Dear Rebecca Makkai: Janine brought this book to my attention, knowing my fondness for thrillers and dark academia. I wouldn’t say this book is a thriller, exactly; a mystery would be a more accurate categorization, or rather literary fiction with a mystery at its heart. (My dividing line between thriller ... more >
2022 was a challenging year for me when it came to reading. The DNFs were frequent but at least I got through my reading list faster because of them, and yay, ended up with a full ten books to include here. In order of how much I liked them, here ... more >
Jennie: When Janine suggested reviewing this collection of short stories together, I was only vaguely familiar with the author. I remembered that Janine had mentioned him in our joint review of How High We Go in the Dark, and indicated that Saunders was known for literary fabulism. It was only ... more >
Janine: Jennie and I loved Station Eleven, Emily St. John Mandel’s breakout novel (Jennie even caught up on one or two earlier books by the author), so we reviewed her follow up, The Glass Hotel, together. When we heard she had a new book, Sea of Tranquility, we decided to ... more >
From the New York Times bestselling author of Rules of Civility—a transporting novel about a man who is ordered to spend the rest of his life inside a luxury hotel With his breakout debut novel, Rules of Civility, Amor Towles established himself as a master of absorbing, sophisticated fiction, bringing ... more >
Trigger warning: Dear David Mitchell, Your literary novel, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet, caught my attention because of its setting, the environs of Nagasaki in 1799-1800. I heard of the book through great word-of-mouth from people whose opinions I generally trust so I was excited to read it. ... more >