Book Reviews | Raging Biblio-holism

A Separation

May 31, 2017 by Drew

The Short Version: Although they have been separated for half a year, a woman goes to Greece in search of her husband at her mother-in-law’s request. She spends a fitful time there, attempting to find him – but what she discovers instead forever alters the state of separation she thought they had entered. The Review: Have you seen the film The Lobster? I ask because I was unable to pull that strange, uncomfortable, wonderful film from my mind while reading A Separation. In […]

Categories: Fiction, Literature • Tags: A Separation, Book, Book Review, Book Reviews, Books, Katie Kitamura, review, Reviews, Riverhead Books, The Tournament of Books 2018

Borne

April 25, 2017 by Drew

The Short Version: Sometime in a dangerous, destroyed future, a woman named Rachel survives on the fringes of a ruined city with her partner. They avoid creatures great and small, fight small territorial skirmishes, and eke out a life. But when Rachel brings home a strange creature, which she names Borne, everything changes. Who is Borne? What is he – and what will he become? The Review: It is quite something to find an author relatively early in one’s adult […]

Categories: Fiction, Literature, Sci-Fi • Tags: Book, Book Review, Book Reviews, Books, Borne, Fiction, Jeff Vandermeer, Literature, review, Reviews, Sci-Fi, Speculative

Universal Harvester

March 28, 2017 by Drew

The Short Version: It’s the late 1990s and Jeremy’s working for a small video store in Nevada, Iowa. He’s thinking, slowly, about his future – but then customers begin to complain of strange scenes spliced into their VHS tapes. He starts to look into it… but some mysteries are, perhaps, never possible to explain. The Review: It shouldn’t come as any surprise, to those who know John Darnielle’s work (either his fiction or his music), that reading Universal Harvester conjures a particular […]

Categories: Fiction, Literature • Tags: Advance Review, Book, Book Review, Book Reviews, Books, Fiction, John Darnielle, Literature, review, Reviews, Universal Harvester

The Intuitionist

March 23, 2017 by Drew

The Short Version: Lila Mae Watson is the first colored female elevator inspector in history – and she’s an Intuitionist, maybe the best they’ve ever had. But when a brand new elevator that she inspected goes into total freefall two weeks before the Elevator Guild elections, she must go on the run to prove her good name. What she discovers along the way might change everything… The Review: It is almost shocking to pick up a debut novel from an […]

Categories: Fiction, Literature • Tags: Book, Book Review, Book Reviews, Books, Colson Whitehead, Elevators, Fiction, Literature, review, Reviews, The Intuitionist

The Bluest Eye

March 16, 2017 by Drew

The Short Version: A young black girl named Pecola living in post-Depression small-town Ohio wishes for blue eyes. Two of her schoolmates, wary of her, recount what they know about this young woman – as, meanwhile, far darker things occur above the level of child understanding. Pecola’s family’s history comes to influence their present – and to ensure that their future is a bleak one. The Review: I rarely read forewords before I read classics that I’ve never read before. More […]

Categories: Fiction, Literature • Tags: Book Review, Book Reviews, Books, Fiction, Literature, Morrison 2017, Reviews, The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison

Injection, Vols. 1 & 2

March 14, 2017 by Drew

The Short Version: What exactly did they do, those five brilliant minds given reign to imagine the future and how they could make it arrive more swiftly? What, exactly, is causing things like ghosts and transhuman zombies and leafy spirits of Olde England to appear in our world? And can any of it be stopped? The Review: I’m a wide-ranging fan of Warren Ellis’s particular take on the specifically-very-English blend of technology, history, and magic (however you define it). Even […]

Categories: Fantasy, Fiction, Graphic Novel, Sci-Fi • Tags: AI, Book, Book Review, Book Reviews, Books, Comic Books, Declan Shalvey, Fantasy, Image Comics, Injection, Jordie Bellaire, Magic, review, Reviews, Sci-Fi, Speculative Fiction, Technology, Warren Ellis

Wind/Pinball: Two Novels

March 6, 2017 by Drew

The Short Version: Two short novels of a young man in Tokyo, just before and just after college. He and his friend the Rat drink at J’s Bar, have variable luck with women, and ultimately try to figure out what to do with their lives – but that’s a taller order than they anticipated. The Review: It’s always intriguing, from an anthropological kind of standpoint, to discover a beloved author’s earliest work after you’ve already become familiar with their collected […]

Categories: Fiction, Literature • Tags: Book Review, Book Reviews, Books, Books in Translation, Fiction, Haruki Murakami, Hear the Wind Sing, Literature, Pinball 1973, Reviews, Ted Goossen, The Rat, Translation, Trilogy of the Rat, Wind/Pinball

Version Control

February 26, 2017 by Drew

The Short Version: Something feels slightly off about the world Rebecca Wright is living in, as though things have shifted in some small way that she can’t define. Her husband is a scientist working on a causality violation device (NOT A TIME MACHINE) and her son is perhaps misunderstood by both of them. After a horrible accident, Rebecca’s life changes irrevocably – or… does it? What if her husband’s work is exactly what he thinks it isn’t? The Review: Remember that Michael […]

Categories: Fiction, Sci-Fi • Tags: Book, Book Review, Book Reviews, Books, Dexter Palmer, Fiction, Literature, review, Reviews, Sci-Fi, Science Fiction, Speculative Fiction, The Tournament of Books 2017, Time Travel, Version Control

The Mothers

February 21, 2017 by Drew

The Short Version: Nadia is a high school senior, ready to escape her small California town for college. The abortion she has seems, at the time, to be the best choice – but while her life goes on without much pause, the lives of those around her are deeply affected and will be for the rest of their days. The Review: Another ToB Irregular wrote on Twitter that this book is an exploration of the following question: “What if your […]

Categories: Fiction, Literature • Tags: Abortion, Book, Book Review, Book Reviews, Books, Brit Bennett, Family, Fiction, Literature, Religion, review, Reviews, Riverhead Books, The Mothers, The Tournament of Books 2017

Raging Biblio-holism

The overwhelming urge to collect, consume, and consider books

Tag: Book Reviews