I Like Books About Books: A Review of Shannon Reed’s Why We Read
WHY WE READ reminds us not only of where we began as readers but also where we could go if we release our inhibitions and allow ourselves to simply enjoy reading.
Reviews
2651 posts
How to Win a Gunfight: Bret Anthony Johnston’s We Burn Daylight
The teens in this book seem to know something the adults don’t: that if they are going to have any kind of future, they must create it themselves.
Reversing the Apocalypse: A Review of Hussain Ahmed’s Blue Exodus
...the world of the dead, the living, and the unborn are all in a cycle. Human materiality is indestructible.
The Eternal Grind: Nick Rees Gardner’s Delinquents and Other Escape Attempts
A clever manipulator of time, Gardner doesn’t rely on the convenience of thirst to move his characters through the page.
“I Am in Love With Moons”: My Lesbian Novel and To After That (TOAF) by Renee Gladman
But this is love: crying into your lover’s face until it becomes so ridiculous, that the event becomes absolutely precious.
Red as in: Dawn Lundy Martin’s Instructions for the Lovers
Perhaps like a phoenix, Martin maintains such a commanding presence throughout the book because she has endured the sacrificial fire of being a poet, the necessary self-immolation.
A Meditation on Magical Girls: Park Seolyeon’s A Magical Girl Retires
Park is not being cheeky. Rather, she’s taking a power that has lived in the hearts and minds of so many young people and propelling the magical girl genre into an entirely new dimension.
The Astonishing Power of African Poetry: A Review of New-Generation African Poets (Kumi)
Featuring gifted emerging poets from Ghana, Nigeria and South Africa . . . Kumi is a final tribute to a visionary and valuable investment in African poetry.
The Possibilities Are Endless: Lena Valencia’s Mystery Lights
[Valencia] portrays both the beauty and the horror of the desert, its landscape, and its inhabitants with the keen eye of someone who is intimately familiar with the rhythms and realities of desert life.
A Seaside Carnival of Narration: On Andrzej Tichý’s Purity
“You’ll be my way out. . . . And it makes no difference what you’re thinking or feeling, or whether or not you believe in transcendence or whatever you call it. I’m already inside of you.”
“There Is No Page That Can Hold Me”: Sam Sax’s Yr Dead
By insisting that Ezra’s ordinary life is epic, Sax shows that every life must be epic, holding everyone accountable. No one can sit out.
The Pawns of History Arise: Tania James’s Loot
What happens to the artist when his society shatters? How does he keep alive the impetus to create after losing his family and place in the world?