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
Hello and Welcome to the Fifth (yes, fifth!) Annual Karissa Reads Books Literary Awards! This is my annual, very rigorous, very competitive, highly esteemed way of looking back at what I've read over the past year and rating it by a merit system known only to myself. Eligible books must have been read by me… Continue reading The Fifth Annual Karissa Reads Books Literary Awards
The Books of Jacob - Olga Tokarczuk (Riverhead Books, 2022) It is, I think, a testament to Olga Tokarczuk's writing that I undertook to read The Books of Jacob at all. I loved her novel Drive Your Plough Over the Bones of the Dead and she won the Nobel Prize for Literature shortly after I… Continue reading Book Review: The Books of Jacob by Olga Tokarczuk
READ: Women Talking - Miriam Toews (Alfred A. Knopf, 2018) The Pull of the Moon - Julie Paul (Brindle & Glass, 2014) The Books of Jacob - Olga Tokarczuk (Riverhead Books, 2022) (translated from the Polish by Jennifer Croft) Darling Girl - Liz Michalski (Dutton Books, 2022) The Further Adventures of Miss Petitfour - Anne… Continue reading What I Read – April 2022
The Mothers - Brit Bennett (Riverhead Books, 2016) When Nadia Turner loses her mother to suicide, her grief and anger turn into rebellion, culminating in a relationship with the son of the pastor at her father's church. Nadia is seventeen, almost finished high school, while Luke is twenty-one, floundering after an injury ended his promising… Continue reading Book Review: The Mothers by Brit Bennett
Karissa Reads Books 