The Pultizer Prizes for 2018 will be announced on April 15, so I thought it would be fun to take a look at the field and try to do the impossible: predict the book that will win for fiction. There have been a lot of left-field winners in the history of the prize, so if … More Predicting the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
If you know me at all, you know I’ve spent recent years railing against novels about white dudes who can’t get their shit together (examples here, here, and here). But the thing about hating a certain form of novel is that every once in a while someone does it spectacularly well and forces you to … More Sometimes Less Really is More: A Book Review of Less, by Andrew Sean Greer
“As Hegel said, tragedy was not the conflict between right and wrong but right and right, a dilemma none of us who wanted participate in history could escape.” The Sympathizer boldly promises to redefine the way you think about the Vietnam War. A lot of that simply comes down to its narrator, a Communist spy … More The Sympathizer, by Viet Thanh Nguyen: Book Review
“Open your eyes and see what you can with them before they close forever.” At the risk of overstating things, All the Light We Cannot See is far and away the most sumptuous, beautiful, and heartfelt book I’ve read in a great while. This is a book to get swept away in. Werner Pfennig is … More Book Review: All the Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr
“I did all I could and it still wasn’t enough.” “You really want to know what being an X-Man feels like? Just be a smart bookish boy of color in a contemporary U.S. ghetto. Mamma mia! Like having bat wings or a pair of tentacles growing out of your chest.” Meet Oscar de León. Once … More Book Review: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Diaz
Supposedly Fun 