Ben Fountain was inspired to write his first novel by a television broadcast of the Thanksgiving 2004 Dallas Cowboys game (still available for viewing in a very blurry Youtube video). Destiny’s Child performed the halftime show, which featured men dressed in military attire and a prominent martial drumbeat. The strange combination struck him, and the result is [...]
Ron Rash’s new novel is a mysterious story of forbidden love in which much of the story is told from a teen girl’s point of view. Rash once again showcases his beautiful writing and a North Carolinian, Appalachian mountain setting, earning an AB4T starred review. Rash is best known for Serena (Ecco, 2008), which was [...]
One of the oldest stories in the Western canon is retold from a fresh perspective in Madeline Miller’s debut novel. I interviewed the author for the SLJ Teen Newsletter a few weeks ago, and I love the way her passion for the classics is reflected in her responses. I will share just two of them [...]
Caroline Preston’s beautiful novel is in the format of a scrapbook full of 1920s ephemera. Not only is every page a colorful, dynamic collage of historical artifacts, but the paper is wonderful. While I’m sure this would be fun in an Ebook format too, turning each luxuriously heavy page is an experience not to be [...]
Lucette Lagnado’s new memoir about coming to the United States from Cairo has been garnering a lot of attention. The New York Times alone published two reviews: “Leaving Egypt, Finding Brooklyn” and “Pretty Girls, Seemingly Pursued by an Evil Eye”. In a way, Lagnado offers two coming-of-age memoirs in one, both her mother’s story and [...]
I thoroughly enjoyed Kevin Wilson’s debut short story collection, the Alex Award-winning Tunneling to the Center of the Earth (Ecco, 2009), so I had high hopes for his first novel. As expected, the writing is original, the imagination brilliant, and the book never dull. It is all about the kids of two performance artists and [...]
Today I wanted to present a book that is still up in the air for me. I read it and passed it on to John Sexton for a second opinion. He wrote the review, which gets the book exactly right — you might want to read it before continuing with my musings. For me, the [...]
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