Book #68 of 2024: The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times by Michelle Obama As a follow-up to her acclaimed 2018 title Becoming, this 2022 release from former First Lady Michelle Obama isn’t nearly so noteworthy. Whereas that debut work was a powerful but straightforward memoir, this one blends the autobiographical genre with self-help, …
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Book #48 of 2024: Terec and the Wild by Victoria Goddard For most people within the boundaries of Astandalas, the magic that flows out of their ruler to knit the empire together is either unnoticed or experienced like a gentle balm. A select few with their own strong powers chafe against it, however, and for …
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Book #42 of 2024: Aurelius (to be called) Magnus by Victoria Goddard From what I’ve read so far, the majority of author Victoria Goddard’s Nine Worlds saga takes place in and around the time of Artorin Damara, the hundredth and final Emperor of Astandalas. This prequel novella, by contrast, is set many centuries prior, and …
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Book #36 of 2024: The Beauty of Dusk: On Vision Lost and Found by Frank Bruni A regrettably disjointed memoir. At its best, author Frank Bruni manages to convey a little of what it’s been like for him to go effectively blind in one eye overnight and learn he has a rare disorder that could …
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Book #32 of 2024: Didn’t Nobody Give a Shit What Happened to Carlotta by James Hannaham After two decades, Carlotta Mercedes has been released on parole from the men’s prison where, under her original name and gender presentation, she was sentenced as an accomplice to her cousin’s armed robbery. (She claims she was just in …
Book #18 of 2024: The Eternal Return of Clara Hart by Louise Finch This isn’t my first time-loop story — or even the first YA book I’ve read where a teenager keeps reliving the same party where a classmate gets killed, and in the process gradually realizes that their clique of popular friends are actually …
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Book #125 of 2023: Stephen Leeds: Death and Faxes by Brandon Sanderson, Max Epstein, David Pace, and Michael Harkins [Disclaimer: I am Facebook friends with the first credited author of this book.] This audiobook production is set within Brandon Sanderson’s existing Stephen Leeds / Legion trilogy, and an afterword makes it clear that he really …
Book #105 of 2023: Carrie Soto Is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid A feel-good comeback story from the master of other such recent historical fiction celebrity novels as Daisy Jones & The Six or The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo (all of which apparently share a loose continuity). In this one, our heroine Carrie Soto …
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Book #104 of 2023: Secret Identity by Alex Segura [Disclaimer: I won a free paperback copy of this title from the publisher Flatiron Books on Goodreads, in exchange for an honest review.] For many readers, the natural comparison point for this 2022 novel will be The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Michael Chabon’s Pulitzer-winning …
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Book #85 of 2023: Those Who Hold the Fire by Victoria Goddard This prequel to author Victoria Goddard’s The Hands of the Emperor is rather short — the Nine Worlds wiki lists it as a novelette, not even a full novella — and it’s pretty dependent on the reader bringing outside context from that longer …
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