by Jack Black This is probably the first instance of Goodreads suggesting a book that I both never heard of and got super excited upon seeing it on my suggestions feed. I initially wondered why I should care about something written by Jack Black. (No offense to the man, but he doesn’t strike me as…
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by Agatha Christie Given that the only other Agatha Christie mystery I’ve had the pleasure of reading was Murder on the Orient Express, I can’t really help but compare it to And Then There Were None. While I definitely enjoyed Orient Express, And Then There Were None was a very clear improvement over it, though…
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by Graham Greene Imagine it now: A virile, young man wanders around the book store. Having recently finished Greene’s marvelous Our Man in Havana, he casually glances to see what else the author may have for him to enjoy, only to find that he wrote Orient Express. Of course, it wasn’t until after purchasing it…
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by Sean Michaels It feels like I’ve recently been struggling quite a bit to write my reviews, but usually that has something to do with getting to the heart of what I feel about the books I’m reading and why. Oftentimes, I’ll have difficulties when there are objective problems with a story, but I still…
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by Madeleine Thien My first encounter with Do Not Say We Have Nothing was when I saw it on the Giller long list. Out of all the presumably great stories that made the list, the synopsis held my interest the most. Thien’s book follows a group of people as they struggle through the Chinese Cultural…
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by Cordelia Strube In my final review related to the International Festival of Authors, something that hasn’t happened since I think The Fault in Our Stars repeated itself. You see, all the characters in On the Shores of Darkness, There is Light have very clear voices, but one in particular had the wrong one initially….
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by Karen Connelly For the second in my series of reviews related to the International Festival of Authors Thunder Bay events comes another poetry collection, Come Cold River by Karen Connelly. In comparison to Country Club, Connelly forgoes the large range of topics McGuire covers in his poems to pursue a more vivid, narrative verse….
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by Andy McGuire In the lead-up to the International Festival of Authors events in Thunder Bay, I decided to take it upon myself to read something by each of the participating authors. While I have enjoyed past events, I figured this would give me a bit more background so that I can get more out…
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by Mike Barnes The Adjustment League follows The Super, our dangerous and somewhat mentally unbalanced narrator. While his condition leaves him catatonic every November, he fights for those who can’t defend themselves in his functional moments––“adjustments,” as he calls it. When a call for help sends him to investigate the mistreatment of a dementia patient,…
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by Michael Martineck You can see the influence of authors such as Ray Bradbury and George Orwell on a work like The Milkman, but I suppose most science fiction can probably trace back to both of these authors. (Speaking with Martineck at this year’s When Words Collide, he mentioned the influences of Philip K. Dick…
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