For several years now, I’ve refused to buy hardcover books. I don’t like the added expense, of course, but mostly, I just don’t like the extra bulk and really don’t like how they feel in my hand: too much like textbooks or hymnals. I don’t need to be reminded of either when I’m trying to read something fun. As a result, I’m consistently a year or two behind everyone else with my reading, a (discount) price I’m willing to pay. David Sedaris has long […]
I don’t want to review this book
Pachinko, Min Jin Lee’s novel following multiple generations of a Korean family through most of the 20th Century, has received a lot of positive attention: finalist for the National Book Award, 10 best books of 2017 for the New York Times Book Review, Roxane Gay’s favorite book of the year (according to the Washington Post). And from what I’ve seen, the reviews here at CBR have been universally positive. So I’m at a bit of a loss, because I really didn’t enjoy it. At all. […]
Everybody makes one another’s terrible mistakes
I read this book too fast. I didn’t intend to. I picked it out as my travel book for a week of work and visiting friends in Boston, thinking I’d chip away a little each day. Then I read most of it on the flight out and finished it the next day because I just. couldn’t. help myself. In writing these reviews for #CBR10, I’m beginning to wonder if the amount of detail I retain is inversely proportional to the amount of time it takes […]
Spooky and beautiful and unprotected from the raw bloodiness of the world
Yolandi and Elfrieda are sisters raised in an isolated, stifling, patriarchal community of Russian Mennonite immigrants in rural Canada. Their parents buy Elf a forbidden piano to give her an outlet, and she pours everything into her music, leaving home at 17 to study in Oslo, eventually becoming a world-renowned concert pianist. But her life is weighed down by the crippling pain of depression, and she ends up in the hospital after yet another suicide attempt. In All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews, everyone […]