This is probably one off the most magical books I've ever read. Her series of essays touch on her personal life but intertwines with century old folktales, or wonder tales as she prefers. Armed with a PhD in folklore, Urquhart weaves a spellbinding, magical journey through everyday life.
Highly recommend to read for those looking for a sense of wonder and magic.
Fascinating from start to finish. The unsung heroes in the CIA, never given proper credit for their achievements in a "man's world," these women are finally being acknowledged. Mundy does a great job in revealing their character to persevere and dedicate themselves to keeping America's spy network secret. Through their work and attention to detail, they were able to track the elusive Osama bin Laden is just one example of their achievements.
Great read and a story worth reading.
A haunting and dreamlike meditation on love and death whose structure of free associations gives it the feel more of a poem than a story. Beautiful and fascinatingly opaque.
A bus accident leads a frantic father into the dizzying maze of military checkpoints and border control in occupied Palestine as he tries to find out what happened to his child. With eye-witness accounts from medics and survivors, bureaucrats and armed forces, the daily tragedies and injustices committed against the people of Palestine are too overwhelming to hold in one's heart.
A most comprehensive and truly sweet memoir, manifesto, and ode to a movement, a genre, the Cure's origins, and Goth music and culture as a whole. Goth is and always has been more than cobwebs and heavy synths and black eyeliner and screamo and religious motifs and ethereal motions, and is a recognition and admiration of a darkness that's always there. It's a wondrous attempt to find, create, and give meaning to pre-established invitations of anti-authority, etc. from punk, etc. Get in the car kids—we're blasting 'Bela Lugosi Is Dead' and getting ice cream on the way to the cemetery.
At first blush, this seems like a Romeo and Juliet, enemies to lovers, YA fantasy. Everline, of the Wardens, stands guard against Ravel and the bloodthirsty Vespertines, while living and fighting in a magic-infused, gothic wasteland. Delving deeper, you find forbidden secrets, betrayal, romance, and the question of who, or what, makes up a family? With decadent prose, I could almost taste the decay and honey rising off the pages. Great read for October spookiness!
Weiden's debut is a fast-paced page turner about complex modern justice and drug trafficking, with a big, beating heart that flushes its pages with compassion. Don't miss out on this one! For fans of S.A. Cosby, Lee Child, Marcy Rendon, and Don Winslow.
All you Jeff VanderMeer and Sofia Samatar freaks out there (rise up!!) will love this one. Chandrasekera's dreamlike postcolonial intrigue is a spy story, the tale of a Chosen One post-heel turn, a novel about gods and devils, a terrifying exposition on political violence, and so much more, rolled up into a huge, fascinating Katamari ball of a book. I loved this and think it deserves a place in conversation with the best speculative fiction books from the past decade.
"I owe the boldness that I tapped to the poor women in my blood." pg. 59
My grandma, Brenda Joyce, was a big fan of dancing barefoot in the kitchen--especially when Dolly came on. This book felt like talking with her.
Pairs well with too-sweet tea and the song Here You Come Again.
The two most remarkable things about Dan Sinykin's history of how corporate conglomeration in publishing has changed the course of literature are 1) it's never been written before and 2) there was a time, not so long ago, when the merging and acquisition of publishing houses was unthinkable. Sinykin teaches how to read "through a colophon," and that "our outsize attention to the author alone is a trick of history." Bestellers are engineered. Book buyers for chains and indies alike are key to a book's success. Sinykin's fascinating history is underlineable on every page.
