Books

The Names ★★★★★

Wonderfully written. Although it's more about choices, the names Cora choses for each of the three parallel lives,

The Book of Lost Hours ★★★★★

I'm a sucker for time travel, so this was always going to land well. But The Book of

The Correspondent ★★★★★

Written entirely through a series of letters with a late-seventies woman as the central protagonist. Much like myself, she

How Fiction Works ★★★☆☆

It was a little too academic for casual reading. Also, it focused on the works of classic literature most of

Hell of a Book ★★★★☆

Hell of a Book is doing at least two things at once, and it knows it. That's the

Six Days in Bombay ★★★☆☆

Meh! Six Days in Bombay had everything going for it on paper: late-1930s Bombay, a half-Indian half-English

Not Quite Dead Yet ★★★☆☆

Three stars feels right for this one: a solid premise that runs longer than it needed to. Jet gets attacked

The Phoenix Crown ★★☆☆☆

Disappointing from one of my favorite authors. The Phoenix Crown promised much: Kate Quinn, San Francisco, 1906, four women, an

People Like Us ★★★★★

Jason Mott can write. Reading this book is an experience. People Like Us is set between a Minnesota college campus

The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt ★★★★☆

Three thousand years of history in one book is a tall order. Wilkinson mostly delivers. I listened to the audiobook

A Deadly Episode ★★★★☆

Four stars. Six books in, and Horowitz still knows how to keep this series moving. This entry leans more meta

These Summer Storms ★★☆☆☆

Three stars, and mostly because I went in with the wrong expectations. I picked this up for the Succession-adjacent

Last One Out ★★★★☆

Nothing ever happens in a Jane Harper book, at least in the present, but she has an uncanny ability to

The High Mountains of Portugal ★★★★☆

Four stars, and mostly because chapters two and three earned it after chapter one made me wonder if I'

The Art of Spending Money: Simple Choices for a Richer Life ★★★☆☆

I came into this as a big fan of The Psychology of Money, which actually changed how I think about

Orbital ★★★★☆

This is prose doing the work plot usually does, and it mostly earns it. There's no real plot

Razorblade Tears ★★★☆☆

Disappointing compared to All the Sinners Bleed. Although the premise held much promise and the characters dropped a lot of

Wild Dark Shore ★★★★★

Haunting, sad, and full of yearning. We live in a world that's beset with woes of climate change

The Black Wolf ★★★☆☆

I'm conflicted about this one. Louise Penny's writing remains impressive at creating the right mood and

The Devils ★★★★★

Abercrombie doing what Abercrombie does best, and doing it well. This is set in an alternate fantasy Europe soaked in

My Seditious Heart: Collected Non-fiction ★★★★★

A quintessential read for Indians. In her inimitable prose, Arundhati Roy lays bare the Indian government's (BJP and