About Book Marks
Recent Reviews
Leif Enger
Positive Booklist If the middle of the story lags a bit, and Lark seems too good to be true, readers will forgive such lapses. Enger’s prose is beautiful to behold.
Bernie Taupin
Positive Booklist Fans of the two artists...should check this out. For the less-initiated, Taupin has a lot to say, and it shouldn’t be missed.
Sophie Mackintosh
Positive Booklist Elodie may remind some readers of a more blatantly carnal descendant of Emma Bovary. The denouement is based upon a real-life tragedy in a small French town, but readers won’t find any real answers to that mystery here. They will, however, find Mackintosh’s incantatory prose as hypnotic as ever.
Reece Jones
Positive Booklist This eye-opening read concludes with signs of hope and suggestions for change.
Corban Addison
Positive Booklist As Addison shows, there is a better way to handle waste on large hog farms, but corporations resist spending the money. Especially interesting for ag-law students and any reader who appreciates stories of justice served.
N Jamiyla Chisholm
Positive Booklist Imagine a two-year-old wrested from her mother’s arms, forced to sleep on a hard floor with strange children and wonder why she rarely gets to see her mother...So began Chisholm’s early years in the Community, a conservative, Brooklyn-based Muslim cult, in the late 1970s...Chisholm’s ne’er-do-well father had informed her mother that, converting to Islam, they’d be adopting a new life filled with purpose...The reality was much harsher: in the Community, the sexes were separated, and children were further segregated by age; Chisholm’s father spent his days panhandling for change while her mother tended infants inside the compound...It took the author years to get her mother to discuss what happened back then, and for them both to work out their feelings about the experience...Chisholm, a journalist, offers a nuanced examination of how and why people make decisions that harm them, and of the difficulty in extricating oneself from destructive situations.
Namrata Poddar
Positive Booklist This is an immigrant story and the reader, no matter their heritage, will recognize similarities in family stories.
Courtney Maum
Positive Booklist Many women may find much to relate to in Maum’s vulnerable and human story, which could be a favorite for book clubs.
Alicia Puglionesi
Rave Booklist Dense with research, Puglionesi’s book ought to be widely studied.
Shukri Mabkhout, Tr. Miled Faiza and Karen McNeil
Positive Booklist The novel asks important questions: What agency does an individual have in a society in flux? What role do political and moral philosophies play in individual or communal life? At novel’s end, readers understand why Abdel assaulted the imam.
Alex Schulman trans. by Rachel Willson-Broyles
Rave Booklist Already an international bestseller, Schulman’s novel is extraordinary in its structure, covering the 24 hours leading up to the ash-scattering, with the timeline unfolding backwards in two-hour increments ... An entrancing, gripping read.
Kate Bowler
Rave Booklist Bowler’s prose is adept at capturing the dialectic of life’s \'splendid, ragged edges\' showing through. And she’s funny, too. This is a gem for cancer patients and their families and for survivors, but really, for anyone who understands the terror and beauty of being human.
Rick Bragg
Positive Booklist Readers familiar with Bragg’s books and magazine work know his down-home humor and infectious turns of phrase ... Bragg’s compassion for the dog’s shortcomings give Speck the time and space to relearn to belong to someone. Does the world need yet another dog book? Yes, if it’s this one.3
Bernhard Schlink
Positive Booklist Two world wars and the passage of more than a century do not overshadow Schlink’s story of lovers who never fully belong to each other, just as they never fully belonged to the world.
Margaret Renkl
Positive Booklist Readers can easily home in on one of the book’s wide-ranging six sections, sample an essay or two from each, or barrel through from start to finish, as whim dictates. Renkl’s voice is calm, steady, and sometimes surprising.
Gideon Defoe
Rave Booklist Hate history? Hate geography? Just let Defoe’s irreverent wit make these subjects come alive. From his iconoclastic intro to tongue-in-cheek discussions of flags and anthems, Defoe’s romp through geographical history will delight. Each short chapter opens with salient facts, and instead of listing boring latitude and longitude ... Anglophiles will appreciate Defoe’s use of words like skint and tenner. Each chapter includes hand-drawn maps. This book is a sparkling gem. Don’t gloss over the footnotes!
