Jun 11
I don’t typically like celebrity books and I don’t read much in the way of memoirs or comedy books. However, Ron Swanson is one of my all time favorite TV characters and I pretty much love everything about Megan Mullally and Nick Offerman. So, I broke my literary fiction trend and picked up this celebrity memoir at Book Expo this year. Read more
Jan 23
Having just finished this book a few days ago, I can understand why it’s getting such mixed reviews from readers. People seem to either love or hate this book. As someone who doesn’t typically love short stories, I was skeptical about this book but Carmen Machado made me a believer. Here’s why.. Read more
Dec 26
Happy Holidays to all our loyal readers! We hope everyone has had a lovely holiday season. As we approach 2018, Book Worm and I have lots of plans for the blog. In a few days we’ll be posting our top 10 books of 2017 and we’ll also be announcing a new schedule for Read Around the World for those who want to join us. Today, Book Worm will be reviewing a new book by Jon McGregor. Keep reading to find out what she thought. Read more
Jul 10
Looking for a good Southern Gothic novel that’s perfect for the summer? I just finished a book that might be the perfect addition to your summer reading list: Gradle Bird by J.C. Sasser. Keep reading to find out why. Read more
Jun 29
We spent the month of June visiting Thailand with all of you. Two months ago we converted our Read Around the World feature into an informal group challenge and invited you all to join us as we make our way around the world. We took nominations and used the randomizer to plan our itinerary. Thailand was the second stop on our group reading tour. I’m not going to lie, I found this month quite a challenge in terms of selecting a book and if not for one extremely helpful person on Litsy, I would have failed the task of completing a book.
Join us as we explore literary Thailand and find out which book I selected and which books our participants (across Litsy, this blog, and Instagram) read this month. Read more
Jun 23
When I was a child, I used to spend hours staring at this painting. My parents had a print hanging in our upstairs hallway across from the entrance of my bedroom. I would often stop and spend several minutes each day gazing up at it wondering why my mother was sitting in an image on the wall. For the longest time, I thought the woman in the painting was either my mother or grandmother. I don’t think I ever asked my parents why my mother was in a painting, but I was convinced that hanging in front of me was proof of a mysterious family secret (I was really into Nancy Drew books at the time).
Christina Baker Kline’s new book, A Piece of the World, is a fictionalized account of the woman behind Andrew Wyeth’s paining. Reading the novel brought back a flood of memories. I hadn’t thought about that painting in over 20 years. Read more
Mar 21
After a few weeks focused on wrapping up our winter challenge and setting up the spring challenge, we have finally got back in the groove of reviewing books again. Book Worm and I have been consumed by both challenges and reading through Infinite Jest which is tons of fun but impacting all our other reading. Book Worm is leading us off with a review of The Lonely Hearts Hotel, a book that others either seem to love or hate. Which side do you think you will fall into? Check out BW’s review. Read more
Feb 23
The Terranauts by T.C Boyle
Published in: 2016
Reviewed by: Book Worm
Rating: ★★★.5
Find it here: The Terranauts
This ARC was provided by Bloomsbury Publishing PLC (via NetGalley) in exchange for an honest review.
Synopsis from Goodreads: A powerful, affecting and hilarious deep-dive into human behavior in an intimate and epic story of science, society, sex, and survival, set in the early 1990s, from one of the greatest American novelists today.
It is 1994, and in the desert near Tillman, Arizona, forty miles from Tucson, a grand experiment involving the future of humanity is underway. As climate change threatens the earth, eight scientists, four men and four women dubbed the “Terranauts,” have been selected to live under glass in E2, a prototype of a possible off-earth colony. Their sealed, three-acre compound comprises five biomes—rainforest, savanna, desert, ocean and marsh—and enough wildlife, water, and vegetation to sustain them.
Closely monitored by an all-seeing Mission Control, this New Eden is the brainchild of eco-visionary Jeremiah Reed, aka G.C.—“God the Creator”—for whom the project is both an adventure in scientific discovery and a momentous publicity stunt. In addition to their roles as medics, farmers, biologists, and survivalists, his young, strapping Terranauts must impress watchful visitors and a skeptical media curious to see if E2’s environment will somehow be compromised, forcing the Ecosphere’s seal to be broken—and ending the mission in failure. As the Terranauts face increased scrutiny and a host of disasters, both natural and of their own making, their mantra: “Nothing in, nothing out,” becomes a dangerously ferocious rallying cry.
Told through three distinct narrators—Dawn Chapman, the mission’s pretty young ecologist; Linda Ryu, her bitter, scheming best friend passed over for E2; and Ramsay Roothorp, E2’s sexually irrepressible Wildman—The Terranauts brings to life an electrifying, pressured world in which connected lives are uncontrollably pushed to the breaking point. With characteristic humor and acerbic wit, T. C. Boyle indelibly inhabits the perspectives of the various players in this survivalist game, probing their motivations and illuminating their integrity and fragility to illustrate the inherent fallibility of human nature itself. Read more
Feb 20
Today it is president’s day in the United States and many of us had the day off of work. If you are looking for an appropriate novel to read on this day, I have the perfect book for you: Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders. Read more
Do you love a good retelling? This may be the book for you. Check out Book Worm’s review of Marissa Meyer’s latest retelling. This time she takes on Alice in Wonderland. Read more
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