Posts
![Our Country Friends cover image](/sites/default/files/styles/blog_teaser/public/content/blogs/our%20country.jpg?itok=s2XzDTcF)
Our Country Friends by Gary Shteyngart
Well, I did it: I read one of the first works of “Pandemic Fiction” by a North American author. Too soon, you ask, for any author to do justice to the subject? Too soon to read about the last two complex and challenging years, laced with so much tragedy, especially as we’re not exactly out of the woods yet? I wondered too.
![Brothers Karamazov Book Cover](/sites/default/files/styles/blog_teaser/public/content/blogs/brothers%20karamazov.jpg?itok=NWP3zVtz)
Teen Review: The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
4 out of 5 Stars
“He had suddenly begun to have a sense that the reason he wanted the escape was not only in order to sacrifice thirty thousand on it and thus heal his scar, but also for some other reason. 'Is it because within my soul I am a murderer, too?' He had started to wonder. Something distant but burning had stung his soul.”
![Dune Movie (2022) Image](/sites/default/files/styles/blog_teaser/public/content/blogs/Dune%20Image.jpg?itok=j7OGxavC)
Dune
The new Dune movie (2022) proved to be a character development exercise. I found myself longing for the galloping action style of the 1998 movie. Though the action sequences were few
![anna karenina book cover](/sites/default/files/styles/blog_teaser/public/content/blogs/anna%20karenina_0.jpg?itok=r2SXMMQG)
Teen Review: Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
5 out of 5 Stars
“When I was seeing her out, in the ante-room, I thought she was about to cry.”
![The Island of Missing Trees cover image](/sites/default/files/styles/blog_teaser/public/content/blogs/island.jpg?itok=rKBuTJFF)
The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak
Uniquely narrated by a fig tree, The Island of Missing Trees switches between two timelines to tell a story of love, heartbreak and a nation torn apart.
![When I Grow Up cover image](/sites/default/files/styles/blog_teaser/public/content/blogs/When%20I%20grow%20up.jpg?itok=dJgzlB0-)
When I Grow Up by Ken Krimstein
What a powerful read. That this book exists is a miracle: originally written for a contest in 1930s Eastern Europe (in what is now Poland and Lithuania), these six essays were among hundreds hidden from the Nazis multiple times and eventually discovered in a church in 2017.
![The Girls I've Been](/sites/default/files/styles/blog_teaser/public/content/blogs/girls%20ive%20been.jpg?itok=1tTsT2M5)
The Girls I've Been by Tess Sharpe
The Girls I've Been by Tess Sharpe
When seventeen-year-old Nora O'Malley, the daughter of a con artist, is taken hostage in a bank heist, every secret she is keeping close begins to unravel.
![Winter's Orbit cover image](/sites/default/files/styles/blog_teaser/public/content/blogs/WintersOrbit.jpg?itok=rvcbvWKl)
Winter's Orbit by Everina Maxwell
Winter’s Orbit, by Everina Maxwell, is an intricately plotted blend of space opera, court intrigue, and slow-burn romance. When the death of Prince Taam threatens to destroy a peace treaty that protects the Iskat Empire from alien invaders, the Emperor attempts to salvage the treaty by arranging for her grandson, Prince Kiem, to marry Taam’s widower, Count Jainan.
![Cover is a beautiful gradient of deep purple, magenta, and gold fire, with a woman hiding behind the face title tect. Her hair long and blowing majestically in her face, only showing her golden eyes.](/sites/default/files/styles/blog_teaser/public/content/blogs/ngan%2C%20natasha%20-%20girls%20of%20paper%20and%20fire.jpg?itok=XWE3Tb2I)
Girls of Paper and Fire by Natasha Ngan
Girls of Paper and Fire paints a picture of a fantastical realm with animal people built on a caste system, with those at the bottom, those at the middle, and those at the top. Although this book appears at first to be a story of someone from the lowest caste falling in love with royalty, it is more so a story of the poorest getting revenge and rising up against tyranny. The world building in this book is excellent and reminds me a bit of Narnia mixed with various Asian cultures and royal aesthetic.
![The Tenderness of Wolves jacket image](/sites/default/files/styles/blog_teaser/public/content/blogs/wolves.jpg?itok=lJ1ndVG5)
The Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penney
When Stef Penney’s The Tenderness of Wolves, opens, it’s 1867 and winter in Dove River,
![The Only Good Indians book cover image](/sites/default/files/styles/blog_teaser/public/content/blogs/The%20Only%20Good%20Indians.jpg?itok=T9yk0WJ_)
The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones
An excellent and slightly supernatural story of revenge.
![I'll Be The One](/sites/default/files/styles/blog_teaser/public/content/blogs/ill%20be%20the%20one.jpg?itok=lqa6Q5QA)
I'll Be The One by Lyla Lee
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Skye Shin has heard it all. Fat girls shouldn’t dance. Wear bright colors. Shouldn’t call attention to themselves. But Skye dreams of joining the glittering world of K-Pop, and to do that, she’s about to break all the rules that society, the media, and even her own mother, have set for girls like her.
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