David Yoon

It's a slim volume that in its spare verse and short chapters bring to mind poetry more than prose, even translated from the original french. It's a series of patchwork vignettes bouncing lightly from Vietnam, to the voyage over, to the immigrant experience in Quebec and back again.

Here we find ourselves in the sleepy Californian village of Pine Cove, home to retirees, tourists and its frankly oddball assortment of denizens begrudgingly creeping towards Christmas. It's just the sort of place for me right now, a cozy community filled with its share of freaks and geeks set up for holiday hijinks.

This time out Moore gives us a smattering of the undead craving brains, not to mention the functional yet elegant furniture design of IKEA, a former B-movie actress barely managing to hold her sword and sorcery past at bay while completely off her antipsychotics, an ex-stoner cop hiding an absolute bumper crop, a talking fruit-bat, and the archangel Raziel who has found himself dirtside yet again.

Writing is hard, writing humor is trecherous high-wire act that treads the thin line between working and failing miserably. Given the grim dumpster fire of 2020 I'm inclined to be generous in the humor department. This is just the thing for those of you looking for a cozy zombie holiday fable.

When no less than Anthony Bourdain lauds this as the “easily the best novel set in the world of cooking ever” you go in with some pretty lofty expectations.

It starts strong with Hassan's family in Mumbai talking of carp-head soup, samosas on wax paper, pomegranate towers, charcoal fires and the food stalls in Bombay's Crawford market. Circumstance brings the family to a small French village called Lumiere. There they open a modest Indian restaurant not 100 feet from the Michelin rated Le Saule Pleurer run by the icy Madame Mallory.

Here you find the primary friction in the story. The rigour of the French tradition against home cooking built across generations. The upstart and eccentric versus the staid and somber or, as elsewhere noted, Slumdog meets Ratatouille.

The book should have meandered and ended here but instead Hassan goes off to Paris to open his own restaurant and Journey begins to read more like author Richard Morais showing off his immense knowledge of the culinary world. We get foodie inside baseball touching on Michelin ratings, celebrity chefs, diversification via endorsements, nouveau cuisine, staffing perils and labor laws. I's kind of depressing really, and reads like the culinary equivalent of an office drone being awarded a gold watch after decades of loyal service.

Middled-aged, hand wringing New York Jew falls for almost inappropriately young Asian girl? Stop me if you've heard this before. Set in some not too distant, post literate dystopia where people are glued to their mobile devices texting ackronymanically with ROFLAARP and TIMATOV while obsessing over their credit scores, rating each others fuckability in real-time and shopping at places called AssLuxury... It's just all too very. Maybe this sort of winking irony is just lost on me.

I do have to say that as an otherwise illiterate second generation, Westernized (corrupted) Korean I got a cheap thrill managing to translate the mangled Kor-Engrish sprinkled throughout. Mu-she-suh indeed.

You know I'm pretty darn satisfied with the how it all came together. I saw a review that mentioned something about “Team Gale” - Please don't. People die, decisions are made and I liked the choices in how to render these. It's the third book in, if you've made it this far you're going to read this even if I tell you Katniss becomes BFF to Bella Swan and Edward comes in and fights the next Hunger Game and totally kicks it's ass.

It's Cloud Atlas meets The Overstory. A collection of connected short stories, spanning 3 centuries, centred around a yellow house deep in the woods of Massachusetts incorporating diary entries, letters, songs, poems, medical notes and more, written by young lovers escaping puritanical judgement, a Loyalist soldier struck with pomomania, a buxom fortune teller, a slave hunter, a schizophrenic, twin spinsters, a disgraced amateur historian, a closeted painter and plenty of ghosts beside. Throw in the smutty goings on of a horny scolytid beetle, the thwarted efforts of an industrious squirrel preparing for winter, a spore shaken from the coat of a dog, and various mountain lions. Not to mention various folks axed, eviscerated, and blown away. Each chapter is written in accordance to the time and narrator, from the prim prose of the late 18th century, the florid letters from a 19th century painter, to the lurid exclamations of a 70's true crime writer.

