Category: Books
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New Releases I’ve Read Lately – Review Catchup
I don’t know how it happened but I have already met my reading goal for the year. Fifty-two books, and then some. What I have not done, is keep up with longer form reviews. There are just too many good books, and not enough time. But I’ve heard it said (by a certain bard) that […]
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Choose Gallant, it’ll Choose You Back
“Home is a choice.” And it’s clear from the first page of Gallant that V.E. Schwab made that choice. Because this book is a sort of home. One where Schwab pushes life into dead things. One that grabbed me with its florid, musical prose and didn’t let go, even after the last page was closed. […]
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Rage Burns Bright, Love Burns Brighter – Extasia Review
There is something undeniably eerie about Claire Legrand’s latest horror novel, Extasia (out today!). Sure, eerie seems a fitting word for a story rife with ghosts, magic, and gruesome, unsolved murders. But what had me shrinking into myself and shuddering in my reading nook wasn’t so much the gore and hauntings as the setting – […]
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This Book is Golden
Phil Stamper has quickly become one of my auto-buy authors, and with his third published novel, it’s not hard to see why. Golden Boys, pitched as a queer Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, is what it claims to be, and so much more. This group of overachievers stole my heart from the off, and held […]
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On Grief – Stories to Lean On
When we talk about grief, we often talking about losing family, friends, pets… But, as many of us have learned over the past year and a half, loss can take many forms – a job, a relationship, a sense of normalcy. It’s during some of these difficult moments when we feel most alone. Because we […]
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Hoang’s Best Yet: The Heart Principle
It’s out of consideration for life that I don’t keep any plants. I do have a pet. He’s a rock. His name is, very creatively, Rock. Helen Hoang, The Heart Principle During a year of critical burnout for many, I never expected to be so deeply touched by a book about the very same. But […]
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Three Wise Men: An Ode to Family & Sacrifice
I, admittedly, don’t read too much non-fiction these days, and even fewer wartime memoirs. But over the past two years, I’ve been lucky enough to happen across a few that I couldn’t pass up, in particular Thank You for My Service, No Ordinary Dog, and most recently (thanks to St. Martins Press), Three Wise Men. […]
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It’s All Greek to Me – My Favorite Mythos Retellings
You can always count me in for a Greek mythology ‘retelling,’ especially when it examines the characters who were overlooked or only briefly mentioned in the stories of the larger so-called heroes. Thankfully, there have been a plethora of these stories in recent years, from Stephen Fry’s Mythos and Heroes to Madeline Miller’s Circe and Kalynn […]
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There Goes My Paycheck: Auto-Buy Authors & Songwriters
There once was a time where if you wanted to enjoy certain media, odds were, you had to own it. These days, with streaming and digital lending, the most you need do is pay a ‘nominal’ monthly fee to access that content. Sure, you might not own it, but do you need to? I’m someone […]
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For the Ones Who Miss Live Music…
Some people find salvation in a stained-glass building, some people find it in a basement punk show. Leah Johnson, Rise to the Sun Last year, Leah Johnson stole my heart with You Should See Me In a Crown. I knew, right then and there, that I was never going to be able to turn down another […]