BookBrowse Editorial Review
Redeployment by Phil Klay
(5/7/2014)
In choosing fiction, Klay had greater creative liberty, and in using short stories, he had the advantage of still greater variety – in locales, points of view and of course, characters. Redeployment communicates powerfully, articulating the experience of war from a diversity of viewpoints. Because of this wide angle view, it seems like it should be required reading before any recruit becomes a grunt.
BookBrowse Editorial Review
The Trip to Echo Spring: On Writers and Drinking
by Olivia Laing
(2/19/2014)
My affection for this book grew slowly. Laing liberally mingles her present travels, her own past exposure to alcoholism with the lives and writings of the featured writers. This complex layering initially intimidated, and at times, confused me. But as I read, I grew accustomed to the complex rhythm, then became happily absorbed by it. This splintered narrative might not be for every reader; it is ultimately effective, however, in exposing just that same characteristic in the lives - and sometim
BookBrowse Editorial Review
Knocking on Heaven's Door: The Path to a Better Way of Death
by Katy Butler
(10/16/2013)
If you are moved by the drama of the everyday, if you appreciate a sustained narrative willing to follow its characters to their best and worst places, or if you have ever watched someone who suffers from a fatal illness, or the inevitabilities of aging, lose all quality of life due to the marvels of medicine - and then wondered if medicine always is so marvelous, you will want to give this book a chance.
BookBrowse Editorial Review
Happier Endings: A Meditation on Life and Death
by Erica Brown
(5/8/2013)
Erica Brown accomplishes much with her new book, Happier Endings: Overcoming the Fear of Death, not the least of which is writing an engaging and uplifting manual on ways to die well. Brown blends humor, personal experience and solid research in her quest to learn about every aspect of mortality. Where other books focus on one aspect of death, such as grief, ethics or commercial concerns, Brown includes them all and synthesizes them into an approachable meditation on a topic Americans lov
BookBrowse Editorial Review
Life After Life by Kate Atkinson
(4/17/2013)
Reviewing a book with a divided mind is not easy. Do I say that the writing here is of the highest quality, that the settings are vivid? Yes. That even the complex structure and repetition serve a purpose? Yes, again. But will I also be transparent enough to say that the story wearied me, that it began to overwhelm? I must.
BookBrowse Editorial Review
Schroder by Amity Gaige
(2/6/2013)
Having read Amity Gaige's previous two books, I anticipated the beauty of her latest novel, Schroder. What I didn't anticipate was the weightiness of it, her ability to take the slightest moments and the lightest phrases and mold them into matters of great consequence. I also enjoyed Gaige's more substantial plot: this novel, though still quite lyrical, has the suspense and forward action that were sometimes lacking in her previous two books.
BookBrowse Editorial Review
The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking
by Oliver Burkeman
(1/23/2013)
The Antidote is aptly titled: the book is both a cure for what ails most guides to happiness and an anti-self-help title of sorts. Author Oliver Burkeman offers compelling introductions to seven philosophies that capitalize on the reality that capitalize on the reality of the negative – versus the popular and permeating positive – to promote happiness.
BookBrowse Editorial Review
Crazy Brave: A Memoir
by Joy Harjo
(8/22/2012)
Harjo moves through her history in an admirably concise fashion. Memories, happy and painful, are related in spare, honest sentences; no words are wasted. Her deep love for and spiritual connection with the arts are obvious, though this book emphasizes language, story, and poetry above dance, music, and painting. It is clear that these creative pursuits and the "knowing" - her Native American subconscious connection to the spiritual/eternal - were her saviors during cycles of abuse, fear and pan
BookBrowse Editorial Review
Tell the Wolves I'm Home: A Novel
by Carol Rifka Brunt
(7/11/2012)
Tell the Wolves I'm Home is a literary pleasure read. The crisp, short chapters and slightly funky (and therefore realistic) characters had me turning pages fast and late. Rifka Brunt's story treats a potentially morbid central topic with a surprisingly light touch. The AIDS-related death of a homosexual family member in Rifka Brunt's hands becomes the inciting incident of a whimsical, unconventional love story. She weaves teenage awkwardness, 1980s AIDS paranoia and domestic drama into a
BookBrowse Editorial Review
Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking
(2/1/2012)
Though her research is current and substantial, the basic tenets of introvert-versus-extrovert issues she explores are, for the most part, not revelatory. Rather, it is her big picture view and her unification of so many aspects of one maligned temperament that make the book an excellent read. Quiet is different from previous books on introversion because it explores the topic from so many perspectives. Other titles on this subject tend to be strictly in the self-help genre or straight me
BookBrowse Editorial Review
A Monster Calls: Inspired by an idea from Siobhan Dowd
by Patrick Ness
(10/5/2011)
Patrick Ness's expansion and completion of Siobhan Dowd's story concept, in conjunction with Jim Kay's gorgeous illustrations, unite to form one of the best novels I have read this year. The book is further proof that the young adult market is enticing some of today's most talented writers. Yes, A Monster Calls is a narrative filled with magic, but the meaning behind that magic extends way beyond a traditional fantasy narrative.
