Morningside Heights is novel spanning the history of a shared life. It's love and sacrifice and the missteps we make in becoming who we are. The characters all orbit the companionable marriage of Pru and Spence, but the scope of a marriage is never just two people. Friends, colleagues, children, and lovers create a world around the pair that maximizes the realities of love, heartbreak, and shame. None of us are equipped for this life; our communities make it bearable. Henkin has crafted a story of real life so fully honest and true it can only exist in fiction.
Officer Clemmons is the memoir of a man at the intersections of race, sexuality, high art, and a curious fame. Francois Clemmons has every right to be bitter towards and lack faith in humanity, but at each step in his life he has followed paths of grace, curiosity, and empathy. This book is filled with tales of sorrow told through a lens of hope and abundance. Whether or not you are familiar with the character from the Neighborhood, you should get to know Franc.
The Saturday Night Ghost club is quick read that packs a heavy emotional punch. This is a nostalgia fueled, coming of age that will break your heart. Honestly, the plot is not what I need to sell you here; you are here for the characters, for relationships, for family truths, and friendship bonds. Davidson has crafted an excellent novel that moves through time to give us a look at that transitional space when you are not quite a kid anymore but there is still so much you can't understand.
Some memoirs transcend the author's experience and become universal - I always thought of those as the good ones. Then I read Jayson Greene's memoir of loss and grief and was forced to confront the fullness of his individual humanity in a way I haven't experienced before. Grief is distinctly personal and Greene's story of the death of his two year old child is simply unfathomable to me, yet his honesty and willingness to sit in the fearfulness of life resonated deeply. Once More We Saw Stars is a wonderfully written memoir that connects on an almost primitive level.
Read this! It is exactly the exact essay collection featuring critical engagement with pop culture that I wanted in my life!
Ghost Boys is a devastating novel. But it is also hopeful, full of compassion, and a compelling case for the fact that 'we can all do better, be better, live better.'
Holy world building Batman! This book is fantastic. The world Adeyemi has created is so detailed, the characters are wonderful, even the animals are amazingly described. Add to that the fact that this is a clear allegory to our times and then sit back in awe that this future YA classic is a debut.
A fantastic novel about race, class, and mass incarceration, but mostly a novel about love and the forms it can take. Beautifully written.
What did I just read? How can such a short work deal with so many interlacing themes? I tore through this novel and loved every second.
A heartbreaking treatise of abuse in many forms, but ultimately a story of triumph. The power of the monologues themselves is obvious, but juxtaposed against them are the stories of hard work, hope, joy, and sisterhood that go into mounting a production of them that are absolutely empowering.
How to deal with a national shame that is impossible to comprehend? Shattuck brings three women together to work through the response of ordinary Germans to the Nazi party, Holocaust atrocities, and war itself. Very human characters, with flaws to learn from. I loved this novel.
A perfect all ages comic! I love Lunella Lafayette, the smartest girl in the world!
An amazing collection! Worth purchasing for the title poem alone but then the author hits you with lines like this: "And because my hunger is so deep, I am ashamed to lift my head." Dip in to Robin Coste Lewis; her work is heartrending, lyrical, gorgeous.
Full disclosure, I think Julie Cantrell is one of the greatest humans! And this is her best book yet. The familial relationships are perfectly captured. This is a book about what family can provide and what we must choose for ourselves. Becoming who you are is as much about what you came from as it is what you are pushing against.
A novel about love and the price we pay for loving! Read this even if you haven't read Hoffman's earlier books; a perfect glimpse into a world of magic.
A look at death culture from around the world. A beautiful reflection on what life means to those left behind and how a healthy interaction with death can increase our quality of life.
This story of an amazing and brilliant group of women who relied on one another and lifted each other up is full of grace and dignity. Their passion imbued them with the power to live self determined lives, which so few people are able to manage.
So much fun! Diana's stories in Themyscira and our world are both so fun, refreshing, and earnestly life affirming. A joy to read!
