Category: Reading
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Recommended Reading: The Caretaker by A.X. Ahmad
Former Indian Army Captain Ranjit Singh, after being court-martialed for a mission gone terribly wrong, is self-exiled to Massachusetts with his family. He is barely scraping by on Martha’s Vineyard, working as the winter caretaker for the rich summer residents of the island, when a chain of events gets his family picked up by Homeland…
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Recommended Reading: The Gap of Time by Jeanette Winterson
The Gap of Time by Jeanette Winterson is a retelling of Shakespeare’s A Winter’s Tale, part of a series of contemporary retellings of Shakespeare by literary authors. Winterson just rolls with the absurdity of her source material, inserting a completely appropriate sense of magical realism into the contemporary time and setting by employing a series of fairy tale-esque…
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Recommended Reading: Descent by Tim Johnston
This week, I’m recommending a book I stayed up until the wee hours last night finishing: Descent by Tim Johnston. On a family vacation in Colorado, an eighteen-year-old girl goes for a run on a deserted mountain road, accompanied by her younger brother on a mountain bike, when the worst thing happens: the boy is left injured, and…
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Recommended Reading: Four Ways to Forgiveness by Ursula K. Le Guin
I had been trying to recommend a new read each month, and I still fell behind on my recommendations. So of course I’m upping my goal to recommending a new read each week! Starting with this one… Does Ursula K. Le Guin write bad books? If so, I haven’t found them. While this collection of…
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Recommended Reading: The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August
This month I am recommending The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North. When Harry August dies, he is reborn as himself at the same time and to the same parents, but with the memories of his previous lives intact. When he learns that another person like him is manipulating history for his own selfish ends…
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Recommended Reading: Ceremony
Ceremony by Leslie Silko is a 1970s classic of Native American literature, a slow but powerful read. Tayo returns home to the Laguna Pueblo reservation from World War II suffering from PTSD and attempts to cure himself by reconnecting with the traditional ceremonies of his people. This lovely cover is for the Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition.
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Recommended Reading: Geek Love
I was saddened to hear of the death of Katherine Dunn. I only recently read her “underground” novel, Geek Love. While it may not be what is conventionally considered horror, it is still a horrifying book–in only the best way. In Geek Love, the owner of a struggling carnival and his wife decide to “create”…
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Recommended Reading: A Head Full of Ghosts
Finally, I have a new book to recommend, and it’s a really good one: A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay. When she was eight years old, Merry’s big sister Marjorie developed severe schizophrenia–or perhaps, as their dad came to believe, she was possessed by a demon. Desperate for both money and a cure, Marjorie’s parents agreed…
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Reading Journal: Beginning of April
It’s been over a month since I’ve posted a reading journal update. Most of my reading has lately not-so-inspiring–although I did enjoy reading Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor so much that I wrote a rather long response to it. Another post-apocalyptic book I enjoyed was Far North by Marcel Theroux. It is set in post-climate change Siberia and…
Shannon Turlington 