Lisa Miller
Positive Booklist This book will give scientists much to consider about spirituality’s health benefits as it provides evidence for what the deeply spiritual already intuit. Skeptics, too, should check it out.
Spencer Ackerman
Rave Booklist Attempting the near impossible, national-security correspondent Ackerman offers a book stuffed to the brim with details discussing the events leading to 9/11 and how America’s response paved the way for the ascension of Donald Trump to the presidency 15 years later, while still acknowledging his project’s incompleteness ... The book gives readers a deeper-than-headlines take on Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning, and Julian Assange ... This book does a masterful job communicating how nothing is as it seems. As for what to make of that assertion, the onus is on the reader.
Charlie English
Positive Booklist English’s book tells two stories: One of humanity where mentally ill people were given a voice, and one of inhumanity, where Nazism strove to destroy creativity and human life. The end notes are fascinating for any history lover who wants to better understand Hitler’s maniacal grip on Germany.
Claire Luchette
Positive Booklist The book is told in flashback, after Agatha has left her fellow-nuns, and the build-up to her departure is well-paced and convincing. Readers will appreciate Luchette’s finely observed characters.
Lucy Jones
Positive Booklist This book explores \'how and why nature make(s) us feel good, and [Jones] has more than done her homework ... Her book, filled with examples of nature’s benefits to human health, makes a strong argument for rescuing nature before it’s too late.
Raynor Winn
Rave Booklist Readers will delight in Winn’s account here of falling in love with Moth. A must-read for lovers of the first book; fans of nature writing should also check this out.
Jessie Van Eerden
Rave Booklist Though the setup may sound like a soap opera, this picaresque novel is anything but. Van Eerden’s sentences spill over with lush imagery and stunning language; she knows and loves these women, and readers will come to feel tenderly toward [them] ... A thoughtful, sometimes humorous, novel.
Jessica Winter
Positive Booklist Alternating chapters between Jane and her daughter, Winter draws readers into depths of familial love that sometimes miss the mark, despite best intentions. She deftly depicts an all-too-human inconsistency: we may hold deep convictions until reality hits close to home. Every page is absorbing; book clubs will love discussing this.
Diane Wilson
Rave Booklist Dakota writer Wilson’s depiction of Rosalie would be story enough, but her debut novel sweeps generations and also encompasses the War of 1862, when the Dakota were ultimately removed from their land in Minnesota. Through the voices of other women from past and present, Wilson deepens the reader’s understanding of what loss of language and culture has done to Indigenous people. In depicting the way Rosalie’s ancestor Marie Blackbird and other women sew seeds into their clothing as the war breaks out, Wilson shows these women’s relationship to and reverence for the land: a sharp contrast to \'a country that destroys its soil,\' using the methods of modern agriculture and its effects upon waterways. A thought-provoking and engaging read.
John Colapinto
Positive Booklist ... heavily researched ... Especially interesting is his theory of how Abraham Lincoln’s high voice helped win a presidential debate. Insights on why babies vocalize before they speak words further fascinate. Lots of data, evidence, thoughtfulness, and heart here.
John Gray
Positive Booklist Readers may wonder: should we be more like cats, then? Gray won’t tip his hand, except to say, catlike, that the good life is the one you already have. For philosophers and philosophical cat lovers. Lots of endnotes for further discovery.
Paulo Coelho
Mixed Booklist Read at face level, this slim volume seems to offer little beyond rudimentary instruction, but the deeper message of the archer is that mastery requires one to delve into the heart of any endeavor. More than perfect technique, it is a matter of patience, intention, hard work, and a willingness to be vulnerable ... Coelho’s mystical, aphoristic style will not be to everyone’s taste. Some readers will see deep truth in the spare sentences; others will find this allegorical tale a trite yawn. Whether this book will be a life-changer or not will depend very much on what the reader both brings to and seeks from its pages.
