It’s official: I have the yips. I finished reading this book three weeks ago, but every time I’ve tried to write a review, I freeze, not because I have nothing to say but because I can’t seem to calm my mind enough to write the review this book deserves. For you see: Alexander Chee’s How to Write an Autobiographical Novel is my favorite book of the year. Chee shares essays about his life and writing career, keeping the subjects separate at first, then integrating them […]
Hard pass
Reader beware of “popular” library books that don’t have a hold list: the good-to-trash ratio is not in your favor. The Queen of the Night fell solidly in the latter category and to add insult to injury, it was looooong. But I was overseas and struggling to download books so I hunkered down and powered through. Ugh. This book is a first-person perspective of a woman adrift mostly in Paris in the 1860s and 1870s. She’s orphaned in America, crosses the Atlantic with the circus with […]