Cormac McCarthy is an impressive writer, but reading his books often feels like jumping into the middle of a disturbing nightmare. I’ve been reading through his works, but I don’t read any more than one per year for my own sanity. This time it was probably more my state of mind, but Outer Dark (1968) turned out to be one of his more disturbing books. I’m going to take a nice long break before I read another. I think I only have Suttree left now anyway. Outer Dark focuses […]
Not as good as the hockey books
I’ve enjoyed Sarina Bowen’s romance stories with hockey-playing college students. I was able to get Coming in From the Cold (2014) for free from Amazon, so even though I’d heard it wasn’t as good, I knew I still wanted to read it. Also, I was going on a short camping trip in November, and I needed something to pass the time during the cold, dark nights. Although I was already reading a book by Cormac McCarthy, I figured I’d much prefer to read something a little […]
A true look at the damages of alcohol, alcoholism, and women
I have been slowly and surely working my way through this list of 21 Books From The Last Five Years That Every Woman Should Read. The latest book I picked up was Drink (2013) by Ann Dowsett Johnston. Drink is part memoir and part hard look at drinking, alcoholism, and women. Johnston describes her own battle with alcoholism: how it developed; how it affected her life and family; and how she was able to eventually stop drinking. At the same time, she describes recently-occurring trends regarding women and […]
Impressive and ambitious
“How could he explain to Marjorie that what he wanted to capture with his project was the feeling of time, of having been a part of something that stretched so far back, was so impossibly large, that it was easy to forget that she, and he, and everyone else, existed in it–not apart from it, but inside of it.” Homegoing (2016) is a far-reaching and impressive first novel by Yaa Gyasi. The book begins in the late 1700’s on the coast of Western Africa with two […]