A primer for creating the community you want to live in and highlighting the best of what your corner of the world has to offer. An inspirational work and one that affected me deeply!
Fascinating and horrifying! These women suffered greatly not only from the horrors of radium poisoning but also the true evils of monied interests that would rather kill people than risk profit. Read, be horrified, and think about what these woman fought against to get our labor laws in place.
This book wrecked me! A hypercharged plot written with care and full of honesty, anger, and hope. The characters are so real; I love them so much it makes my heart practically burst!
This seems like a simple (though well written) collection of vignettes about class and family until it becomes a great deal more. An expertly crafted novel; its brilliance comes in as Shanbag subtly allows a flood of wealth to dictate the lives and morality of his characters.
Slice of life comics following three friends in college that I wish I could dive into!
I do not have adequate words to describe this beautiful book. Woodson's memoir in verse is one my favorite books. A perfect work.
Loved this book! Love Doughty! The way we interact with death dictates much about the way we interact with life. We are all going to die, and we will live a whole lot better if we acknowledge it.
Because I am curious and not at all adventurous, astronauts' memoirs are a way of life! Hadfield's story is both fascinating and motivational. He naturally rolls in a personal development message about hard work and positivity that almost borders a trite, but Hadfield is just so absolutely likable that it all works.
Everything about this series is perfect! The writing, the art, the characters! Nothing is better than Kamala Khan!
This is an excellent essay collection spanning criticism of culture, feminism, and competitive Scrabble. Roxane Gay tackles racism, sexism, and Fifty Shades of Grey. She writes about her love of The Hunger Games and Law and Order: SVU alongside stories of rape, oppression, and the damage done by our modern fairy tales. Gay balances her frustration and anger with levity and pure openness. At times she seems fearlessly honest. I agreed with her, I disagreed with her, I laughed with her, and ultimately I am championing her. Roxane Gay is someone who is thinking critically about our world and it is a better place for it. She admits that she doesn't always get things right, that she lets herself down - that's the glory in being a Bad Feminist, you don't have to be perfect, which is lucky because no one is.
See my full review of Bad Feminist on the Cavalier House Books Blog!
-Michelle
Just about everything in this novel resonated with me. Friendship, growing up, opportunities both seized and squandered - all the stuff that we take in that makes us who we are as adults. It is all described so well by Wolitzer.
See why I included The Interestings on my Bookprint on the Cavalier House Books Blog!
-Michelle
I have never loved a family more than I love the Cuthberts! Read this! Balm for the soul!
I'm starting to think that this book was written for me. It has practically everything I like: smart, quirky characters, epistolary style, solid writing, brilliant satire...the list goes on. I offer my thanks to Maria Semple for writing the funniest book I've ever read about depression.
-Michelle
Still one of my favorite books from late childhood – one of the novels that made me fall in love with reading.
See my full review of Fahrenheit 451 on the Cavalier House Books Blog!
-Michelle
You should have a copy of this! Reciting Stickboy's poem never fails to make me and those around me smile.
-Michelle
A young girl who suffers from rabies (or is possessed by demons) and the priest who loves her. My introduction to Garcia Marquez; a great place to start if you're not quite ready to dive into "One Hundred Years of Solitude."
-Michelle
This book literally changed my life. It changed the way I look at food and definitely changed the way I eat.
-Michelle
Eqypt in the 1920s (when Carter discovered Tut); an eccentric Egyptologist, his lover, and the detective hired by her father compete in this fantastic epistolary novel.
-Michelle
I was such a late comer to this book that I feel obligated to inculde it here for others like me who may have missed the boat. The Secret History is so good that I need explitives to describe it. This is just my type of page turner; dark, brooding, full of literary allusions. A book about such horrible, insufferable individuals has no right to be as enjoyable as this book is. Donna Tartt rules us all.
-Michelle
Finally read this after many pleaded with me to do so, and I loved it! The characters are wonderful and Gabaldon has a fully realized world in 1740s Scotland that I was absolutely sucked into!