Kerri Arsenault
Positive Booklist Arsenault’s driving curiosity is matched by a stunning vocabulary (catkin and debouche are two such delights). Readers who can appreciate the complexities of loving and hating their birthplace, and who understand that going home is like a “dialogue between two people in a deep and complicated relationship,” will find this memoir well worth the effort.
Robert P. Jones
Rave Booklist This book is a marvel. It manages to quietly excoriate the insidious, entrenched attitudes that continue to sow racial hatred and division and to show the large and small ways that they continue. Devoid of moralizing, this powerful, heavily researched and annotated book is a must-read for religious leaders and academics.
Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, trans. by Michele Hutchison
Rave Booklist Rijneveld’s International Booker Prize–shortlisted debut is not a novel for those expecting triumphal outcomes. Readers who can persist through the agonies of a family falling apart, however, will find their breath taken away by Rijneveld’s prose as filtered through Hutchison’s deft translation.
Ronan Hession
Positive Booklist Readers in search of high drama and action will not find it in Hession’s understated debut; rather, they will meet lovely, beautifully-realized characters. An especially delightful read for Anglophiles.
Becky Mandelbaum
Positive Booklist Mandelbaum creates complex characters, full of contradiction and missteps. This first novel is finely rendered, lightly dashed with humor, and littered with lots of animals
Sarah Posner
Positive Booklist [Posner\'s] extensive research offers a dizzying array of right-wing think tanks and coalitions, driven by both high- and low-profile names; it can be hard to keep them straight. Add abortion, immigration issues, blatant racism, and extremist alt-right views about same, and one has the stew that is the current political scene ... She sees no end in sight, nor does she offer easy answers. A gripping read.
Nancy Wayson Dinan
Positive Booklist This strange brew of a book nods to the picaresque novel, is shot through with magical realism, and undergirded by a naturalist’s concern for Mother Earth—and it’s all wrapped in lovely sentences. Book groups will have field days discussing this.
Eileen Alexander
Positive Booklist [The letters] run the gamut of chatty (sometimes catty), ruminative, plaintive, and frank, and readers will appreciate Alexander’s breadth of literary knowledge ... Alexander’s style of expression is uniquely her own with terms like \'mollocking\' (to cavort, especially sexually) and naming the bathroom \'Duncan.\' Nothing is too great or too trivial to include in her letters: interminable air raids, praise for C. S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters, and squabbles with her father and brothers. Front matter provided by the editors helps give context, and a \'who’s who\' at the end helps readers keep the vast cast of characters straight.
Torbjørn Ekelund, Trans. By Becky L. Crook
Positive Booklist Ekelund’s take on Robert Frost’s road not taken may surprise. Readers are also introduced to famous trails around the world and some of the folks who’ve endeavored to walk them. Interesting tidbits include information about why it’s anatomically impossible to walk a completely straight line and how paths are typically formed not to save time, but energy. A quiet, reflective read.
Kathy Peiss
Positive Booklist Peiss has done stellar work unearthing the contributions of librarians and archivists in collecting and preserving documents in Europe, actions that aided the U.S. government in its efforts to end the war ... Exhaustively researched, this is a recommended read for librarians, archivists, and WWII buffs who want to discover a little-known contribution in Allied war efforts
S. M. Hulse
Positive Booklist Mourning, loss, and love illuminate the pages of Hulse’s ruminative novel. Especially fine is her rendering of a person of faith struggling with doubt and the nature of evil. Fans of Annie Proulx may appreciate the novel’s pensive mood and the exploration of a place where people have few options and little hope.
Lara Prescott
Rave Booklist Prescott’s debut far surpasses the typical genre fare ... Prescott...does a masterful job of spanning continents and juggling shifting points of view, but readers may wish to keep notes to remember who’s who. Cold War buffs or those familiar with Pasternak’s tour-de-force and its adaptations will find this book especially enticing. Those new to the story will still be intrigued, and perhaps want to seek out the original.