[Deep breath] It's a lot, and yet Mason somehow manages to pull it off and land this thing. It is pure storytelling magic where all that is asked of you is to revel in the magic of the words on the page. Not a bad side hustle when Mason isn't busy teaching psychiatry at Stanford. #showoff

Can there even be spoilers at this rate? I mean I'm assuming you haven't picked up volume 3 without reading the first 2 already. Hill continues to flesh out his characters and imbue them with a depth not normally found in easy horror. Sam Lesser in death regains some agency and we better understand how tortured he is. He's more than just a cardboard cut-out, stock evil character. Kinsey, Kavanaugh, Jamal and Jackie's segment is handled beautifully, sets up the caves, and lends depth to the friendship. Keys are lost and found and finally we see some cracks in the family dynamic.

Knowing that it's all going to come to a tragic end at the Ford Theatre you're propelled along wondering how the conceit of vampires will be integrated into history to tell the story. I found the writing a bit flat and the constant switching back and forth from the first person to third person narrator was discombobulating. I'm afraid the movie version will simply rest on the idea of Lincoln! Vampires! much like Cowboys! Aliens!

The Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon brought me here.

Working with Family and Children Services has been an exhaustive process with countless hours of classes as we work to integrate two new teens in our lives. Brené Brown's name came up with almost reverential fervour as we talked about empathy.

Soon I'm seeing her name everywhere. Her book Daring Greatly starts popping up in my social feeds and then several folks on Quora list The Gifts of Imperfection as a must read.

The book has clouds, a soaring dove and hands forming a heart on the cover. This is not my typical wheelhouse.

I don't know what it is about these books. It's like they just don't stick. I'm reading the words but all I'm retaining is the garbled whronk-ronk of the adults in a Peanuts cartoons. I'm wholeheartedly nodding along to what she's saying as I'm reading it but I just can't seem to retain any of it. Hopefully this isn't a sign that I'm repressing something awful. It's like my mind has stuck it's fingers in it's ears and babbled “la-la-la” the whole time.

I don't think I read self-help right. It's like it demands a different, more active reading than literary fiction. I'm out of practice.

Perfect holiday fodder to zip through, bordering on guilty pleasure. Picked it up on the strength of the upcoming movie and Janet Evanovich's near ubiquitous presence on store bookshelves. Perfectly fun read!

It's sort of a languid ramble of an aging narrator writing to his young son. It's homespun, middle America in awe of the beauty of the world and God's place in it. It is a religious book that warrants a closer reading as it has the grace to not complete ambush you. Robinson's writing is beautiful but collectively it just didn't take hold of me. It didn't stick and yet I know I'll pick up her latest book Lila which tells the story of John Ames' (the aging narrator of this book) wife.

Picked it up again to reread with Infinite Summer http://infinitesummer.org/ which was an incredible way to approach the novel. It's such a loopy, dense book - heavily endnoted in that Wallace style - it just lends itself to group interpretation. The site still exists so when you do pick it up to read you have to dive in online as well.

You see, this is why I should never borrow books from the library. While I sit here considering the books I remember fondly to add to my otherwise meagre library here on Goodreads I remember reading and re-reading his SNOOT essay and loving his foray at the AVNs. I loved this collection of essays and so I scan the bookshelf looking for it only to realize I borrowed it. And with so many books still to read I doubt if I'll ever actually buy it just to have on my shelves. Sigh.

Still looking for that searing modern novel that tackles corporate, white collar 9-5 without veering into broad parody. This isn't it.

It's an updated vampire story from a literary writer fulfilling his daughter's wish for a hero in the shape of a little girl. It kicks off strong. Cronin reminds me of early Stephen King and just nails the “American” voice. The small towns and the people in them. The highway gas stations, roadside diners and the idea of space. (I'm totally grabbing The Stand after I finish The Twelve.)

