Hello and welcome! I'm back with the (somewhat) Annual Karissa Reads Books Literary Awards! I've been doing this for a few years now (inspired by the incomparable FictionFan). My attempt at these awards petered out last year due to the craziness that was my life in December 2023 but this year I've started early and… Continue reading The Annual Karissa Reads Books Literary Awards: Best Non-Fiction
Tag: Karissa Reads Books
Book Review: Tyll by Daniel Kehlmann
Tyll - Daniel Kehlmann (Pantheon Books, 2022) (translated from the German by Ross Benjamin) I had never heard of Tyll Ulenspiegel before picking up this novel but I gather that he's a well-known German folk figure. A classic trickster type, given to bawdy jokes. Here Kehlmann brings him into the context of the Thirty Years… Continue reading Book Review: Tyll by Daniel Kehlmann
Book Review: The Mythmakers by John Hendrix
The Mythmakers - John Hendrix (Abrams, 2024) Two of the greatest literary voices of the 20th century - and certainly two of the most influential voices in the realm of fantasy literature - are undoubtedly J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. There aren't many readers in the Western world today who haven't been influenced by their… Continue reading Book Review: The Mythmakers by John Hendrix
Book Review: The Stolen Bicycle by Wu Ming-Yi
The Stolen Bicycle - Wu Ming-Yi (translated from Mandarin by Darryl Sterk) (Text Publishing, 2017) This was such an unexpected, playful, thoughtful, and informative book. It reads more like a non-fiction story rather than a novel, perhaps because it’s hard to tell at times how much is based on the author’s actual life. And perhaps… Continue reading Book Review: The Stolen Bicycle by Wu Ming-Yi
Book Review: Liars by Sarah Manguso
A friend pushed this book into my hands, telling me that she had devoured it over one weekend. She'd found so much to relate to within its pages, she told me, even as she reassured me that her husband is great. It was a statement worth making because the husband on these pages is pretty… Continue reading Book Review: Liars by Sarah Manguso
Book Review: Intermezzo by Sally Rooney
Intermezzo - Sally Rooney (Alfred A. Knopf Canada, 2024) An intermezzo, in music, is a short instrumental movement between larger acts. In chess, it refers to an unexpected move that forces an immediate response. Reading these definitions after I finished Sally Rooney's most recent novel, it struck me immediately what a fitting title the book… Continue reading Book Review: Intermezzo by Sally Rooney
Book Review: The Empusium by Olga Tokarczuk
The Empusium - Olga Tokarczuk (Riverhead Books, 2024) (translated to English by Antonia Lloyd-Jones) The Empusium - a strange sort of novel set in a sanitorium, health resort town in the early 20th century with a mysterious, plural-voiced ghost-like narration - is a tricky book to describe. I like Tokarczuk's work quite a lot -… Continue reading Book Review: The Empusium by Olga Tokarczuk
Book Review: Small Animals by Kim Brooks
Small Animals - Kim Brooks (Flatiron Books, 2018) When Kim Brooks' son was 4-years-old, she took him along for a last minute errand at a Target while she was visiting her parents in the state of Virginia. Once there, young Felix wanted to stay in the car and so Brooks allowed it. She locked the… Continue reading Book Review: Small Animals by Kim Brooks
What I Read: September 2024
Read: The Names of all the Flowers - Melissa Valentine (The Feminist Press, 2020) Land of Big Numbers - Te-Ping Chen (Mariner Books, 2021) Really Good, Actually - Monica Heisey (Harper Collins, 2023) The Epic of Gilgamesh - trans. N.K. Sandars (Penguin Classics, 1964) The Husbands - Holly Gramazio (Doubleday Canada, 2024) The Heaven &… Continue reading What I Read: September 2024
Book Review: The Names of All the Flowers by Melissa Valentine
Melissa and her brother Junior are tight-knit siblings at the tail-end of a large, chaotic family. Growing up in the 90s in Oakland, California, the parents of a Black mother from the South and a white Quaker father. Their mother works nights, sleeping during the day, and their father is a hoarder and the children… Continue reading Book Review: The Names of All the Flowers by Melissa Valentine
Karissa Reads Books 