Hell of a Book

After a bit of a break reading other stuff, I'm back with a review for my 8th Aspen Words Literary Prize 2022 Longlist read. This one also happened to have won this year's National Book Award, so I was heading into it prepared for some intense literary fiction and some high expectations. Plus, it was set…

Greedy

There is something about the title of this book that felt aggressive in a way that made me not want to read it, despite the fact that it was compared to Samantha Irby (whose essay collections we are never meeting in real life and wow, no thank you I love) and seemed topically to be spot on…

Men We Reaped

I read my first book by Ward, her novel Sing, Unburied, Sing, a few years ago. It was an affecting reading experience, emotional and expressive, lyrical and illuminative. But the story style, the slow-moving family saga and ghost story mix, is one that I have to be in the right mind-space for, because it can easily cause me…

Wahala

Thanks to Libro.fm for the ALC of this book. It is one that I would definitely not have picked up as fast, if ever, without that push. And while there are quite a few ALCs I've gotten from them that remain unread (I'm just one person and there are so many great books and just too many things other than reading on…

The Empire of Gold

Check out my super fast turnaround on reading The Kingdom of Copper (the second book in the Daevabad trilogy) and this final installation! After it was like two years after reading The City of Brass that I finally continued with the series, I'm really proud of my "only" a couple months between these last two. Go me! Also, it…

Olga Dies Dreaming

Between the eye-catching cover (those colors!) and the ALC I got access to through Libro.fm, I picked up this new release really quickly! Not my normal MO, so cheers to me. Haha. And it was a lucky choice, because this was a page-turner of entertainment and big ideas from start to finish. Olga Dies Dreaming by…

Beautiful Country

I'd seen a few reviews and/or TBR stacks featuring this memoir, but it shot to the top of my personal TBR when I read a twitter thread about a horrible interaction the author had with an attendee at an event at which she was on a speaker panel. It was infuriating to read about, so…

What Storm, What Thunder

This is the sixth book in my slow-but-steady read-through of the 2022 Aspen Words longlist. They just announced the shortlist, actually, and, while I still plan to finish the read-through, I have to say that my totally random reading order choices were quite on point, because of the 6 I have now read (this one included), 4…

Empire of Pain

Alright. I did it. In one of the most overwhelming #bookstagrammademedoit reading choices I've ever made, with particular shout outs to @thestackspod and @irisbooklist, I decided to give this one a go. I've never really seen a nonfiction book talked about like this one was, with so much hype. I hesitated to read it though, because I worked in youth…

The Natural Mother of the Child

I, like so many people in the book world, was sucked into the Barnes and Noble 50% off hardbacks sale at the beginning of this year. It was basically irresistible. And this memoir was one of the selections I made. I haven't really seen it around much, but with a background in childbirth and breastfeeding education…