Darrel J. McLeod
Positive Booklist McLeod’s story is a close-up of the continuing effects of manifest destiny ... Readers will appreciate McLeod’s hard-won peace.
Margaret Renkl
Rave Booklist Telling stories is in [Renkl\'s] bones, but those stories are just one part of this unusual book. Dated passages function like bits of memoir, snippets of her life: recalling romantic love, her mother’s depression, her father’s cancer, her own health scares. Those parts will wholly please readers, but Renkl is also a fine observer of the natural world ... Reinkl deftly juggles the two disparate threads of narrative, all of which is shot through with deep wonder and a profound sense of loss. It is a fine feat, this book. Renkl intimately knows that \'this life thrives on death\' and chooses to sing the glory of being alive all the same.
Lori Gottlieb
Positive Booklist Gottlieb plunges further into the psychological depths as she discloses how therapists keep each other honest ... Some readers will know Gottlieb from her many TV appearances or her \'Dear Therapist\' column, but even for the uninitiated-to-Gottlieb, it won’t take long to settle in with this compelling read.
Raynor Winn
Rave Booklist As they trek, the author’s disillusionment falls away. As though scrubbed clean by the salt air, she and Moth begin to cobble together plans for a new life. Though the two never seem to bicker, Winn quickly dispels romantic notions about the trip, describing pelting rains; cold, sleepless nights; and stomach-grinding hunger when they run out of food (or money). A beautifully written and deeply satisfying read.
Beppe Severgnini
Positive Booklist Severgnini’s love affair with trains is as long as the Trans-Siberian Railway. Longer, perhaps ... Italy’s tortured political past gets full treatment ... Wry observations and gentle humor abound in addition to elegiac writing on trains and train travel.
James Sullivan
Positive Booklist Reading how Aretha Franklin took Otis Redding’s \'Respect\' to a new level in the cause of women’s rights is but one highlight in this carefully researched book. An index would have aided greatly, but given the complexity and breadth of musical influences and genres discussed, Sullivan can be forgiven for the omission.
Sophie Mackintosh
Positive Booklist In Mackintosh’s skilled hands, readers encounter this world as if in a fever dream and float on its characters’ disparate and shifting points of view. Book clubs may enjoy discussing the dystopian and feminist themes of Mackintosh’s exciting debut.
Ariel Burger
Positive Booklist Structuring his book in sections like \'Memory,\' \'Activism,\' and \'Witness,\' Burger uses snippets of past classroom conversations to illustrate the larger themes; the episodic structure works. Ironically, in highlighting Wiesel the teacher, Burger further elevates Wiesel the humanitarian. Readers will find their own preconceptions called into question, as though they were in class, too.
Art Cullen
Rave Booklist \"An engaging storyteller, Cullen recounts the deeds (and misdeeds) of youth, but his writer’s passion shines when he discusses the events that led him to write the prize-winning editorials ... The moral, economic, and social history of a small town in Iowa might not seem like much of a story, but in Cullen’s hands, it is.\
Nell Stevens
Positive Booklist Online A lover of research, Stevens falls under the spell of Elizabeth Gaskell, Victorian writer and wife of a dull parson. Stevens alternates chapters between her own life and her discoveries of Gaskell’s, using the device to great effect. When Norton finally visits Gaskell, a perfectly nice visit essentially goes nowhere. Stevens encounters much the same with Max. Such juxtapositions add up to a delightful read.
Sarah Smarsh
Positive Booklist \"...this book is more than a female-authored Hillbilly Elegy. Smarsh employs an unusual and effective technique, throughout the book addressing her daughter, who does not, in reality, exist. Rather, she’s the future that seemed destined for Smarsh, the same future that had been destined for and realized by all the women in her family ... her story is a trenchant analysis of the realities of an economic inequality whose cultural divide allows \'the powerful to make harmful decisions in policy and politics.\' Elucidating reading on the challenges many face in getting ahead.\
Julia Whicker
Positive Booklist Dense, dark, and haunting.