Tracking her rise from humble beginnings to acclaimed author and self-made anthropologist, Peter Bagge‘s Fire!!: The Zora Neale Hurston Story charts the life of the Harlem Renaissance’s most famous woman writer, fast-forwarding through her life in bold technicolor to give us the woman, the myth, the legend: Zora Neale Hurston. Continue reading
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
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