Tag: lit
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Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill
Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill This book was stunningly beautiful. Succinct, specific, heart-wrenching. A woman tells the story of her life and her unraveling marriage. It’s like the most heart wrenching short story you’ve ever read, but book-length. Beautiful.
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The Love Wife by Gish Jen
The Love Wife by Gish Jen Took me quite a long time to get through. Didn’t connect with these characters as much as I did in Typical American or Mona in the Promised Land. Still good. In a lot of ways this book is more about a well-meaning white lady trying to best care for […]
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Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay
Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay So… confession. I also read her book An Untamed State and was not impressed. I wanted to be. I follow Gay on Twitter and tumblr and am an all-around fan, so I scooped up that novel with enthusiasm, but for me it just fell flat. Another confession: I read this […]
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I’ll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson
I’ll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson I really loved the beginning of this book. It felt raw and real and dealt with adult-type things in a teen-like way. It was great. The language was sharp and funny and insightful. Once you get about a quarter of the way in it starts becoming more […]
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A Man Came Out of a Door in the Mountain by Adrianne Harun
A Man Came Out of a Door in the Mountain by Adrianne Harun This was one weird book. Basically a tale of good vs. evil with a little bit of poverty and race politics. It was OK. I didn’t feel compelled enough the unfurling evil to put up with the flowery, detailed language and ended […]
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The Circle by Dave Eggers
The Circle by Dave Eggers This book made me super tense the way an all-night HTML-fixing session or internet black hole does. It’s basically 1984 (George Orwell) with a female protagonist and the internet as your enemy. I simultaneously wanted to delete all of my internet profiles and check my Twitter followers. Read this if […]
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We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler
We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler I’ll be honest, even though I read the back, I quickly forgot that this was a book about a girl who lived her life with a chimp. This is an easy-read, fun-to-read, easy-to-empathize with book. It also made me want to deeply research animals. I […]
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Vida by Patricia Engel
Vida by Patricia Engel Not much to say about this book, which is not to say I didn’t like it. It’s a series of short stories about the same main female character at different stages. Rough and tumble and a little gritty. Really pleasant to get through, strong strong descriptions. I’d call it the female […]
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We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo
We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo This is a really gorgeous book. I think my only criticism is I could have easily spent a few hundred more pages with the main character. I wanted to more time spend with her coming to her own in America, the challenges that presents. There’s a lot going […]
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The People in the Trees by Hanya Yanagihara
The People in the Trees by Hanya Yanagihara This was kind of a weird read for me. Pleasant, seriously interesting premise (low-brow scientist ends up discovering a turtle that keeps people alive for hundreds of years past their natural expiration date). It’s a little mysterious and long-winded. It took me a while to get through […]
colleen stinchcombe 