5+ | Raging Biblio-holism

The Underground Railroad

November 14, 2016 by Drew

The Short Version: A slave woman named Cora runs away from the Georgia plantation where she is enslaved and finds that the Underground Railroad is, in fact, a literal railroad – and so begins a winding adventure towards freedom. The Review: This isn’t going to be so much a review as a musing. I just don’t know how I can write a traditional review of this book in light of the last week. See, I read this book in the days […]

Categories: Fiction, Literature • Tags: 5+, Book, Book Review, Book Reviews, Books, Colson Whitehead, Fiction, History, Literature, review, Reviews, Slavery, The Tournament of Books 2017, The Underground Railroad

The Old Man and the Sea

April 27, 2016 by Drew

The Short Version: An old fisherman, down on his luck after a string of 85 days without a catch, sets out to sea again with the aim of catching a big fish. But when he snags a giant marlin, a battle begins that will take him to the edge of his abilities. The Review: What is there to say about this book that hasn’t already been said? It is a perfect novella. It feels handmade, in the way that the best […]

Categories: Fiction, Literature • Tags: 5+, Book Review, Book Reviews, Books, Classics, Ernest Hemingway, Fiction, fishing, Hemingway 2016, Literature, Novella, Reviews, The Old Man and the Sea

Girl at War

May 11, 2015 by Drew

The Short Version: Ana Jurić is a young girl in Zagreb in 1991 when war breaks out across Yugoslavia. She survives the conflict and manages to escape the country. Ten years later, as a college student in New York City, she decides to return to Croatia and make a kind of peace with her past. The Review: Humanity’s capacity for cruelty will never cease to amaze me. The only thing about us, as a species, that is perhaps more amazing is our ability […]

Categories: Fiction, Literature • Tags: 5+, Advance Review, Book Review, Book Reviews, Books, Croatia, Fiction, Genocide, Girl at War, History, Literature, review, Reviews, Sara Nović, The Balkans, War, Yugoslav Wars, Yugoslavia

Perdido Street Station

April 7, 2015 by Drew

The Short Version: A stranger arrives in the city-state of New Crobuzon with a seemingly impossible request. And what begins as an ordinary scientist’s experiment unexpectedly (when he receives some contraband) swings into a terror that threatens to consume the entire city – a terror that invades your dreams on giant wings… The Review: I’m on record as being a big Miéville fan – but his Bas-Lag sequence has been touted as his sprawling masterwork, a titanic trilogy that (in its […]

Categories: Fantasy, Fiction, Literature • Tags: 5+, Bas-Lag, Book Review, Book Reviews, Books, China Miéville, Fantasy, Fiction, Literature, Metaphysics, New Crobuzon, Perdido Street Station, Physics, Politics, Reviews, Science, Weird, Weird Fiction

Mother Night

March 2, 2015 by Drew

The Short Version: Howard Campbell Jr., one of the most notorious Nazi propagandists, was also an American double agent. But was he too good at his “fake” job? As Vonnegut says in his ‘introduction’ to Campbell’s ‘memoir’, “we are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.” The Review: So the thing I’m discovering about Vonnegut is that he is infinitely quotable. The phrasing is not such that you feel like he’s trying, either – […]

Categories: Fiction, Literature • Tags: 5+, Book Review, Book Reviews, Books, Ethics, Fiction, Identity, Israel, Kurt Vonnegut, Literature, Mother Night, Nazis, New York City, Philosophy, Politics, Reviews, Vonnegut 201x, World War II

Laura van den Berg in Conversation with Catherine Lacey at McNally Jackson

February 19, 2015 by Dani

In the past month, I’ve discovered two new favorite books. Find Me by Laura van den Berg and Nobody is Ever Missing by Catherine Lacey. Van den Berg (henceforth known here as LvdB) is getting crazy good press right now – Salon thinks she’s “the best young writer in America,” and I probably agree. Both books garnered 5+ ratings here on the blog. So I’m not alone! Much to my delight, the NYC launch of Find Me entailed a conversation between LvdB and Lacey at McNally Jackson. And it was great! Everything you […]

Categories: Events • Tags: 5+, Catherine Lacey, Dani Lencioni, Events, Find Me, FSG, Laura van den Berg, McNally Jackson, Nobody Is Ever Missing, Recaps

Find Me

February 13, 2015 by Drew

The Short Version: A virulent new disease appears in America that causes the infected to develop silver lesions and lose their memories, then rapidly lose motor control and cognitive function before death within ten days. Joy, apparently immune, is taken to a hospital in Kansas where she and several other patients wait out the epidemic. But when things take a turn at the hospital, Joy runs away and decides to head to Florida to find her birth mother, embarking on […]

Categories: Fiction, Literature • Tags: 5+, Advance Review, Apocalypse, Book Review, Book Reviews, Books, Contagion, Disease, Dystopia, Farrar Straus and Giroux, Fiction, Find Me, FSG, Laura van den Berg, Literature, Memory, Post-Apocalyptic, Psychology, Reviews, Science, Speculative, Speculative Fiction

The Supernatural Enhancements

October 27, 2014 by Drew

The Short Version: A. is surprised to discover that he has a second cousin in Virginia – who has died and left him a big ol’ mansion. Along with a mute Irish girl named Niamh, he heads to the house which is big, creepy, and full of mysteries. And then the dreams start… The Review: Holy hell this book is fun. I mean, just damned fun – the sort of breathless adventure that you don’t want to put down and that […]

Categories: Fantasy, Fiction, Horror, Literature, Mystery • Tags: 5+, A Visit to October Country, Adventure, Book Review, Book Reviews, Books, Codes, Edgar Cantero, Fantasy, Fiction, Games, Horror, Literature, Mystery, Mysticism, Reviews, Supernatural, The Supernatural Enhancements

Acceptance (The Southern Reach Trilogy, Book 3)

August 6, 2014 by Drew

The Short Version: It’s winter in Area X. [REDACTED] is [REDACTED] and [REDACTED] [REDACTED]. The Southern Reach, Area X, the Séance & Science Brigade, the lighthouse, the tower/tunnel, the biologist, Control, the director… some sort of conclusion or resolution will be found, for those who dare to seek it. But what will happen to those who do seek it will [REDACTED]. (Please note: this review will, out of some necessity, traffic in some minor spoilers from Books 1 & 2 – […]

Categories: Fiction • Tags: 5+, 6, Acceptance, Fiction, FSG Originals, Horror, Jeff Vandermeer, Literature, Speculative Fiction, The Southern Reach, The Southern Reach Trilogy

Raging Biblio-holism

The overwhelming urge to collect, consume, and consider books

Tag: 5+