Customer Comments

This book didn't blow me away, but it made me keep thinking about it long after I had finished it. A book that can do that is well worth the time. Halliday puts two seemingly unrelated stories together, both of which would have been interesting enough on their own, to raise questions about our selves and others.

This book was one of the best I've read in ages. It's timely, exploring the perception of Muslims in England and how various people try to negotiate life within those perceptions. Shamsie creates characters it's easy to care about; I wanted the book to keep going just because I wanted to spend more time with her characters, always a good sign in a novel. Everytime I thought I knew what would happen next, she surprised me, reminding me how unpredictable the world can actually be. I wish I could go back and read it again for the first time.

Though I was initially put off by the narrative voice (first person plural), Lee creates a world and characters readers can believe in. As with any good dystopian/apocalyptic fiction, Lee is commenting on our world as much as he is the one he has created. Here he wants the reader to see the great inbalance in income and opportunities that exist. The reader comes to identify with Fan, the main character, through her struggles, which helps illustrate the inequalities in our world. This book was well worth the time.

A novel about rival philosophies of elevator inspection doesn't sound interesting, but Whitehead uses that conceit to great effect in this novel to explore race and racism. The elevator inspectors sound more like hard-boiled detectives than anything else, and Whitehead creates suspense that propels the narrative from the very first page.

Kindred is a great exploration of race, not just historically through Dana's visits to the pre-Civil War South, but through how those visits affect her and Kevin. While they realize the truth of the historical record of slavery, readers see how such behaviors continue into our present day and how the effects of slavery have lasted long before its official abolition.

This book was not exactly what I was expecting, which is a good thing. Rather than a superficial treatment of why Black men in America (and these five young Black men, specifically) die, Ward points out how complex racism is. She expands on the stories of the young Black men to talk about her life, which provides insight into how racism can lead to feelings of despair. She counters that, though, with the portrayal of her mother, who is much stronger than Ward believed. Especially with the discussions of race in our country right now, this is a book worth reading.

If you enjoy Franz Kafka's work, especially his short fiction, you will love this short story/novella. In typical Murakami fashion, an ordinary day at the library turns into something quite different quite quickly.

This is a strong collection of writing (mainly fiction) from across Africa. The editor organizes the work by area, then has one nonfiction piece introduce each area's section. There are well-known names here, like Nadine Gordimer, Chimamanda Adichie, Chinua Achebe, J.M. Coetzee, and Ngugi wa Thiong'o, but my favorites were stories by Helon Habila, E.C. Osondu, and Aziz Chouaki, all of whom were new to me. If you're interested in a good overview of contemporary African fiction, this is a good place to start.

Patchett's collection is solid throughout, something that can't be said about most essay collections. Her essay on writing, "The Getaway Car," is outstanding and should be required reading for everyone who even thinks about writing. If you're interested in education, bookstores, reading, dogs, becoming a police officer, writing, or how Patchett found a happy marriage, this is the book for you.

This is a great novel. It has interesting characters who are odd, yet believable, and it raises interesting questions about family and art. I thought I saw the ending coming, only to be surprised yet again by where it actually ended up. It's definitely the best novel I've read all year.