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29 04, 2018

A Love Story For the Rest of Us

By |2018-04-29T18:42:22-05:00April 29th, 2018|good fiction|0 Comments

This week, we bring you a love story. Alain De Botton’s The Course of Love is a romance for people whose motto is, “Yeah, right.” In it, boy meets girl. Boy wants girl. Boy gets girls. But the story doesn’t stop there. No, this one takes the reader past those blissful early weeks when the two lovers think they just found the ticket to [...]

22 04, 2018

Missing Son, Shocked Mother

By |2018-04-22T16:56:51-05:00April 22nd, 2018|good fiction|1 Comment

When I opened the first page of What She Knew, author Gilly Macmillan drop-kicked me straight into the drama: A child in peril. The police springing into action. The mother in shock. Set in Bristol, England. When I opened the pages of my next read, I found — A child in peril. The police springing into action. The mother in shock. Set in Bristol, [...]

8 04, 2018

Jane Eyre Redone

By |2018-04-08T19:08:25-05:00April 8th, 2018|good fiction|0 Comments

In the first pages of Lyndsay Faye’s Jane Steele, the heroine admits that she’s committed a few murders. The reader may wonder if this is a character they can like. But give her a few pages to win you over. You would surely dream of plunging a few knives into human flesh, too, if you lived through the misfortunes that befall Jane. Her lovely [...]

4 03, 2018

What Year Is It, Luv?

By |2018-03-04T09:22:17-05:00March 4th, 2018|good fiction|0 Comments

Alice Love of Sydney, Australia, falls off her bike in spin class one day and, when she comes to, she’s not quite right in her head. Who are all these people calling my name? I think I’m pregnant. It’s 1998, right? It’s not? It’s 2008?! And the surprises keep coming. Why is my husband in Portugal? Why did he yell at me on the [...]

25 02, 2018

The Dark Clouds of War

By |2018-02-25T18:57:43-05:00February 25th, 2018|good fiction|0 Comments

Martha Hall Kelly’s Lilac Girls is a history lesson and a good read all wrapped up into one fat, but not too fat, book. She takes us back to World War II, just at the part where things heat up. Caroline, a New York socialite with a family heritage of helping the unfortunate, works at the French consul, hurrying up visas for panicked people [...]

11 02, 2018

Headed to the Olympics

By |2018-02-11T15:09:35-05:00February 11th, 2018|good fiction|0 Comments

To read Megan Abbott’s You Will Know Me is to spend a week in a world completely closed to most of us: competitive gymnastics. From my first broken-spoke of a cartwheel back in 4th-grade, I knew I’d have to pick a more earthbound dream. Yep, I am no Devon Knox, the wunderkind gymnast of Abbott’s story. Young Devon was born to run, tumble and [...]

21 01, 2018

Who’s For Going Back to High School?

By |2018-01-21T20:04:05-05:00January 21st, 2018|good fiction|0 Comments

Imagine you’re a fat girl, with bright red hair. Curly red hair. Today’s your first day at a high school in the Flats of West Omaha. You get on the bus and hope you can find a seat. It’s like walking into a den of panthers. They can stare at you. Or they can just go ahead and sink in their fangs into your [...]

14 01, 2018

Clear Your Schedule for This One

By |2018-01-14T19:56:12-05:00January 14th, 2018|good fiction|0 Comments

While you know I love reading, you may not know that I approach it like patient, measuring out dosages. Must finish this book by Thursday, which means I must read this many pages at lunch time. This method started when I attempted Don Quixote, which was so challenging that I had to break up the not-very-engaging story into bearable pieces. And now I have [...]

17 12, 2017

Let’s Go To Amerikay

By |2017-12-17T20:42:40-05:00December 17th, 2017|good fiction|0 Comments

I’m working my way through a list of ethnic museums in Chicago. Got the Ukrainians and the Greeks checked off. (Hey, Latvians, I tried, but if you’re going to tell Google Maps you’re running a museum, might be nice if you find a nice little volunteer to open the place up. Or you could try posting your hours on the door. I don’t like [...]

3 12, 2017

Less Depressing than Jane Eyre

By |2017-12-03T19:13:54-05:00December 3rd, 2017|good fiction|1 Comment

It’s been a while since I read a story wherein someone wore a “frock.” Frocks were how heroines dressed back when I learned to read, so that should tell you the era of this week’s book. In Mary Stewart’s Nine Coaches Waiting, Linda Martin leaves an English orphanage to accept a governess position in a French manor. (To be clear, she’s an orphan at [...]

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