All You Can Ever Know, by Nicole Chung: The author’s deeply personal story of her adoption and subsequent reconnection with her birth family. Lovely writing but I wished the scope had expanded beyond the first-person experience. A Separation, by Katie Kitamura: Kitamura’s style always feels distant, at an emotional remove. I admired the ideas (though here I wanted more about mourning “wailers”) but didn’t feel a strong connection. Mount Verity, by Therese Bohman: Atmospheric – set in Sweden in the… Read more »
Posts Categorized: Blog
Books of 2026, Part 4
Front Street, by Brian Barth: Examination of the rise of tech giants in San Francisco alongside the increase in homelessness. Really interesting in parts, and I appreciated his willingness to interrogate his own motives, but…at times there was a little more autobiography than needed. One thing I would have appreciated was a list of the featured people – with so many different names and details to keep track of, I sometimes lost who we were following. Bluebird, Bluebird, by Attica… Read more »
Books of 2026, Part 3
The Great Believers, by Rebecca Makkai: This was wonderfully written and narrated, though I nearly combusted of frustration (perhaps intended by the author) in seeing so clearly exactly what was going to befall the main character, a young man living in Chicago during the HIV crisis of the 1980s and 90s. There are two narratives, the second told from the perspective of another character’s sister in the 2010s, and I found both compelling. Fiend, by Alma Katsu: I keep chasing… Read more »
Books of 2026, Part 2
Daughters of the Bamboo Grove, by Barbara Demick: I’m always fascinated when a book is decades in the making, especially when the journalist understandably assumed that there was no way to investigate/put together the truth. Demnick was a journalist in China for years and met multiple families who were forced to give up one or more children after having more than one in the era of the “One Child” policy (forced, or in some cases, subjected to the kidnapping of… Read more »
Books of 2026, Part 1
The Anomaly, by Hervé Le Tellier: This was fine. I think I might appreciate it more on a reread, but I also don’t think I want to reread it. The formatting – each of the first twelve or so chapters focuses on a new character – was fine, but the central idea wasn’t especially interesting. It seems like Le Tellier was working with a specific set of self-imposed constraints, which I admire but didn’t necessarily enjoy. And the Band Played… Read more »
Books of 2025, Part 11
Last ones of the year – On the Calculation of Volume II, by Solvej Balle: It would have been easy for this to feel repetitive, but instead it started to go in really interesting directions as it continued to explore the life of a woman trapped in (on?) the 18th of November. There were a few questions I’d had of the narrator in Volume I (eg “why doesn’t she do _______?” or “how come she hasn’t tried ______?”), and those… Read more »
Books of 2025, Part 10
Bear, by Julia Phillips: My brilliant friend! I had the privilege of watching this book come alive from its beginnings, yet its final form still managed to astonish me. The element of not-quite-fantasy juxtaposes sharply with the brutality and mundanity of everyday life. If You’re Seeing This, It’s Meant for You, by Leigh Stein: My other brilliant friend! I also had the pleasure of reading the early stages of this gothic novel meets hype house, but I went in unaware… Read more »
Books of 2025, Part 9
Interior Chinatown, by Charles Yu: Really clever and funny. At one point I thought a courtroom scene was going to descend into didacticism, but Yu pulled it back. Children of Radium, by Joe Dunthorne: I do love the archetypal “I was looking for this one thing but found something completely different” story, and there’s lots of good exploration and excavation here…but I felt a little shortchanged on radium overall. Also, the author’s mother probably needs a whole book about her…. Read more »
Books of 2025, Part 8
Monogamy, by Sue Miller: This novel felt very old-school in some ways – a study of the broad sweep of a marriage over time. Some of it felt…self-indulgent? Insular? I’m not sure. The focus isn’t that far from Claire Lombardo’s novels (The Most Fun We Ever Had, which I loved, and Same As It Ever Was, which I liked), but didn’t quite take me in the way those did. Joan is Okay, by Weike Wang: I loved Joan’s voice so… Read more »
Books of 2025, Part 7
The Bee Sting, by Paul Murray: Reading this was harrowing in that every decision each of the four main characters made was accompanied by my running internal monologue of “no no no don’t do that anything but that.” There are some strong choices here – one character’s sections use no periods, and although I got used to it, it never felt necessary – but the scope is expansive and the writing exquisite. The ending came to feel just right after… Read more »
