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Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, by Jonathan Safran Foer
I think my in-person book club has contracted “Annoying Child Narrator” disease. Before this book we read The Elegance of the Hedgehog, which had an overly precocious child narrator, and before that we...
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Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel
This book. It is… a book. It is a long book, but not long like Ken Follett‘s books are long, in the thousand-page sense — long like I thought it was going to take me ten or so hours to read and it took...
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Lost and Found, by Carolyn Parkhurst
I really enjoyed Parkhurst’s The Dogs of Babel when I read it a few months ago, and so I was excited to read her second book for my book club this month. But as it sometimes happens, I completely...
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Pride and Prejudice, adapted by Nancy Butler
You may remember that I finally read Pride and Prejudice last year, after many failed attempts, and I thought it was pretty okay. But this year I’ve fallen in love with The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, which...
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Little Bee, by Chris Cleave
This is one of those books where I have no idea what to say about it right after reading it, so I decide to wait until inspiration strikes, and then it doesn’t and then I’m like, I should really write...
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Doctor Who: The Forgotten, by Tony Lee
So I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it here before (oh, right, briefly), but I like me some Doctor Who. I’m not as obsessive about it as some I know, but I’m always game to watch the new episodes or some...
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Weekend Shorts: Human Division Extras and The New Yorker Fiction Podcast
From The Human Division: “After the Coup” and “Hafte Sorvalh Eats a Churro and Speaks to the Youth of Today” If you’ll recall, I read The Human Division in serialized e-book form, so when the official...
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Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, by Mary Roach
Mary Roach is one of the few nonfiction authors whom I have on my list of “authors whose entire backlist I should go read right now,” which is partially because I just don’t read that much nonfiction...
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American Gods, by Neil Gaiman
Finally! Finally, I have read through the entire American Gods canon. Backwards, of course, because that’s how I roll (that is not how I roll). First it was Anansi Boys, all the way back in 2009, and...
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The Amulet of Samarkand, by Jonathan Stroud
Dear Bartimaeus, You are wonderful, let’s go hang out together. Love, Alison. I listened to this book back in the day and fell madly in love with it — I mean, how could you not fall in love with Simon...
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Stolen Bases, by Jennifer Ring
I often say that being in a book club is great for reading books you would otherwise not have picked up or even heard of at all. But sometimes, and this is one of those times, I must also say that...
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Rare Beasts, by Charles Ogden
I saw a few books in this Edgar & Ellen series going out of my library around Hallowe’en, and when I picked up this first one and noted the phrase “fans of Lemony Snicket” in a blurb on the back,...
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World War Z, by Max Brooks
I had been meaning to listen to this book ever since I found out that it was a full cast recording, and especially since I found out that the full cast included such people as Jeri Ryan and Nathan...
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Weekend Shorts: Mitosis and Nancy Drew
I’ve got two very different stories to talk about today — one a delightful interlude to tide me over until a sequel, the other a horrible travesty upon my childhood. Which to talk about first… Mitosis,...
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Orange is the New Black, by Piper Kerman
This was my first pick of the year for my in-person book club, although technically someone else picked it and then I stole it because I didn’t have any better ideas. You know. I had heard about the...
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City of Ember, by Jeanne Duprau
Another pick for my library book club — this one I hadn’t even heard of until I found four copies of it in my children’s section, and then I figured, hey, if we already have a lot of copies of it… Also...
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In the Woods, by Tana French
If you’ve been around this blog for a while, this title might sound a little familiar. Yes, indeed, this is the third time I’ve read this book, and the second and third time I’ve inflicted it on a book...
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The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie
Another month, another library book club pick selected because I needed an excuse to get around to reading it! This book has been out for a while and shows up on my radar every few months or so when...
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The Last Child, by John Hart
One of the best things about being in a book club, even with the same members coming every month, is that you can never guess how everyone is going to react to a book, even yourself. One of the...
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In a Sunburned Country, by Bill Bryson
Bill Bryson is one of those authors whose work I really should already have read, but I’ve never managed to set aside the time to devour his backlist. A few years ago I used a couple of plane flights...
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