After reading more of Bolaño’s 2666 than I ever should have, I cleaned my bookshelves of all the to-read have-tos that I’ve held on to for far too long. And found myself without anything to read. Failure to read good books generally puts me in a state of existential crisis, so I decided to return […]
Book Reviews for Writers
The book reviews on this site bring together my love of literature, political science background, and experience living abroad in an attempt to understand the world. As a novelist, I also write about what these writers teach me about craft and how they influence my writing.
Asia
Wet Silence – The Poetry of Widowhood
How many ways can you write about widowhood? In Wet Silence: Poems about Hindu Widows, Sweta Srivastava Vikram explores every nuance of what life is like for a Hindu widow in India. It’s as much a human exploration as a cultural one as Vikram delves into the aftermath of the complex relationships that underlie arranged […]
Latin America
Treading Lightly While Traveling through Haiti in Maps Are Lines We Draw
What does it mean to leave no trace? This laudable goal of many a traveler can go awry when we get caught up in the “what does it mean” and forget that “leave no trace” is meant to apply to the outer environment and not to ourselves. In reading Maps Are Lines We Draw: A […]
US & Canada
Beginning a New Year as I Mean to Continue – with the Alchemy of the Word
I wanted to write this review in December, but I was busy stealing moments to make writing from the inspiration I found in Alchemy of the Word. I wanted to write this review over the Christmas holiday, but I was practicing balance. I wanted to write this review on New Year’s and fill it with […]
Arabia
Contemplating Zoroaster’s Children by Marius Kociejowski
I’m always excited when I get a package from Canadian publisher Biblioasis. The books they publish (including Alphabet, The Tuner of Silences, and The End of the Story) are intelligent, creative, and well-written and Zoroaster’s Children by Marius Kociejowski is no exception. To call Kociejowski a travel writer is to do him a grave disservice. […]
Eastern Europe
Books that Don’t Make the Cut
If you’ve read more than a few of my reviews, you’ll notice that I usually only take the time to review books I like. That’s because I prefer to delve into the positive aspects of a work but also because my time is valuable and I often don’t finish books I’m not enjoying. At the […]
South Pacific
Crafting Emotional Honesty in In the Quiet by Eliza Henry-Jones
It’s not hard to trigger a newish mom’s “what would happen to my family if something happened to me” fears, but it is hard to sustain a quiet story over 350 pages. In In the Quiet, Eliza Henry-Jones does both so beautifully that not only did I feel immersed rather than manipulated, but I stayed […]
Western Europe
Revisiting a Beloved Childhood Favorite for #TheDarkisReading: The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper
When I saw on Twitter that Robert Macfarlane had proposed a book group where we all start reading The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper on Midwinter’s Eve (the day the book starts) and share our experiences under the hashtag #TheDarkisReading, I was in heaven. He’d brought together my so many of my favorite things […]