books | The Reader's Room

Mar 2

Love it or Hate it: The English Patient

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Have you ever noticed how some books seem to drive a wedge between people? You check the reviews and find almost no middle-of-the-road ratings. Instead people either seem to love it or hate it. Well, welcome to the Love it or Hate it post category! Each month, we’ll pick one book to review and two contributors will battle it out to convince you to pick it up or throw it out. Last time we discussed The World According to Garp. The “Love its” won with 80% of the vote. Many thanks to our reviewers. My husband, Dan, was our Love it Reviewer and Andrew (a newly added contributor) was our Hate it Reviewer.

This month’s selection is The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje. It is another book that is on Boxall’s 1001 List of Books to Read Before you Die. So the question is… do you Love it or Hate it? Continue reading to find see our two reviews.

Our March Book Madness Brackets are Here!

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Our brackets are ready so it’s time to sign up for our March Madness reading challenge! Many thanks to all the early participants who nominated books and to those who voted on the books. Over 70 people voted on all 64 books and, based on those votes, we tabulated rankings for each category. Keep reading to see how the nominated books were ranked and to see a copy of our official challenge bracket. Read more

Feb 29

9 Comments

February Monthly Recap

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Time for our February recap. Find out which books were favorites, which were duds, and which ones we are most looking forward to in 2016. We’ll end our wrap up with a calendar of book-related events/facts coming up in February and a glimpse of our upcoming content.

One randomly selected follower (email or wordpress follower) will win a $10 amazon gift card. Scroll down to see if you are the winner. The prize is only awarded if you contact us with your email address so make sure to check these monthly recaps each month to see if you won! We also want to hear from you so let us know what you read this month and what you look forward to reading next month. Read more

Feb 26

1 Comment

Book Survey: Final chance to help us out!

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Starting March 1 we will be posting our Book March Madness brackets for anyone who wants to participate in our challenge but we need your help! This will be our last request and we’re hoping all our wonderful readers can pitch in and help us. Plus you’ll get a chance to win a $15 gift card!

A few of our challenge participants (the first 20 who signed up) nominated three books each. We’ve compiled a list of 64 books to correspond to each of the 64 teams who will make it into the NCAA basketball tournament. We need your help rating these books. The survey takes 10-15 minutes (less time if you are familiar with most of the books).

Help us out and you not only can win $15 gift card (entry for the raffle is at the end of the survey) but you can also help out some of our participants. And, if you choose to join the challenge, you get to play a role in ensuring the books you are most interesting in reading, get ranked highly. You may even find a few books to add to your TBR!

Thanks in advance! We love all our readers and know you’ll come through for us! You can find the survey here: March Madness Book Survey

Want to join our challenge? We’ll be posting the brackets for the game on March first and official play starts on the same day as the NCAA basketball tournament. Read more here.

Feb 25

7 Comments

On Beauty by Zadie Smith

I think I was the only person in the world to dislike Zadie Smith’s White Teeth. I read her debut when it first came out and I actively disliked it although I don’t remember exactly why I disliked it. Ever since then I’ve been meaning to give Smith another try. I picked up this book for our winter scavenger hunt since it fulfilled item #21: A book with no images on the cover. Here’s what I thought… Read more

Feb 24

12 Comments

Mr. Splitfoot by Samantha Hunt

Last week I reviewed the latest Indiespensables box from Powell’s Books that came with a copy of Mr. Splitfoot. This book has been on my radar for a while and I coincidentally had been approved for a galley of the book prior to receiving my book box. The novel is getting an incredible amount of buzz in the book world. Here’s my review.

Non 1001 Book Review: The High Mountains of Portugal Yann Martel

The High Mountains of Portugal was released this month. It also happens to be one of the books on our march madness brackets. If you haven’t had a chance to vote in our march book madness survey, help us out and vote here. Here’s what I thought of the book. Read more

Feb 21

13 Comments

We need your help!

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We are creating a list of books for our March Madness reading challenge. You can read more about that here.

Fellow bloggers and readers: Please help us out by rating our challenge books. The survey takes about 10 minutes and you’ll be entered to win a $15 Amazon gift card. Books on the list were nominated by our challenge participants. You can still sign up to participate in the challenge which will begin on the same day as the NCAA basketball tournament.

We would be forever grateful if you could complete the survey and share with other readers so we can generate a fair ranking of all our books. These books will then be put into our reading brackets and you can all join us in making predictions.

You can find the survey here: March Madness Book survey.

Feb 17

3 Comments

Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor

Last November I attended the Book Riot Live convention (read my review here) and while I was there I signed up for the book match by Brooklyn library librarians. I listed my favorite authors as David Mitchell, Haruki Murakami, Chimamanda Adichie, and Margaret Atwood. and I listed my favorite genres: literary fiction, fantasy, magical realism, and international literature. Finally I mentioned that I particularly like books that focus on cultures and traditions that are different from my own. One of books they recommended was Akata Witch by Nnedi Okorafor. I don’t typically go for children’s books so when I was looking for a book published in 2010 (for a reading group I belong to called Play book tag) and I came across this one by the same author, I thought I would give it a shot. Read more

Feb 16

7 Comments

Book-Beer Pairing: A Brief History of Seven Killings

If a book ever cried out for an alcoholic beverage, it is this one. I wanted something tropical and refreshing so I selected Council Brewing Pineapple Tart Saison.

Saisons tend to be sour, low ABV (this one was only 4% making it wildly inappropriate for the book) are super carbonated, and often have some kind of a fruity component. In this case Pineapple. Supposedly this is killer on tap, but it wasn’t great in the bottle. I gave it 3 out of 5 stars. I got the sour, but didn’t get the pineapple at all. I’ve had other Council Saisons I’ve liked much better than this, but it really would be a good beer for sitting on the beach in Jamaica….

And if you were a character in A Brief History of Seven Killings, you’d likely lift the bottle to your lips and be killed in some horrific fashion. Bumbaclot!

I started reading this book right around the time the Man Booker Prize was announced and after 60 pages, I realized that the dialect was going to kill me, so I decided to do the audio. I spent a lot of time in Jamaica in the ’80’s and I felt I had enough of a handle on the Patois that the audio would be a breeze. It wasn’t.