writer
The Museum of Human History by Rebekah Bergman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Rebekah Bergman’s THE MUSEUM OF HUMAN HISTORY is a spellbinding study of how people reckon with the most powerful force in our lives: time. Through touching and inventive vignettes spotlighting a handful of households inhabiting the same town, Bergman asks what any of us might risk or leverage to stop time, and the roles of our bodies, our memories, and life’s artifacts in the attempt.
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A History of Wild Places by Shea Ernshaw
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Shea Ernshaw brings a painter’s touch to this twisty-turny plot joyride that takes elements of mystery, fantasy, and horror, puts them in the woods, and sees how they all get along when cut off from the outside world.
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Ghosts by Henrik Ibsen
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
All-consuming tragedy unfolding at a breakneck pace, caused a moral panic upon its release, eviscerates the Victorian gender norms of its day… this play burns with rage, and I loved it.
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The Animals by Cary Fagan
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This is a strange, awkward tale of a strange, awkward man in a town where nothing ever happens, except the occassional high absurdity that gets assimilated into everyday life quite seamlessly. The humor is painfully subtle, but ever-present, and there’s a lot of the main character falling asleep with pizza on him. Reads like one of those dreams that makes sense while you’re dreaming it, but then you wake up and say– “What… was that?”
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Whalefall by Daniel Kraus
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
The writing in Daniel Kraus’ WHALEFALL is assertively top-tier. A visceral, blood-pumping story with perfect emotional pitch, this novel is a breathless page-turner. I especially enjoyed Kraus’ strong research base which creates a very real-feeling crisis (believe it or not, this is a realistic “swallowed by a whale” tale). Science and poetry take turns shining through interesting action writing that plunges the readers into depths of multiple kinds.
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The Seep by Chana Porter
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
THE SEEP by Chana Porter is quiet and strange, a new utopia for a new era with new discomforts and new questions. Porter’s questing, soft narrative explores the burdens and the wisdom of resistance to easy solutions. Humor, otherworldliness, fantastic worldbuilding, and open-ended possibilities abound.
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All Systems Red by Martha Wells
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Science fiction at its absolute finest, the first book in the Murderbot Diaries series ALL SYSTEMS RED is downright delightful. A solid adventure-rescue story in its own right is enhanced into something really special with the narration of its genderless, socially anxious, reluctant hero–a robot designed to kill stuff who really just wants to binge watch a show called Sanctuary Moon.
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Raft of Stars by Andrew J. Graff
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Andrew J. Graff brings old-school adventure in his debut, RAFT OF STARS. The lovingly described northern Wisconsin landscape is the star in a book that is set in the 1990s, and honestly feels like a book that was written in the 1990s. A very nostalgic read, full of narrow escapes, miracles, and small town misfits-turned-heroes.
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Our Souls at Night by Kent Haruf
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Reading Kent Haruf’s final novel is watching a master at work, fluid and effortless. Our Souls at Night is a stunning piece of contemporary realism. Doing so much in few pages and spare language, it left me breathless with its unfettered sincerity.
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Shark Heart by Emily Habeck
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Listen: I think we all believe, deep down, that there’s a chance we wake up one day and have begun to transform into an animal. In Shark Heart Emily Habeck takes this idea for kindling in a book that burns with hyponotic energy and familiar truth. Life’s hardest roles are those of inevitability and release, and Habeck casts them brilliantly in this moonlight-drenched, ocean-wide love story.
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