Cronin jumps post-apocalypse and falters with sci-fi tropes like the new patois of a fallen America. Flyers for “frack”, gaps for pants. And he fumbles around for a suitable name for the death-row inmates, turned military experiment gone horribly awry (natch). Smokes, dopeys, virals, dracs, glowsticks - anything other than vampires ..although there is a nice nod to Dracula.

Big, chunky read perfect for the winter break that led me right into the next book.

Fairy tales with a pervasive sense of unease. More grim than Grimm. And while Link is capable of turning a phrase I kept looking for some sort of internal logic at work in each of the stories. It's funny how so many of the reviews apologize for their mediocre ratings. There is a sense that each story hints at something larger - or maybe we're just programmed to look for the metaphor in fairytales. I just couldn't unravel it and as a result each short story felt unresolved and meandering.

Part of the Humble Ebook Bundle which I'm still excited to work my way through.

Short collection of pop culture mash-ups roving from Sweet Valley High to David Hasselhof, Dirty Dancing to Dr Phil.

Sometimes it's gleefully off kilter like the corporate business consultant hired by Jim Henson to “maintain financial viability in balance with artistic integrity” who wakes up having been turned into The Electric Mayhem's id-fuelled drummer, Animal. Or the 180 foot tall cock rock god rampaging downtown Tokyo while whaling out hits from KISS, Warrant and AC/DC.

Perhaps no one explains it better than the author's possessed Auntie Wei who, while buttering her muffin with a crucifix screams “my work on the this collection demonstrates that I am capable of: 1) producing a body of short works that are thematically linked, and 2) working productively with the assistance of arts funding support.”

Yeah, it's a lot. Maybe it's the hyper-sensitivity of the migrant experience where it feels like all the clues to fitting in are there in the culture around you — or maybe it's just that when you gaze into the muppet's eyes for too long you find you've become the muppet.

Nathan Hill's debut Nix blew me away, and Wellness is just such an assured follow-up that is so crammed full of ideas it requires its own bibliography. Hill manages to weave together so much without feeling overdone. Even when he brain-dumps, like the chapter on the internet, it reads at once obvious and yet utterly novel despite being a well worn topic. And Hill, with an abundance of confidence (seriously, the audacity to tackle any of these topics that have endured reams of examination and opinion across media) explores the challenges of parenting, marriage, gentrification, and of course, wellness itself. But what could be overly dour and heavy-handed is leavened by various hilarious recountings of Elizabeth's familial wealth, dot-com exceptionalism manifested as polyamory, and mean-girl school moms.

It's just a joy to be in the hands of such sheer writerly aplomb. From the pitch-perfect, Chicago fairy-tale, meet-cute first chapter to the abrupt jump ahead to marriage and the raising of an 8-year-old. It's a GenX reckoning that follows its own bookish logic, and while admittedly relying on some overly tidy epiphanies later on, I still can't be mad at the whole magnificent endeavor. Despite being a brick of a book, I'm still tempted to pick it up and read it again - it's that good.

Wrestling and porn, easy targets though Hedges is merciless in his outrage citing the worst stomach churning examples to sledgehammer his point home. From there it's onto reality television then a segue to the corporate controlled news foisted on us. All this to lead us to the Empire of the title, the complete giving over of our lives to corporatism.

It's a long angry screed, relentless and pessimistic. It's something the 20-something me would have loved and gotten righteously indignant about. Now it just makes me sad. It's all fire and brimstone with little in the way of redemption and hope.

A prequel to the absolutely winning Legends and Lattes which first introduced me to cozy fantasy. Here we find Viv, the battle hardened orc, early in her marauding career. Headstrong and impulsive, she surges ahead of her crew in battle and sustains a serious leg wound for her troubles. She's left behind in the sleepy town of Murk as the rest of Rackham's Ravens set off in pursuit of the necromancer Varine the Pale.

