional #Palestinian middle-class family through the Six Day War (1967), the First Intifada (1987), the Gulf War (1990), the Second Intifada (2000), 9/11 (2001), and the 2006 Lebanon War. #bookstodon#books#LiteraryFiction#HistoricaFiction
@bookstodon What a great little book! Lots of stuff going on so the reader needs to pay attention - #trauma, guilt, alternate realities, identity loss, cross-cultural relationships, monetizing grief and loss, #whiteguilt, and people and feelings that disappear in the furrows. Recommend it.
Another favourite from last month's post was the cover of THE LOVE OF SINGULAR MEN by Victor Heringer designed by Pablo Delcan for New Directions. I really like the combination of type and colour palette.
10 out of 10. THE HEAVEN & EARTH GROCERY STORE by James McBride is my favorite book of 2023 so far. It's a saga, a mystery, & a tale about racism and ableism. From Penguin Random House on August 8. #ewgc@ewgc#bookstodon@bookstodon
Wow, I didn’t expect these stories to emotionally wreck me, though I probably should have. Strout is wise and empathetic about hurt people making bad choices, and exceptionally good at making me feel things. The audiobook is excellent
@sbarolo@bookstodon#AmReading Strout's Anything is Possible. Like her other books, this one's everyday characters are anything but given her insights, great storytelling and very readable and explicit prose.
What a fucking BOOK holy heck.
I’ll need to find a hard copy of it so I can devour it again and again, and inevitably lend it out and lose it forever. But it’ll be WORTH IT.
Up there with Let Me Sing You Gentle Songs for beautiful stories that split and twist like braided rivers before spilling back into the ocean.
Might have a new top five book ay