Tag: Book review
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“Does This Make Me Funny?” by Zosia Mamet
I reached for Zosia Mamet’s “Does This Make Me Funny” out of curiosity. I like reading essays very much, and earlier I read a collection of essays written by her father. This time, I expected a somewhat lighthearted collection of anecdotes about Hollywood, written from the perspective of someone younger, a new generation. Zosia’s status…
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“Mayra” by Nicky Gonzalez
Mayra and Ingrid used to be childhood friends, growing up in Hialeah, a Cuban neighborhood west of Miami. At the time, their friendship was for them the most essential thing in the world. Ingrid was a quiet one, while Mayra, wild and mostly free from her mother’s care, initiated adventures that were risky but exciting.…
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“The Lake Escape” by Jamie Day
“The Lake Escape” by Jamie Day is a summer book: something you can quickly pick up and read sitting in a beach chair and sipping iced tea, then promptly put it aside when a seagull tries to steal your snack. In the style of recently popular movies and novels, “rich people behaving badly”, the story…
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“The Bewitching” by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
The latest novel by Silvia Moreno-Garcia is a dark, atmospheric horror/mystery, consisting of three clearly defined storylines. Minerva, a young Mexican woman, is a student at a New England college, writing her thesis. It’s 1998, and strange things happen. She often feels a sense of foreboding, as if she has been watched. At one point,…
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“Big Bad Wool” by Leonie Swann
It’s winter, and the flock of sheep from “Three Bags Full,” the first book in a series “The Sheep Detective Stories” by Leonie Swann, goes to France, together with their shepherdess Rebecca and her eccentric, tarot-reading mom. They stay on a snowy meadow, with Rebecca’s trailer close by and a majestic chateau in the distance.…
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“My Friends” by Fredrik Backman
What a great gift friendship is—for everybody but especially for teenagers in their formative years, when they search for understanding and acceptance, trying to find themselves and moving between excitement and depression, often in a single day. Fredrik Backman’s “My Friends” is a book about friendship that helps them accept that being different is okay.…
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“Backstage” by Donna Leon
“Backstage” is Donna Leon’s second memoir, following her excellent “Wandering Through Life.” In it, we get another glimpse into the author’s life, this time in a shorter, less structured way. This is not a profound, highbrow autobiography, but rather a conversation over a cup of coffee, where you listen to your friend’s stories. It is…
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“Twist” by Colum McCann
There is a picture described in Colum McCann’s “Twist”: a simple drawing made by children that shows a tiny ship at the top of the frame and the overwhelming depths of the ocean below, its waters changing from blue to black. The small ship carries a hook that extends to the bottom of the sea,…
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“Bad Nature” by Ariel Courage
Hester, the heroine of Ariel Courage’s debut novel “Bad Nature,” is a 40-year-old New York lawyer with no family and no friends, and to top it off, she is diagnosed with terminal cancer. Refusing the treatment, she instead decides to fulfill her goal, which she has been carrying for years, always sure that it will…
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“Dream Count” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie knows how to write about women. I discovered this by reading her “Americanah” many years ago and was surprised by how beautiful and insightful the author’s view of women was. What great news is that after a 10-year break from fiction, one of my favorite authors is back with a new novel,…
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