Blake Crouch: Recursion

There was a lot I really liked about this novel and a few things I really didn’t. I avoided reading anything about it beforehand, but I’m guessing it’s dogged by comparisons to Christopher Nolan’s films (both “Memento” and “Inception,” particularly) and maybe to Kaufman/Gondry’s “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” and really, if this is

Alyssa Cole: A Princess in Theory

When Naledi gets exaggeratedly polite emails about being a long-lost royal bride of an African nation she very reasonably assumes they’re a phishing/identity theft attempt, but it’s all true, and “A Princess in Theory” unspools like a modern take on a classic screwball comedies, with assumed identities, disastrous coincidences, palace intrigue, and even a bit

Jo Stanley: Bold in Her Breeches: Women Pirates Across the Ages

A history of female pirates faces formidable challenges: career criminals tends to be systematically sensationalized and mythologized, pirates were overwhelmingly from a socio-economic class virtually ignored by traditional historians, and the doings — or even presence — of women is likewise ignored by many historical sources. A handful of female pirates left a verifiable history

Diablo Cody: Candy Girl

Before Cody became the screenwriter of films like Juno, Young Adult, and the woefully under-appreciated Jennifer’s Body, she spent a year stripping (with a little side exploration into phonesex and some other non-hooker sexwork). Her unflinching memoir displays the same sort of acerbic wit her characters wield. She satisfies my long-standing morbid curiosity about the

Victoria Connelly: A Weekend with Mr. Darcy

Connelly has come up with a clever new tactic for reaching the surprisingly healthy market for Jane Austen-related fiction: instead of a working with Austen’s characters directly, or even in a Regency setting, she’s penned a modern day romance about Austen-obsessed characters. Connelly’s own love for Austen shines through, and there’s enough solid detail to

Lee Carroll: Black Swan Rising

I found myself dawdling as I got near the end of Black Swan Rising, because I didn’t want to reach the end. The broad strokes of Garet James’ story follow a familiar template (make allies/learn skills/face a rising evil) but the details feel surprisingly fresh. The husband-and-wife authorial team (Carol Goodman/Lee Slonimksy) offer a take

Barbara Comyns: Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead

This is an odd, disquieting, and hard-to-pin down little novel. Comyns manages to make strengths of qualities that are often considered flaws. The tone varies substantially, sometimes within the span of a single page or less. A vein of mildly satirical comedy of manners runs through it, but it also encompasses an eerie streak not

Ernest Cline: Ready Player One

In Ready Player One, an eccentric multi-billionaire’s will leaves a jackpot to whoever finds an easter egg hidden in his ubiquitous virtual reality environment. The primary hallmark of the multi-billionaire’s eccentricity was an obsession with 80’s geek culture, and so in Cline’s not-so-distant future, retro geek culture is perpetuated by fortune hunters looking for clues

Suzanne Collins: The Hunger Games

I struggle with how useful it is for me to comment on popular works. A lot of people obviously love this book. I’m statistically quite unlikely to ever write anything as many people pay attention to, what gives me the right to judge it? But maybe it’s useful for me to explore whether this is

Rachel Cohn and David Levithan: Naomi and Ely’s No Kiss List

I absolutely adored Cohn and Levithan’s Dash & Lily’s Book of Dares, a young adult romance partly set in The Strand, with a hefty epistolary component and a dash of screwball comedy. I didn’t enjoy Naomi and Ely’s No Kiss List nearly as much, partly due to mismatched expectations. This was a rare case where