BEA14 | Raging Biblio-holism

Her

April 10, 2015 by Drew

The Short Version: When Nina sees Emma, the shock of recognition is instant. But Emma doesn’t remember her and so Nina begins a new friendship, all the while worming her way into Emma’s life – with increasingly worrying consequences. The Review: Despite all the trappings, this book leans away from (even as it falls into) being a thriller. The term “thriller” implies a certain amount of propulsion, implies that the reader will be “thrilled” – but Her is a far quieter novel […]

Categories: Fiction, Literature, Mystery • Tags: BEA14, Book Review, Book Reviews, Books, Family, Fiction, Harriet Lane, Her, Literature, Mystery, Reviews, Thriller

An Untamed State

February 23, 2015 by Drew

The Short Version: Mireielle Duval Jameson is the daughter of a wealthy Haitian businessman – and when she’s kidnapped in broad daylight in front of her husband and son, everyone expects he’ll pay the ransom quickly. Instead, she is held and brutalized for 13 days and the woman who finally finds freedom, when it comes, might not be the same woman who was taken. The Review: I nearly stopped reading this book after about 60 pages. And although I did […]

Categories: Fiction, Literature • Tags: An Untamed State, BEA14, Book Review, Book Reviews, Books, Feminism, Fiction, Gender, Haiti, Kidnapping, Literature, Politics, Rape, Reviews, Roxane Gay, Sex, Sexual Assault, The Tournament of Books 2015

The Queen of the Tearling (The Tearling Trilogy, Book One)

February 4, 2015 by Drew

The Short Version: Kelsea Raleigh has just turned nineteen and, as such, is set to claim the throne of the Tearling. But she’s been in hiding since she was born and only her own bravery and the faith of a few good men (and women) stand between the ascendant queen and the many who want her dead. But getting crowned is just the first struggle of many more to come. The Review: Sometimes, you just want some high fantasy. Nothing […]

Categories: Fantasy, Fiction • Tags: BEA14, Book Review, Book Reviews, Books, Emma Watson, Erika Johansen, Fantasy, Fiction, Harper, Queen of the Tearling, Reviews, Tearling, The Queen of the Tearling, The Tearling

The Boy Who Drew Monsters

October 22, 2014 by Drew

The Short Version: Jack Peter Keenan, a ten-year-old with Asperger’s, won’t go out of the house after a traumatic near-drowning at age seven. But as Christmas approaches in his tenth year, he begins to draw strange pictures – pictures that bring his mother, father, and best friend into a strange world of imagination and deadly possibility out on the Maine coast. The Review: I’ve said this before: there is something inherently creepy-mystical about the coast of Maine. The way the fog rolls in, […]

Categories: Fiction • Tags: A Visit to October Country, Autism, BEA14, Book Review, Book Reviews, Books, Fiction, Horror, Keith Donohue, Maine, Reviews, The Boy Who Drew Monsters

Party Games (Fear Street Relaunch #1)

October 3, 2014 by Drew

The Short Version: Brendan Fear is having a birthday party out on Fear Island. Rachel Martin’s friends warn her not to go – but she has a crush on Brendan and, heck, those old stories about the Fears are just stories, aren’t they? But when kids start dying, Rachel has to find a way off the island – before time runs out. The Review: I have to admit, there are few better ways to kick off the month of October than spending […]

Categories: Fiction, Horror • Tags: A Visit to October Country, BEA14, Book Review, Book Reviews, Books, Fear Street, Fiction, Goosebumps, Horror, Party Games, R. L. Stine, Reviews, Young Adult

Rainey Royal

September 29, 2014 by Drew

The Short Version: It’s the Village in the ’70s and Rainey Royal is trying to figure out who she is. We meet her first at age 14 in her big house on West 10th St, her father an oblivious jazz musician and his best friend eyeing her with lecherous intent. She’s brash, newly sexy, and an old-school wild child – but even those have to grow up at some point. The Review: Sometimes you read the right book at the right […]

Categories: Fiction, Literature • Tags: BEA14, Book Review, Book Reviews, Books, Dylan Landis, Fiction, Literature, New York City, Rainey Royal, Reviews

Broken Monsters

September 22, 2014 by Drew

The Short Version: Working in Detroit, Detective Gabi Versado has seen some shit – but nothing quite like this most recent corpse. The top half of a boy stitched to the bottom half of a deer, it’s only the beginning of something awful and Versado, along with a cast of wonderfully broken characters, will have to face all kinds of darkness if they want to keep their city safe. The Review: I happened to see Jim Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive just after […]

Categories: Crime, Fantasy, Fiction, Horror, Literature • Tags: Art, BEA14, Book Review, Book Reviews, Books, Broken Monsters, Crime, Detroit, Fantasy, Fiction, Horror, Lauren Beukes, Literature, Reviews

10:04

September 12, 2014 by Drew

The Short Version: After the critical success of his first novel, a thirtysomething author deals with having to write a second while also being diagnosed with a heart condition, trying to get his best friend pregnant, and increasingly frequent superstorms tracking towards New York City. This is life, just a little different from how we know it. The Review: Look at that cover. Seems familiar, right? It was the cover of New York Magazine the issue after Sandy hit – but suddenly […]

Categories: Fiction, Literature • Tags: 10:04, BEA14, Ben Lerner, Book Review, Book Reviews, Books, Fiction, Hurricane Sandy, Literature, Memoir, New York City, Philosophy, Poetry, Reviews, Semi-Fiction

Station Eleven

September 4, 2014 by Drew

The Short Version: A famous actor suffers a heart attack onstage during a Toronto production of King Lear – and outside, civilization is just beginning to crumble. An incredibly virulent pandemic decimates the world population in days but some survive. Spanning an impressive breadth of time from the actor’s early days to nearly twenty years after the flu hit, Station Eleven examines five lives that converge in ways nobody could have expected. The Review: This is one that grabs you from the get-go. […]

Categories: Fiction, Literature • Tags: Advance Review, Apocalypse, BEA14, Book Review, Book Reviews, Books, Emily St. John Mandel, Fiction, Flu, Georgia Flu, King Lear, Literature, Reviews, Shakespeare, Station Eleven, The Tournament of Books 2015

Raging Biblio-holism

The overwhelming urge to collect, consume, and consider books

Tag: BEA14

Her