Books shelved under “General”

Back in a previous life when I was an English student in university, we learned about something called intertextuality, which loosely put is the relationship among various texts. All I can say is that I am glad I read at least one book by Audre Lorde before reading The Days of Afrekete, which from its title to its tropes is steeped in Lorde’s work. (A lot of other reviews are also comparing it…

When I was younger, I might have loved this book. It’s exactly the right mixture of literary pretentiousness and unreliable narration that would have tickled the still-forming prefrontal cortex of my young university student brain. I might have written an extremely lengthy review, arguing how brilliant Karen Joy Fowler is for this masterpiece of a novel.

When I was younger, I might have hated this book. It’s a nauseating mixture of literary pretentiousness and unreliable…

Just absolutely devastating. But of course, I have come to expect that of Louise O’Neill.

After two brilliant forays into young adult novels, both well worth a read, O’Neill brought her unstinting criticism of patriarchy to her first adult novel Almost Love in the best and most scathing way possible. After the Silence is a more-than-worthy second adult novel. While both have passing similarities—depictions of emotional abuse, gaslighting, male partners treating women poorly—O’Neill looks at…

Second review: August 2020

It has been nine years since I first read Of Human Bondage, so I felt very overdue to revisit a book that I dubbed in my first review “ripe for reading again and again.” Maybe I was a little scared that it wouldn’t hold up. Well, I am in a re-reading mood in this second half of pandemic-laden 2020, and Maugham fit the bill.

Trigger warnings in this book for:…

Very mixed feelings about this one. Zazen is the kind of nihilistic, meditative tract that a lot of people rave about. Vanessa Veselka definitely examines a lot of the paradoxes inherent in the way some adults conduct themselves during those often aimless days after school and before middle age. At the same time, I did not have a good time reading this, and I never really enjoyed any of the characters. But I do wonder…

I have been a diehard fan of Louise O’Neill since I read Asking for It, and I pre-ordered Almost Love when I learned of its existence. O’Neill combines an unflinching feminist philosophy with an unfettered talent for storytelling, and her latest novel is no exception. Equal parts amusing, scathing, and surprising, Almost Love presents us with the paradoxes of making and breaking relationships and the ways in which we make and break ourselves in…

If I were younger, I would be all over this book. If I were slightly older than that, but still younger, then I would probably sneer at this book’s pretentiousness. As it is, having advanced to the ripe old age of 28, I have now acquired enough wisdom neither to gush nor to sneer but simply to shrug. The Golden House is most definitely Salman Rushdie, but it’s also a little bit different. And perhaps…

Books with unlikable protagonists are difficult. I love the conceit of an unlikable protagonist in some circumstances. Yet if one is not in the right mood, not liking the protagonist doesn’t help. Solar compounds this problem with Ian McEwan’s dense narration which, while providing excellent insight into Michael Beard’s interior life, means that we spend a lot of time on little moments that aren’t actually all that interesting. As with several books I’ve picked up…

It’s the penultimate read for the Banging Book Club! Arguably the most well-known of this year’s selections and easily the most controversial from the moment of its release, Lolita is definitely complex and not an easy book to read.

Lolita reminds me of Lullabies for Little Criminals, one of my favourite books and one that I revisited this year in preparation for teaching it to my adult learners (I’ve since taught it twice,…

Reading Adult Onset feels like watching someone else watch a movie inside a glass box: I can see them enjoying the movie but can’t quite join in. I think I’ve come to terms with the fact I didn’t like this book, but I’m still trying to figure out if it’s well written or not. That is, I’m pretty certain most of what I didn’t like is on me, not on the book—but maybe a little…

The epistolary novel was a huge tradition back when the novel was first becoming big. I love that blogs have breathed new life into this form. Anonymous Lawyer, based on a blog of the same name, is the somewhat-fabricated record of the hiring partner at a corporate law firm. He shares his views on summer students, employee management, how to get to the top, and family matters. In this character Jeremy Blachman conveys…

So, this was bizarre.

Horrorstör is a wacky horror novel. It's set in an American knock-off of Ikea called Orsk. This particular Orsk store is haunted, however, and three employees stay overnight to get to the bottom of it. Grady Hendrix attempts to enhance the novel through a number of artistic gimmicks ranging from the chapter titles/descriptions to the entire design of the book.

As far as the design goes, it's a nifty idea. It…

I’m very ambivalent about this book. Skinny Legs and All is a dense, intricate spiral of a story with funny characters but serious messages. However, Tom Robbins’ style grates on me a little bit. There’s nothing egregious about it, but maybe I’m just getting less patient with purpler prose as I approach the ripe old age of 26. In any event, I appreciate and respect this book, but I didn’t enjoy it as much as…

In Grade 11 English we read A Separate Peace, by John Knowles, as our Novel, and I hated it. Now, I know that hating the assigned reading is a time-honoured tradition in English class, but you have to understand that this was my first experience with such an emotion. I was the book-addicted, scholarly, high-achieving nerdy student who, in Grade 10, had gotten together with friends and their English teacher at lunch to read…

One of the central conceits of Jailbird is that the RAMJAC corporation seems to own everything, and it is owned by Mrs. Jack Graham, a reclusive woman whom few people have met in person and who gives orders by telephone, confirming them by mailing a letter to her subordinates signed by fingerprints from both hands. That’s weird, right?

Problem is, this is a Vonnegut novel, so it’s not nearly weird enough.

Walter F. Starbuck is…

I picked this up because one of my A2 English Literature students has selected it for her coursework partner text, to accompany our class discussions of Hardy and Player One. Ian McEwan is an author I’ve been meaning to read more but never really made a priority, so it’s nice to have a reason to jump him up in the queue.

I really do love the ghetto of genre fiction, but sometimes the overabundance…

This is my second P.G. Wodehouse experience following Cocktail Time, which was not a Jeeves and Wooster novel. I enjoyed Cocktail Time and was looking forward to Carry on, Jeeves, which I didn’t actually realize was an anthology. This proved to be even better than a novel as an introduction to Jeeves and Wooster. It gave me a nice sense of their relationship through the ages. And with each story nice and short…

This book has been on my to-read list for ages. Adding it was as simple as, “Hugh Laurie wrote a novel? Sold!” The fact that it’s a novel about a British ex-military freelancer trying to prevent the assassination of the American businessman he was hired to kill … well, that’s just a bonus. Some books keep their wit bottled up and dole it out carefully over the course of the story. The Gun Seller isn’t…

Many people have recommended P.G. Wodehouse to me many times, and now I have finally read one of his books. I had no particular reason for choosing Cocktail Time as my first Wodehouse experience. I went to a used bookstore for the first time here in my new town, and at the back of the shop was a small bookcase full of very new-looking Wodehouse books. With no idea where to begin, I looked to…

I went into this book without high expectations. Not only did I know little about Margaret Drabble or The Seven Sisters but I acquired this from the same person who gave me Love the One You’re With, so … yeah. Provenance aside, this book turned out to be immensely satisfying. Drabble creates a main character and narrator who is fallible and sympathetic, and the story she tells is firmly grounded in realism even as…