BookBrowse Editorial Review
Orientation: And Other Stories
by Daniel Orozco
(6/15/2011)
Here is a collection of short stories that excites me. The author's talent is evident from the opening page, and the brevity of the stories enables busy readers like me to enjoy them in the small bits of free time we have to read. Daniel Orozco's characters and modern, mostly work-life settings add up to a rare type of writing: short stories that read like mini page-turners. Orientation is filled with people very similar to ourselves and to those we encounter every day, but instead of bei
BookBrowse Editorial Review
Deadly Spin: An Insurance Company Insider Speaks Out on How Corporate PR Is Killing Health Care and Deceiving Americans
by Wendell Potter
(1/13/2011)
Potter's closing chapters expand from the detail he shares about one American industry to a much broader issue – the shrinking of traditional journalism and the substitution of spin and opinion for objective information sources. Potter discusses a key element of what librarians often call information literacy. When we can no longer identify the source of critical, factual information – like our news or the data used to create legislation – how can we trust its accuracy? The lessons from Potter's
BookBrowse Editorial Review
Yellow Dirt: An American Story of a Poisoned Land and a People Betrayed
by Judy Pasternak
(11/3/2010)
Yellow Dirt is a work of the highest quality journalism, an exposé made possible by meticulous research... She has taken a large cast of characters, a bulging list of corporations and government agencies, and a scientific subject and managed to unite them in a story that the average reader can comprehend... This book is a solemn reminder of what harm can result when governments act in haste and fear and business decisions are based solely on profit. The "American story" of Yellow Dirt<
BookBrowse Editorial Review
Half a Life by Darin Strauss
(11/3/2010)
Half a Life has a larger significance than simply rehashing a sad event in the past; in fact, it's one of those rare books that I would recommend to almost any reader. We all have to find ways to cope with loss and much of this adjustment is hidden from our everyday routine and acquaintances. Though Strauss's memoir has a painful premise, I found it a surprising comfort to understand another person's response to tragedy, especially when I noticed that the author's most private thoughts, t
BookBrowse Editorial Review
Burmese Lessons: A True Love Story
by Karen Connelly
(6/9/2010)
I am complimenting Burmese Lessons when I say that it is a book that is difficult to define. It is a travel narrative of the finest quality. Its pages contain both history and biography. Most of all, it is the memoir of Connelly's fierce love for both a person and place. This book meets my definition of a page-turner. It is literary nonfiction of great substance and beauty.
BookBrowse Editorial Review
Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea
by Barbara Demick
(1/13/2010)
This book, a product of years of Demick's travel and research, gives six former North Koreans the rare opportunity to speak for themselves, to tell their uncensored stories to a world hungry for a better understanding of the Korea above the 38th parallel... Many times Demick is successful in drawing her reader into the forbidden world of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), but some tales are so jarring that one has to fight against disbelief and shock to stay connected to the chara
BookBrowse Editorial Review
Love Stories in This Town by Amanda Eyre Ward
(4/22/2009)
Ward’s stories offer entertaining, light reading punctuated by spurts of messy reality. The mix of heartache and humor, blended with sometimes outlandish circumstances will likely appeal to female readers like me, and most especially to those who are mothers... Negative and positive are nearly balanced in these stories and though we cannot expect the same in real life, this evenness makes for hopeful reading.
BookBrowse Editorial Review
Tinkers by Paul Harding
(1/21/2009)
Tinkers is a skillfully written novel. It succeeds in demonstrating that our daily, microcosmic lives contain vastness and fantasy. This book offers its reader a meditation on the private geography of the mind and, through Harding's characters, a glimpse of our own efforts to piece together the broken and mismatched elements of human relationships and existence.
