Book Review: Arroyo Circle
Guest book review by Gene Helfman. In Arroyo Circle, JoeAnn Hart deftly weaves a tale with multiple threads. As the story develops, the different characters become incorporated into the fabric through …
Fiction
New and forthcoming environmental books (October 2024)
As we enter fall we (in the Northern Hemisphere) can be grateful for reasons to stay inside — and read. Which leads me to this list of new(ish) and upcoming …
Book Review: Honeymoons in Temporary Locations
What will a post-climate-disaster America look like? In Ashley Shelby’s short story collection, Honeymoons in Temporary Locations, the results range from devastating to absurd to all-too-plausible. This trifecta is what makes Shelby’s …
Animal Tales: Novels old and new that every animal lover should read
From the snake tempting Adam and Eve to the sheep that saved Odysseus from the Cyclops, animals have featured prominently in literature from the very beginning of literature. Today, animals …
Book Review: Love Story with Birds
Love Story with Birds, by Derek Furr, is a work of literature that defies easy categorization, which is partly why I enjoyed reading it. By way of poems, essays, stories, …
North Woods, a novel by Daniel Mason
Random House, 2023 “Shivers of lust passed through his elytra as he found her scent grow stronger,” and there we are, in the head of an Elm Bark beetle, one …
Book Review: The Pelican Tide
Sharon J. Wishnow’s debut novel, The Pelican Tide—set on Grand Isle, Louisiana, in 2010, just before the Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill—is both an intense environmental disaster story and a …
Book Review: Dark Soil
The title card at the end of Cheryl Dunye’s The Watermelon Woman, a classic of the New Queer Cinema film movement, reads “Sometimes you have to create your own history.” …
Book Review: Of Cattle and Men: Heavy is the hand that holds the stun gun
There is a conversation, repeated several times, during the powerful novella Of Cattle and Men by Ana Paula Maia, translated by Zoë Perry: “Like they say in these parts: as …
Book Review: Waiting For Al Gore
By Bob Katz To an event organizer, Bob Katz’s novel, Waiting For Al Gore, will read like a horror story, but for those worried about how we will organize ourselves …
The ten most popular book reviews of 2023
As we enter 2024, here is a brief recap of the most-viewed book reviews in 2023: