nomadreader

The backstory: The Boyfriend Project  was one of the May Book of the Month picks . Before that, I'd never heard of it, but it sounded so fun, I added it to my box. Most of the books I pick from Book of the Month are titles I already wanted, but I love when it introduces me to new things. The basics:  "Samiah Brooks never thought she would be "that" girl. But a live tweet of a horrific date just revealed the painful truth: she's been catfished by a three-timing jerk of a boyfriend. Suddenly Samiah-along with his two other "girlfriends," London and Taylor-have gone viral online. Now the three new besties are making a pact to spend the next six months investing in themselves. No men and no dating."--publisher My thoughts: This book is filled with fun, friendship, romance, and just the right amount of drama. It manages to be fun and made me feel good, but it also manages to feel real. It's the right combination of real and escapist. I lo...

The backstory: I've been reading Sarah Hepola's work for years on the Internet, thanks to one of my oldest and best friends, Kathleen , who introduced me to her writing on The Morning News in the (very) early 2000's. I greeted the publication of her first memoir with delight. The basics: Blackout  chronicles Sarah Hepola's complicated relationship with alcohol from childhood to the present, when she is happily sober. My thoughts: I've been saying Sarah Hepola is one of my favorite writers for more than ten years, and I had just about stopped saying it because I was starting to dread the typical follow-up question about what books she's written when the asker has no desire to read a slew of Internet links. Now I can hand them a book. Blackout  is one of those books that makes me pause when I try to describe it. It is absolutely about drinking heavily, blacking out, and Hepola's road to sobriety. That description wouldn't have made me pick it up, and...

The backstory: When Mystical Creatures Attack! won the Iowa Short Fiction Award and is 2014 New York Times Notable book . The basics:  "Told through high school class assignments, letters, emails, private journal entries, school literary magazine submissions, advice column blog posts, and psychiatric wellness reports, the 25 linked stories in this debut collection beautifully sketch the lives of residents of a small South Texas town."- Publishers Weekly My thoughts: First: whoever called this book a short story collection has a very, very narrow view of what a novel is. To me, linked stories may share characters and settings, either across some stories or all. When Mystical Creatures Attack! has three main characters, and one of each is the main character in each story (I would say chapter.) It's certainly not a traditional novel, as the description indicates. It doesn't unfold in a chronological narrative. But, to me, it's definitely a novel, even if man...