The Weekend - Charlotte Wood (Riverhead Books, 2019) Jude, Wendy, Adele, and Sylvie are women in their 70s who have been friends for decades. Four very different women bound by the years and times they have shared together. Now, though, Sylvie has recently died and Judy, Wendy, and Adele are gathering for one final weekend… Continue reading Book Review: The Weekend by Charlotte Wood
Read: The Sea - John Banville (Vintage International, 2005) The Weekend - Charlotte Wood (Riverhead Books, 2019) The Riches of Your Grace - Julie Lane-Gay (InterVarsity Press, 2024) Universality - Natasha Brown (Knopf Canada, 2025) (narrated by Norma Butikofer, Anushka Chakravarti, Clare Corbett, Daniel Weyman) Why I Write - George Orwell (Penguin Books, 2005) Anne… Continue reading What I Read: July 2025
Guys, why did I think this was a sasquatch story? Why did I spent at least two thirds of this book waiting for a sasquatch to show up? I swear I remember reading this in a blurb or review somewhere but I obviously got it mixed up (or vastly misunderstood). So, let's be clear: there… Continue reading Book Review: God of the Woods by Liz Moore
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
Antarctica by Claire Keegan and The End of the World is a Cul de Sac by Louise Kennedy are two short story collections by female Irish writers. Since I read them back to back, it was hard not to compare them as I was reading and I felt it made a sort of sense to… Continue reading Book Review: 2 Irish Short Story Collections
Read: The End of the World is a Cul de Sac - Louise Kennedy (Riverhead Books, 2023) (289 pages) Antarctica - Claire Keegan (Grove Press, 1999) (201 pages) The Flanders Road - Claude Simon (New York Review Books, 2022) (translated from the French by Richard Howard) (193 pages) The Secret Adversary - Agatha Chrsitie (Blackstone… Continue reading What I Read: February 2024
Read: Their Eyes Were Watching God - Zora Neale Hurston (Harper Audio, 2005) Bangkok Wakes to Rain - Pitchaya Sudbanthad (Riverhead Books, 2019) Girlfriend on Mars - Deborah Willis (Hamish Hamilton, 2023) Stubborn Archivist - Yara Rodrigues Fowler (Mariner Books, 2019) The Wild Heavens - Sarah Louise Butler (Douglas & McIntyre, 2020) Daughter - Claudia… Continue reading What I Read – November 2023
Bangkok Wakes to Rain - Pitchaya Sudbanthad (Riverhead Books, 2019) Even as I was reading Bangkok Wakes to Rain, I found myself thinking, How am I going to classify this book? It's a novel but not exactly. It's a collection of short stories but that's not quite right either. It has sections that feel like… Continue reading Book Review: Bangkok Wakes to Rain by Pitchaya Sudbanthad
Having read Zhang's previous novel, How Much of These Hills is Gold, I knew to expect a novel that played with reality, one that would introduce strange and wonderful elements and leave me to decide what was real and what might not be. That's exactly what I got with Land of Milk and Honey. At… Continue reading Book Review: Land of Milk and Honey by C Pam Zhang
Hello and Welcome Back to the final installment of the Fifth Annual Karissa Reads Books Literary Awards! Undoubtedly, most of what I read is fiction so this final category is the Big One. I have my top 5 below but some other titles I greatly enjoyed reading in the past year are (in no particular… Continue reading Best Fiction: The Fifth Annual Karissa Reads Books Literary Awards
Karissa Reads Books 