BookBrowse Editorial Review
The Forever War by Dexter Filkins
(10/1/2008)
For anyone who despairs, as I have, of ever understanding the nations and events which orbit around the date September 11, 2001, The Forever War is part antidote, part exacerbation. As in the rest of life, the more we learn, the less we really know. Yet, this is the great value of the book. Filkins shows us that black and white ideologies – political, moral or otherwise – may be easy to stand by in our comfortable, peaceful world, but they become much harder to proclaim from the other side of th
BookBrowse Editorial Review
The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson
(8/13/2008)
The Gargoyle is, above all, entertaining. Davidson's work of seven years is the kind of pleasure reading that is hard to find: fantasy and suspense combined with intelligent research and strong writing. The pace slows a bit too much during some of Marianne's narrative diversions but, on the whole, the novel is a successful page turner. The Gargoyle is sometimes raw, sometimes delicately detailed. It offers a modern and historic love story that, though predicable, cannot be called c
BookBrowse Editorial Review
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood
by Ta-Nehisi Coates
(6/1/2008)
Coates's description of his growing years in drug and violence-riddled West Baltimore is simultaneously ugly and beautiful – a glimpse into a city of barely controlled chaos and a portrait of a father clinging and dragging his children into safe adulthoods. The author's honesty is unflagging, revealing flaws in himself just as easily as those he observes in his father, brother, teachers and friends. His language flows from the page to the ear, producing a silent chorus of hip hop rhythms, street
BookBrowse Editorial Review
The Monsters of Templeton: A Novel
by Lauren Groff
(4/17/2008)
If one were to complain about Monsters, the overwhelming number of characters and voices introduced throughout the root story would be the most likely grievance. Yet for some readers, this layering of history and modern day will be a large part of the book's appeal. The determination must be based on personal taste and reading mood. This is a book for readers wishing to be enveloped by their reading, willing to be engrossed, and desirous of a novel that requires them to devote their full
BookBrowse Editorial Review
All Shall Be Well; And All Shall Be Well; And All Manner of Things Shall Be Well by Tod Wodicka
(4/3/2008)
Despite light moments and clever demonstrations of culture clash, Wodicka's novel is not a light read. His themes are weighty, his research is thorough and his characters are burdened by their personal and familial histories. Readers may guess that the struggles described in the book's pages are a reflection of its author. Wodicka admits to creating Burt Hecker at least partially out of the need to purge himself of similar tendencies before the birth of his own child. Though Wodicka himself is n
BookBrowse Editorial Review
The Eye of Jade: A Mei Wang Mystery
by Diane Wei Liang
(2/7/2008)
Fans of page-turning suspense may find this novel a bit too quiet, but readers interested in exploring other cultures and those who appreciate the subtleties of writing more often associated with literary fiction than mysteries, should find this first Mei Wang mystery very enjoyable. The Eye of Jade is an engaging glimpse of modern China blended with some of the compelling elements of the classic "who-done-it" adventure. It is also a work of fiction that successfully introduces one to the intrig
BookBrowse Editorial Review
My Enemy's Cradle by Sara Young
(1/24/2008)
My Enemy's Cradle is a good read, though there are plot elements and character interactions that may strike some as unrealistic. However, these portions do gain credibility by virtue of the unnatural setting and extreme time in which they take place. Risky decisions, compromise and relationships – both forbidden and convenient – during the German occupation are part of Cyrla's story, as they are part of World War II history.
BookBrowse Editorial Review
A Golden Age: A Novel
by Tahmima Anam
(1/10/2008)
A Golden Age is written with absorbing specificity: Anam is confident in the purpose and placement of layered detail. Yet, the book also shines in its exploration of universal themes and human emotion. Family, loss, loneliness, sacrifice, religion and response to war – many of the grand subjects of fiction – are found in this tale of a mother who refuses to surrender her children or, in the end, her adopted country.
BookBrowse Editorial Review
Someone Knows My Name: aka: The Book of Negroes
by Lawrence Hill
(11/27/2007)
Turning the pages of Hill's book is effortless in one sense and very difficult in another. Protagonist Aminata Diallo's desire for freedom is unquenchable, her drive inspiring and superhuman. The losses she experiences, however, are just as potent as her will. Brief joys of love and family are suffocated by mourning time and time again. Some scenes approach the threshold of heartache plausible for one soul to bear, requiring Hill to find or create a new purpose for Aminata's fight for life and f