I had never heard of Holly Jennings or Arena before my library book club assigned it, but that’s the beauty of reading new books and authors you never knew existed. I am also not a video gamer at all, so the content is unfamiliar. Sometimes, I learn a lot, and other times, I learn to gut through a book in order to finish and be able to discuss it with other people. This book, I am afraid, falls into the latter category for me. Kali […]
48: An intriguing new novel
I’m a sucker for new books, but I don’t often read them, because of time limits, my library tower (graduated from stack), and my enormous TBR list in general. My sister recommended Jennifer Egan’s Manhattan Beach, and I saw it available at my library and put it in my basket on a whim (yes, I have officially gotten greedy to the point of getting basketfuls of books from the library—it’s a new first for me!). It was a great book to read on the airplane […]
47: An okay emergent YA novel from a great talent.
I greatly enjoy Jason Reynolds’ voice in young adult literature. I think his works are necessary to adding diverse literature for young adult readers, and I have liked his novels to this point. Since I read and LOVED All American Boys and Long Way Down, I think I may have a hard time going back to his first books (case in point: The Boy in the Black Suit was just okay). So I had that in mind when I read When I Was the Greatest, […]
46: An uneven and somewhat disappointing debut
I was trawling the library’s New Books shelves (as you do when the school year is over, and you can easily read a stack of books in a few weeks), and R.F. Kuang’s debut novel The Poppy War caught my eye. I am trying to read more work by women of color, and science fiction/fantasy is not always the easiest to come by. I decided that this book held an intriguing premise, and I was curious to see how it would pan out. I read […]