Underground Airlines made a lot of Best of 2016 lists, and I was lucky enough to snap it up at the library before the hold list got too long. It’s a story about what the world would look like if the Civil War had never happened, and slavery was still legal in America. Not surprisingly, it’s kind of a horrifying look. The protagonist is something of a bounty hunter, tracking down escaped slaves before they can make it to Canada and freedom, and his personal […]
Quick, and Fun, Like Riding a Bike (Not a Bronco)
Half Broke Horses is a “true-life” novel, meaning that Walls took all the stories she had heard and collected about her grandmother and wove them into a narrative, smoothing them into place in a coherent timeline. Since the novel is written in the first person, she admits to assuming her grandmother’s thoughts and exact words, and it’s probably best to just treat the whole thing as probable fiction – beyond that, though, many of the stories kind of defy belief! From learning to fly a […]
A Vivid, Gorgeous Read
I really, really enjoyed The Namesake, and it completely deserved my first five-star ranking of 2017. It’s about the son of Indian immigrants and his experiences growing up in America, and how his name shapes the man he becomes. I wrote about deciding on the stars it needed and what I liked about it here! A sidebar: I’m here to give this a shot again in 2017! I wrote a few reviews in early 2016, but eventually tapered off because I found it so difficult to […]
Like texts from your best friend.
Shonda Rhimes’ sister told her that she never said yes to anything, and after some reflection, she realized it was true. So she made a resolution to spend a year saying yes to anything – everything – that came her way, and change her life into something that would make her happier. It’s challenging when her very first “yes” is to give a commencement speech at Dartmouth, and her second is to appear on Jimmy Kimmel Live (if you’re not aware, Rhimes is the creator of […]