If every book read like Behind Closed Doors by B.A. Paris, nobody would know the TBR struggle. With dry eyes burning from strain, I turned page after page until the wee hours of the morning. This suspense novel satisfies the bookish desire to escape reality and fall into a story world. The experience is so gratifying, I Tweeted St. Martin’s Press immediately upon closing the book.
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Though This Too Shall Pass by Milena Busquets has a summery cover and a summery length, it would be a depressing summer read for most of us. We lack the leisure time and the leisure locales of the characters. Most of us have no personal hermitage or even access to such. I don’t even have a tent! Even worse for light summer reading, Blanca spends her entire vacation mourning her mother and seeking the attention of men. That’s depressing!
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My top recommendations for summer 2016 reading will include Rich and Pretty by Rumaan Alam. The story doesn’t seem to go anywhere, but neither does life when you are just getting traction as an independent new adult. In a book with few exciting plot occurrences, it’s Alam’s turn of phrase and believable characters that make this book so enjoyable. Additionally, the affirmation of friendship between people who dream of a relationship going one way and adapting when it doesn’t makes for the best message I’ve read in fiction lately.
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At the 2016 Tucson Festival of Books, Joseph Finder discussed the high-profile sources he tapped into while doing research for his novels. A co-panelist asked, “Who?” “Billionaires,” Finder responded. “Trump?” “He’s not a billionaire.” But not all Finder’s characters are billionaires. Many of them face relative financial challenges. So… what if Trump was in a Joseph Finder novel?
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Nothing uplifts this book lover’s spirits like starting my favorite festival of the year examining social justice in fictional murder mysteries! The 2016 Tucson Festival of Books panel, “The Rich Die Differently”, was stacked with intriguing authors and perhaps my favorite moderator this year, Julie Kramer. The journalist-turned-novelist asked smart questions without getting in the way of the panelists’ answers. That didn’t stop the panelists from disagreeing with the premise of the session right from the get-go.
L to R: Terry Mort, G.M. Malliet, Julie Kramer, Joseph Finder.
The debate in my house about which is better, Marie Lu’s Legend trilogy or The Young Elites trilogy in progress, is more of an exercise in book chat than to make an actual determination. We share an appreciation of both, though we have preferences. My sci-fi boy likes the tech-y world depected in Legend. He read it alongside classic dystopian books, including 1984 and Brave New World. I prefer The Young Elites but not because it takes place in a classical, romantic world.
Eleanor: A Novel by Jason Gurley opens with every reader’s dream–a rainy Sunday, a steaming cup of tea and a private nook. Moving deeper, “Sometimes Eleanor [grandmother of the titular Eleanor] swore her life was being written by someone else’s hand.” Yes. I recognize this person.
I fell in love with Clare Clark’s writing the moment I broke into We That Are Left in spite of the grammatically irritating title. I wondered what she had to say about appearances that deceive and those who are titled pretending at something while we who are not titled aspire to their falsehoods. I jotted down lines and page numbers of favorite descriptions and passages. Such great writing promises a great story. In the end, I felt cheated of that great story just as the wealthy cheat at status and the poor are cheated.
My favorite part of this photo is how obviously thrilled Stine is. My second is the eerie specter looming over Stine’s shoulder.
Since the new Goosebumps movie came out on October 3, I decided to revisit my night with R.L. Stine at the 2012 Tucson Festival of Books Author Dinner.
If you are a writer your children will be nonreaders, at least that’s what bestselling author R.L. Stine told me at dinner. He offers his son as an example. His son read book after book of Garfield cartoons but nary a Goosebumps. When I suggested Stine was putting me on about his son not reading his work he says, “That’s something nice people like you say.” (I often make it through entire meals without revealing my monstrous side.)
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“Evelyn” like “EEV-lin” in the UK or “Evelyn” like “EH-vah-lin”, my Mississippi born, plumber’s daughter grandmother? Intentionally or not Stephanie Clifford plays on a class tension among the upwardly mobile in America from the get go through the naming of the protagonist in her novel, Everybody Rise. I never felt on sure footing while reading this book. I was curious about Evelyn and the voyeurism that tempts me with Real Housewives of Everywhere and other reality shows about one percenters kept me reading.
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