Book Review: Tell the Wolves I'm Home, by Carol Rifka Brunt

“You can build a whole world around the tiniest of touches.” 

I'm just going to say it straight out: this book kinda creeped me out. And not in a good way.

The year is 1987. June Elbus is one of those quirky, misunderstood teens in the Royal Tenenbaums, Harold and Maude mold. None of her peers get her, which is exacerbated by her love of all things medieval (and her habit of wearing medieval-inspired clothing to school). One of her favorite pastimes is to hang out in the woods so she can feel herself "fall out of time" and pretend she's living in a distance age. She and her older sister used to be inseparable, but lately their relationship has become oddly combative. Worst of all, her

Book Review: Old-School Comfort Food, by Alex Guarnaschelli

Food, Family, and Heart

And now for something completely different.

I have never reviewed a cookbook before. Sure, I've reviewed books about cooking, but never, ever an actual honest-to-God cookbook. Mostly, this is because I'm traditionally not a chef. Just so we understand each other, I'll give you some background, then we'll talk about my experiences with Chef Alex. My mother (a full-blooded Italian woman) is an incredible cook, but I was an extremely picky eater as a child. Like, ridiculously picky. Won't eat anything green picky.* Will pick apart an entire pizza to remove any trace of onion picky. Given the ultimatum of finishing my dinner or spending the rest of the evening in my room I

Countdown: The Goldfinch, by Donna Tartt

On sale 10/22/2013


The Secret History fans are legion. They are also loyal. I remember working at Borders when Donna Tartt's second novel, The Little Friend came out; people were incapable of talking about Secret History without resorting to the sort of hushed whispers typically reserved for the sacred.

Which means that it comes as no surprise that there's already a steady thrum of buzz around Tartt's third novel. She seems to be settling into a pace of releasing a book every ten years, but her fans have limitless patience.

Book Review: And the Mountains Echoed, by Khaled Hosseini

"I suspect that the truth is that we are waiting, all of us, against insurmountable odds, for something extraordinary to happen to us."

Hype can be a cruel demon. For an author, it sets an expectation that can be extremely difficult to live up to. For a reader, more often than not it only leads to crushing disappointment.

Khaled Hosseini is immune to such nonsense. First, his debut novel, The Kite Runner, became an international bestseller. It spawned a film adaptation. Then came A Thousand Splendid Suns, his follow-up, which I happen to like better than Kite Runner (review here). Now we have his third novel, And the Mountains Echoed, and Hosseini has yet to stumble. It almost doesn't seem fair, does

Summer Lovin': My Reading List for Summer 2013

Ah, summer. Vacations, picnics, lazy days lounging poolside, and, if you live in New York and are anything like me, the occasional day where you refuse to go more than fifteen feet from the air conditioner because hot DAMN is that humidity awful!

The point is: opportunities abound for reading. I left high school a while ago but I still usually set myself some goals for the summer: a mixture of fun and serious books to complete by Labor Day. My modus operandi is traditionally to be overly optimistic about what I can achieve because I'm one of those people who can't really choose a sequence of books in advance. I pick the book I'm most in the mood for, so I need a lot of options.* This year I decided to scale things down a bit and be a little more realistic. So here's what I plan to read this summer:

BEA 2013: Day Two

All Work and Some Play

Yesterday's BEA adventure was a quickie but a goodie. Today, I worked the Macmillan booth from 10:30-1, then took off on my own to see what I could find. There was plenty to see (and not just the muscular Ellora's Cave models who were signing a calendar at their booth). At Macmillan, I spent the entire two and a half hour shift helping manage the line for the Rainbow Rowell signing we had. For those who don't know, Rainbow Rowell is the author of Eleanor and Park, Fangirl, and Attachments and she has an awesome name (I really hope it's real). She also has a lot of fans. They started showing up an hour before the signing and the line got crazy long. Luckily, they're amazing, fun fans. It was a lot of fun chatting with them.

You know, people in the industry always bemoan that BEA is never as good as it used to be, or that it's never fun after the first time (after that, it's just a lot of extra work). Phooey, I say. Maybe it's my old Borders instincts, but being at BEA makes me feel connected to the world

BEA 2013: Day One

Adventures in Nerd-vana

Book Expo America 2013 is here! Heaven on Earth for book enthusiasts everywhere, as publishers hawk their wares to get industry people excited about the big books they have on tap for the rest of the year.

Also, give-aways. The real star of every BEA. Hordes of people clamoring for ARCs and tote bags (seriously, I think some people are more excited for the totes, the way they prowl the floor demanding to know where you got the red McGraw-Hill tote over your shoulder. Ignoring the fact that they already have totes spilling out of their clothes). Today was the first big day of events, and I got to participate in the fun part of BEA: galley grabbing. I didn't expect to make it over to the Javits Center today, so I didn't have a plan of attack. This was strictly a quick and dirty visit. Still, I got supremely lucky and walked away with five good'uns. Let's take a look, shall we?

The Morning After: Dan Savage at the NYPL for American Savage

Dan Savage in Conversation with Andrew Sullivan at the New York Public Library

This author event was particularly great for Boo and me. As gay men who grew up in the pre-Ellen world, there's a special place in our hearts for the It Gets Better Project. I wish it had been around for me when I was a confused, scared kid who unwittingly served as a punching bag in my junior high.