From that breathless beginning we settle into the slower pace of the town where Viv finds a struggling bookshop and a sapphic love interest in the form of the town baker. (Baldree once again shows that's he's an unabashed fan of baked goods, treating us to more mouthwatering reactions to some heavenly pastries)

We're introduced to the rattkin bookseller who proves to be one hell of a bookish hand seller, slowly easing Viv from swashbuckling thrillers into steamy romance novels. We also get some wonderful creatures, from Potroast the pet gryphet that is part owl part begging dog, to the most adorable skeleton I've encountered in fiction yet (I'm already fan-casting Alan Tudyk as the voice) Top it off with Gallina, the overeager chickenhawk to Viv's Foghorn Leghorn and you've got another fun fantasy tale that was a breeze to read.

It's a compelling read that truly fleshes out an immortal cell line cultivated from an African American woman back in 1951. These HeLa cells were essential to developing a polio vaccine, they have been sent into space, blown up and used for decades. One scientist posits that if you could weigh all the HeLa cells ever grown they'd weigh more than 50 million metric tons.

It's a story about science, ethics, memory and family.

In February Lisa Moore drives me to distraction with her dialog. No one has conversations. Words are just launching pads to daytime reveries and thoughtful meanderings.

“That'll stain if you don't get at it.”

Helen loved her kids. Maybe John best of all. He was far flung and wide ranging ...and here follows a page and a half recounting of a failed attempt to put together a crib and a story of a dog running in the wet sand.

“Maybe a little water will set it right.”

Another page and a half likely shot through with rich metaphor and deeply layered meaning that I read as a “buying groceries is hard”

I would read the hell out of a Lisa Moore short story. She could write about a mother walking with her son through winter snow. She would capture the way the light hits the snow, flattening the shadows and it would be so damn Canadian I swear I'd be able to hear the Hinterland Who's Who theme.

With an entire book I find myself admiring individual pages beautifully rendered but finding the ending to simply be the absence of additional pages to read.

Barbara Thorson is your average sass-talking, D&D playing, bunny-eared, 5th grade giant slayer who wields her titan-killing hammer named Coveleski in a heart-shaped purse.
That's all you should need to know going in. Do yourself a favour and discover the rest for yourself.

I loved Shining Girls and Broken Monsters warranted a rare 5 stars — but right off the bat something was off with Bridge. I found the writing plodding and perfunctory, swirling around yet another multiverse book.

After Bridge loses her neuroscientist mother Jo to brain cancer she finds herself, along with her long suffering, non-binary, Puerto Rican artist friend Dom, in her mother's house cleaning it out. Inside the freezer she finds a greyish-yellow cocoon like a spindle wrapped in elastic bands. Naturally she breaks off a piece and swallows it — remembering something about a dreamworm.

Turns out the dreamworm allows Bridge to jump into other worlds, to occupy the bodies of other versions of herself in the vast multiverse. A world-travelling influencer or a punk-rock mother and her abusive boyfriend — the same person made strange through different choices. Been there, done that, but I'm ready to be convinced by Beukes.

It's hard when the main character is just so unsympathetic. Her single-minded pursuit felt grating and selfish - certainly reflecting drug addiction and an unhealthy response to a fresh loss, but Bridge is just the worst. It's made ever more clear when paired with her long-suffering, voice of reason, helpful enabler Dom. And sure you can cite generational trauma as Jo Kittinger is also, the worst — which meant I never bought why Bridge would be so singularly obsessed with finding her.

Everyone is pared down to a singular obsessive impulse. Even amidst the blood spattered gore it felt monochromatic and dull as a result. Robots with singular purpose colliding in the multiverse with an ending I just didn't buy.

Pair this with The Vegetarian, which I read earlier this year, and you'd think Koreans are some kind of messed up when it comes to food and sex.

When a seven year relationship comes to an end Ji-won shutters her cooking school and returns to cook at the Italian restaurant she once worked in. And wallows in her misery - like a lot. We follow her for seven months of pining, tiny betrayals at the hands of her friends, and lots of food.

The food writing is sumptuous but strangely there's no kimchi here. There's no Korean food at all. I liked this quite a bit but it could have benefitted from some editing down to novella length.