August 2014 – Lovely Bookshelf

Flings by Justin Taylor

August 27, 2014

Justin Taylor’s Flings, a collection of short stories, started out on a high note for me. Each story is a brief glimpse into one moment…

Snow and Shadow by Dorothy Tse

August 25, 2014

The stories in Snow and Shadow are so, so bizarre, but in that delicious way that leaves you excited to discover what the author has come up with…

Bout of Books 11 Wrap Up

August 24, 2014

Well, we’ve reached the end of Bout of Books 11. I met all of my goals. Participated in a Twitter chat and a few…

The Story Hour by Thrity Umrigar

August 19, 2014

In The Story Hour, an unlikely and precarious friendship forms between Maggie, a well-respected psychologist, and her patient, Lakshmi, a depressed Indian woman in…

Burnt Toast Makes You Sing Good by Kathleen Flinn

August 15, 2014

You wouldn’t think a memoir consisting of someone else’s family stories would be all that interesting, but Kathleen Flinn had me hanging on each…

Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami

August 12, 2014

In high school, Tsukuru Tazaki belonged to a close-knit group of five friends. When he goes off to college, the other four suddenly and…

The Virtues of Oxygen by Susan Schoenberger

August 10, 2014

Although The Virtues of Oxygen is fiction, it is an accurate and respectful look at Americans who live just above the poverty line, struggling to make it…