nomadreader

Happy New Year, y'all! As always, I start the new year by looking back at the best books I read last year. Admittedly, 2013 was not the best reading year for me. I went through several reading droughts and several slow blogging periods. I thought of walking away from this blog more than once (and I'm so glad I remembered why I love sharing my reading with y'all. I'll be sticking around for quite some time.) Despite some reading and blogging disappointments, the year itself was a delight. Mr. Nomadreader and I bought our first (and I hope last) house. I discovered my new favorite band, American Aquarium , and took a solo road trip to one of my favorite cities, Nashville, to see them in concert for my birthday. I continue to love my job and all around, I feel very blessed and happy. In terms of reading, I didn't even manage to read 100 books in 2013. (It's the first time since graduate school I haven't read 100 books, and I'm disappointed in myself for ...

The backstory: Lamb  was longlisted for the 2013 Orange Prize  (soon-to-be-Bailey's) Women's Prize for Fiction and won the 2011 Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize . The basics: Lamb  takes its title from David Lamb, a middle-aged man struggling with the end of his marriage and the death of his father. When he meets 11-year-old Tommie, an unpopular girl, the two strike up an unlikely friendship of sorts and embark on a road trip from Chicago to the Rocky Mountains. Tommie goes willingly, but she does not tell anyone when she does. My thoughts: Throughout Lamb , there is certainly an element of creepiness. It's more overt at some times than others, but the tension of innocence also permeates the novel. There are essentially four versions of the events in the novel: how Lamb sees things, how Tommie sees things, how Lamb explains  things to Tommie, and, lastly, how the reader combines all three of these narratives. The reader also gets glimpses from the omniscient n...