For years, people have recommended Siddhartha Mukherjee’s book about cancer, The Emperor of all Maladies, to me. It’s sooooo good, they would say, not like you think a book about cancer would be. I don’t read a ton of nonfiction and a book about the history of cancer has always sounded incredibly grim, despite what anyone says, so I’ve always politely ignored their suggestions. After reading The Gene however, I’m actually considering picking it up. Mukherjee is an incredibly talented writer. The Gene delves into […]
A great mystery in translation
I love a good mystery and The Ice Queen had a killer (pun intended) premise. German detectives find Jossi Goldberg shot execution style with a number drawn in blood near the body. As a 92-year-old Holocaust survivor, he isn’t the likeliest of murder victims. After getting him in for an autopsy however, they find that his arm has an unsuccessfully covered tatoo of his blood type, a sure sign that he was once part of the SS. Detectives Kirchhoff and Bodenstein must find out who […]
Don’t be deceived by the cover. This book will kick your ass.
The title and cover of this book are incredibly misleading. I knew to expect something a little different based on a few reviews, but if I had been going off first impressions, I would have expected a lighthearted beachy read. Something fluffy and deliciously fun. Dietland was fun, but not in fluffy way. One of the blurbs for it described it as Fight Club meets Margaret Atwood which is pretty spot on. The main character, Plum, tries her hardest to go unnoticed. She spends her […]
Nothing will ever live up to Austen’s genius, but this was still a fun read
3.5 stars. I didn’t go into this book expecting Jane Austen levels of genius so my experience reading Eligible was pretty enjoyable. As far as Austen adaptations go, it was pretty great, about on par with something like The Lizzie Bennet Diaries. Let’s be real, it’s unlikely that any adaptation is ever going to reach the heights of an Austen original, but I was surprised by how closely Sittenfeld’s version hewed to Pride and Prejudice. In Eligible, Liz and Jane are both in their late […]