NetGalley
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(This is also a book on my Summer Reading List, so you’re getting a 2 for 1 update!) David Gate’s essay and poetry collection “A Rebellion of Care” is beautiful. Gate writes from the heart, giving readers pieces of himself as he contemplates his life and loves. He reminds us that “joy is an act…
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I was quite disappointed in this book. I love sharks, I think they are beautiful and fascinating creatures. I doubt we will ever fully understand their behaviors, so when a book like this comes along I am interested to see what has been learned. This book doesn’t really offer any insight. It reads like someone…
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I absolutely loved Thanh Dinh’s “The Smallest God Who Ever Lived,” so I was very excited to read “Salt & Ashes.” Unfortunately, this book didn’t resonate with me the way “Smallest God” did. I will not say I didn’t like “Salt & Ashes,” there were some beautiful lines and truly moving thoughts. One line I…
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Emily Hauser’s brilliant book “Penelope’s Bones” has a place of note on the shelf beside my copies of Natalie Haynes’ “Pandora’s Jar” and Divine Might.” Hauser has presented her readers with a detailed study of figures from Homer’s works that hover in the background of his heroes’ lives: the women of legend. The women not…
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As a writer and book lover, I was very excited to read Emily Hodgson Anderson’s “Shadow Work: Loneliness and the Literary Life.” While I thought this book was very good and definitely worth reading–especially for writers–I didn’t love it. Some sections failed to hold my interest; however, other sections had me pausing, considering, rereading, and…
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Gruesome as it may sound, I love the Borden mystery (and I wholly believe that Lizzie did, in fact, murder her father and stepmother.) I was really looking forward to this book; unfortunately it didn’t really convey any emotion or suspense. The writing is very stilted, and the characters very flat. I have no doubt…
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Jen Schneider’s On (Pantry) Stock & (Kitchen) Timers is a unique collection of a stream-of-consciousness essays and poems that you wouldn’t think would work but does in an enchanting, eye-catching, made-you-look kind of way. Schneider’s words are a collage of thought that walks readers through a maze of sensation/emotion/confusion/questing. This collection deserves a re-read to…
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Foreign Fruit by Katie Goh is an outstanding book. I was expecting a microhistory about oranges, or citrus fruit as a whole; I was not expecting an incredibly well-researched social history about culture, society, belonging, searching for one’s place in the world, biases, acceptance, food cultivation, and environmentalism (among other topics). Goh’s book takes readers…
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Murder Ballads by Katy Horan is a treat for fans of Dark Folklore and Gothic themes (that’s a gruesome way to begin a review, isn’t it?). I was already familiar with “The Death of Queen Jane” and “The Twa Swans” thanks to Loreena McKennitt. Horan included a list of recordings, so readers can immerse themselves…
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Chelsea Steinauer-Scudder’s beautiful book Mother, Creature, Kin brings to mind the essays of Barbara Kingsolver and Rebecca Solnit, and Diane Ackerman’s A Natural History of the Senses. Steinauer-Scudder explores such topics as climate change, motherhood, seeking (and finding) one’s center as well as one’s place in the world. She asks her readers to consider their…
This is the Mask: A Book Blog 