Joel and I are both very aware of the scars that come from being afraid of who you are. I could spend days musing on all the reasons, so suffice to say we think It Gets Better is an integral part of helping kids in the same situation grow up (relatively) unscathed. When we got engaged last year we very quickly decided that we didn't need a wedding registry, so we asked our family

Book Review: Truth in Advertising, by John Kenney

"In reality I was playing a part, doing what I imagined I was supposed to do.” 

 Finbar Dolan is having a breakdown. He's had a mildly successful career at an advertising agency in New York (read: he's successfully been rewarded for doing the minimal amount of work). His engagement went bust, leaving him with two tickets to anywhere in the world that are about to expire if he doesn't use them. His estranged, abusive, father is dying. And a diaper client is forcing him to come up with (and execute) an exceptionally expensive Super Bowl commercial to launch a product that may or may not be bad for the environment, even though it's supposed to be a revolutionary development in "green diaper technology."

Bookstores might as well have a section devoted to novels about white males approaching middle aged who perpetually screw up their lives until they learn an important life lesson*, and to be honest with you Truth in

Confessions of a Former Book Shamer

My name is Greg, and I was a book shamer.

Thankfully, I reformed. This is my story.

Not too long ago, I happened on this blog post from YA author Tara Fuller entitled "Book Shaming: Why Do We Do It?" To break it down, book shaming is essentially book snobbery. It's the idea that people should only read serious, literary books. Everything else is a waste of time. On the edge of your seat waiting for the next John Grisham? Have you read every book in the Shopaholic series? Do you enjoy (gasp!) YA books? You might as well not read at all. If you

Book Review: TransAtlantic, by Colum McCann

"The creation of a new moment"

Back in 2009 Colum McCann set the literary world on fire with the National Book Award-winning Let the Great World Spin, a collection of stories centered around the day a man walked a tightrope between the towers of the World Trade Center. Using that true event, McCann elevated the ordinary lives of his characters to extraordinary heights. 

There's a lot more of that in TransAtlantic. At its heart this novel is the story of four generations of Irish women making their way through tumultuous times. Ostensibly, these are ordinary women living everyday lives, but McCann manages to imbue them with cultural and historical significance by intertwining their stories with some real-life events: Jack Alcock and Teddy Brown making

Book Review: The Burgess Boys, by Elizabeth Strout

"Nobody ever knows anyone."

Jim and Bob Burgess couldn't be more different. Bob is sensitive, not very confident, casually self destructive, and dangerously toying with alcoholism. Jim is a brash high-powered attorney with a fancy townhouse in a trendy part of Brooklyn. He's also a huge jerk, but people are very forgiving of this quality because ... well, it isn't really clear why people put up with him. Maybe it's the money? Or genetic/marital ties? It's implied that he used to be a man of principle but the more you get to know him the more you wonder if people are just confusing confidence with morals. Anyway, if Jim and Bob weren't brothers they'd likely hate each other. They may hate each other anyway. Oh, there's also a sister named Susan, but she's never counted for anything her entire life, so she

Book Review: Unaccustomed Earth, by Jhumpa Lahiri

"My children ... ... shall strike their roots into unaccustomed earth."

Ever since the publication of her mesmerizing, Pulitzer Prize winning debut collection, Interpreter of Maladies, Jhumpa Lahiri has established herself as one of modern fiction's most powerful voices. The stories in that collection showcased what was to become Lahiri's trademark: acute psychological observations, eloquent writing, detailed descriptions, and a fiercely intelligent structure. As in poetry, each word feels carefully chosen, yet the overall ease with which the narratives flow belies the effort that undoubtedly went into them. "Interpreter of Maladies" also served to debut Lahiri's dominant theme in that each story featured Indian characters struggling to adapt to new surroundings after immigrating to the U.S. Her sophomore effort, The Namesake: A Novel expanded

Countdown: Jhumpa Lahiri's The Lowland

Coming September 24, 2013

September is shaping up to be a big month for books. First Tom Perrotta, now Jhumpa Lahiri. My wallet can't take much more of this abuse!

It's been five years since Lahiri's last book, Unaccustomed Earth, hit shelves and found itself in The New York Times' top ten books of the year. I enjoyed that book but was concerned that a certain sameness was setting in with Lahiri's books (full review here). It will be interesting to see if she breaks out of her comfort zone a bit. She's a fantastic writer--there's no denying that, but I worry that after she's worn out the whole 'emotionally repressed lives of Ivy League-educated Indian immigrants' storyline. It's been very successful for four books (two of them story collections) now. A fresh

Book Review: The Antagonist, by Lynn Coady

"It's funny how it's the memories of shame that hang on longest."

After finishing Claire Messud's The Woman Upstairs, I'm now two for two with books propelled by rage. Unfortunately for The Antagonist, it pales in comparison to the sublime, burning anger of Woman (review here). To be fair to Lynn Coady, that's where the similarities end, and I wouldn't dream of comparing her novel to a different one that just happened to share a similar pub date. It was just one of those coincidences.

Gordon Rankin, Jr (aka Rank) is furious. The object of his rage is Adam, a former college friend he hasn't seen in twenty years or so. Adam just published a novel receiving some modest