Book Review

It’s Memorial Day, and you know what that means: the official start of summer reading season.

For me, there are four categories of summertime books, and I like to draw a few from each when I compile my reading list.

If you haven’t yet heard of Sally Rooney, you probably will soon. The Irish writer seems to be the literary phenom of the moment, after her 2017 debut novel, “Conversations With Friends,” won widespread critical and commercial acclaim.

Springtime inspires me to sweep out the garage, strip the flannel sheets off the bed and exchange all those bulky coats and sweaters for T-shirts and flip-flops. And that’s when I gleefully grab mind-candy novels like “Daisy Jones & The Six” – the latest from author Taylor Jenkins Reid.

Between 2005 and 2009, in a remote Mennonite colony in Bolivia, girls and women would wake in the morning feeling lightheaded and in pain, their bodies bruised and bleeding. For years, residents of the colony thought demons were attacking the women in the night. Some felt God was punishing them for their sins. Others attributed the episodes to “wild female imagination.”

I should begin by stating that I am no connoisseur of magical realism. Throughout my reading life, I have flitted around the genre like a hummingbird near honeysuckle, pausing every now and then for a tiny taste – some Haruki Murakami here, some Toni Morrison there. It always left me feeling lightheaded and a little bewildered, like “What the heck is in that stuff, anyway?”

Author Laurie Halse Anderson first wrote about sexual assault in her groundbreaking novel, Speak, which came out in 1999 and opened the door for a national dialogue about rape culture and consent.

Dave Cullen produced a masterpiece of investigative journalism with his 2009 book, Columbine, which took him 10 years and chronicled the events surrounding the mass murder at Columbine High School in Colorado.

His new book, Parkland, details another horrific school shooting. 

What’s the most irritating question a writer can be asked?

According to Maurice Swift, the amoral protagonist in John Boyne’s new novel, A Ladder to the Sky, the answer is simple: Where do you get your ideas?

By now you’ve no doubt seen – or at least heard about – Netflix’s post-apocalyptic survival film “Bird Box.” The movie has captured audiences, spurred memes and given rise to another dangerous internet “challenge,” as people wander around or even drive blindfolded, inspired by scenes depicted in the film.

Sometimes a book grabs you and won’t let go. That’s the case with Ghost Wall, a tense, provocative, explosion of a novel by British author Sarah Moss.