If you haven’t heard of The Girl on the Train by now, I’m quite surprised you found this review. The smash-hit thriller from Paula Hawkins has had everyone talking since its release in 2015, and for good reason: The Girl on the Train is the kind of mystery novel that can hook even the most staunch thriller-haters, including this reviewer. Continue reading
A few writing books have become must-reads for any aspiring English-language novelist: Stephen King’s On Writing, Ursula K. Le Guin’s Steering the Craft, William Zinsser’s On Writing Well. This year, Colum McCann‘s Letters to a Young Writer: Some Practical and Philosophical Advice joins that list. Consisting of 52 essays crammed with no-nonsense advice, Letters is a must-read for any Aspiring Writer. Continue reading
The best kind of short-story collection doesn’t so much contain digestible vignettes as offer up chewy, meaty Everlasting Gobstoppers for reader consumption and reflection. Roxane Gay‘s Difficult Women does exactly that. Continue reading
In May 1980, the South Korean military fired upon students demonstrating against the closing of a university in Gwangju. The next two weeks saw militias and grieving mothers alike organizing to protest the brutality of the country’s de facto president, Chun Doo-hwan. Human Acts, the third of Han Kang‘s novels to be translated into English, centers on a single death in the weeks of violence: that of Dong-ho, a middle school student killed in the military’s last attack on civilians. Continue reading
Combine Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One with Ellen Wittlinger’s Hard Love, add just a dash of Milk Money, and what do you get? The Impossible Fortress by Jason Rekulak, a light read about teenage programmers in late-20th-century New Jersey that proved to be unputdownable. Continue reading