Recent Reads I Did Not Talk About Because I Am Useless

It's been almost two months since I last wrote a blog post and about a month since I actually posted on here. That's the elephant in the room and the truth is I just forgot how to read friends. It's tough to be a book blogger if you do not actually read but instead just…

One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston Review

Goodreads blurb: For cynical twenty-three-year-old August, moving to New York City is supposed to prove her right: that things like magic and cinematic love stories don’t exist, and the only smart way to go through life is alone. She can’t imagine how waiting tables at a 24-hour pancake diner and moving in with too many weird…

People We Meet On Vacation by Emily Henry Review

Goodreads blurb: Poppy and Alex. Alex and Poppy. They have nothing in common. She’s a wild child; he wears khakis. She has insatiable wanderlust; he prefers to stay home with a book. And somehow, ever since a fateful car share home from college many years ago, they are the very best of friends. For most of…

April 2021 Wrap Up

April was a month of many reads BUT one is reigning supreme and that is of course the chicken book. So let's chat about it first and then move on to the other ones that I maybe failed to mention elsewhere due to the chicken book consuming my life. Brood by Jackie Polzin Rating: 5…

Pop Song: Adventures in Art & Intimacy by Larissa Pham Review

Goodreads blurb: Endlessly inventive, intimate, and provocative, this memoir-in-essays is a celebration of the strange and exquisite state of falling in love, whether with a painting or a person, that interweaves incisive commentary on modern life, feminism, art and sex with the author's own experiences of obsession, heartbreak, and past trauma. Like a song that feels…

Brief Thoughts on the Women’s Prize 2021 Shortlist

The Women's Prize for Fiction 2021 shortlist was just announced, so I figured I share my thoughts on it quickly. I've only managed to read 2 and half(ish) books of the longlist, since I was not prioritizing reading it – I have read Luster and No One Is Talking About This and I absolutely loved…

An Ode to the Weird Chicken Book: Brood by Jackie Polzin

Goodreads blurb: Meet Gloria, Gam Gam, Darkness, Miss Hennepin County, and their unlikely owner. Over the course of a single year, our nameless narrator heroically tries to keep her small brood of four chickens alive despite the seemingly endless challenges that caring for another creature entails. From the freezing nights of a brutal winter to…

Women’s Prize 2021 Reviews #2: No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood

Goodreads blurb: As this urgent, genre-defying book opens, a woman who has recently been elevated to prominence for her social media posts travels around the world to meet her adoring fans. She is overwhelmed by navigating the new language and etiquette of what she terms "the portal," where she grapples with an unshakable conviction that a…

The Helm of Midnight by Marina J. Lostetter Review

Goodreads blurb: In a daring and deadly heist, thieves have made away with an artifact of terrible power--the death mask of Louis Charbon. Made by a master craftsman, it is imbued with the spirit of a monster from history, a serial murderer who terrorized the city with a series of gruesome murders. Now Charbon is…

March 2021 Wrap Up

March was a hodgepodge of things – I had a lot of time at the beginning of the year, and then March hit with a very busy period, so I had to scramble to get back into actually working. Other than that, there's still a global pandemic and not a lot of things going on.…

Women’s Prize 2021 Reviews #1: Luster by Raven Leilani

Goodreads blurb: Luster sees a young black woman figuring her way into life as an artist and into love in this darkly comic novel. She meets Eric, a digital archivist with a family in New Jersey, including an autopsist wife who has agreed to an open marriage. In this world of contemporary sexual manners and racial…

Open Water by Caleb Azumah Nelson

Goodreads blurb: A stunning, shattering debut novel about two Black artists falling in and out of loveTwo young people meet at a pub in South East London. Both are Black British, both won scholarships to private schools where they struggled to belong, both are now artists - he a photographer, she a dancer - trying to…