Category Archives: update

Now this is my kind of novel. You have to work for it a little. Great House follows four disparate characters in eight chapters that seem to be connected by more than a large, looming desk but it isn't until the very end of the novel that the connection becomes clear. Krauss writes of loss,Continue reading “Week 11/52: Great House by Nicole Krauss.”

Okay, I have been meaning to read A New Kind of Christian forever ago but then I read it and basically, I might as well have read it before as most of the content — Christianity in the post-modern world — has been covered elsewhere over the years. It felt ten years old (and itContinue reading “Week 10/52: A New Kind of Christian by Brian McClaren”

  The Lonely Polygamist by Brady Udall was a Powell's Indiespensable selection that I just didn't get around to reading last year. Four wives + 28 children + economic hardship = complicated. And then maybe we should add another wife to the mix? Somehow along the line I began to care about this messy clan.Continue reading “Week 9/52: The Lonely Polygamist by Brady Udall”

I chose three 600-page novels in a row. Why? Sarah Waters is a great English novelist. I highly recommend The Little Stranger (haunted house a la Henry James) & A Night Watch (large cast of characters, WWII London). Fingersmith is a Victorian mystery featuring thievery, switched identities, rouge gentlemen, and mad houses. And somehow is completelyContinue reading “Week 8/52: Fingersmith by Sarah Waters”

Oh my goodness, why do I love chatty upper-class British society novels SO MUCH? I just kind of gulped down The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate. Nancy Mitford was the eldest of the famous Mitford sisters and her novels, especially The Pursuit of Love, are extremely autobiographical. And extremely funny: "LordContinue reading “Week 7/52: The Pursuit of Love & Love in A Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford”