Sample Saturday – a dog, a scandal, and motherhood

Posted by Kate W in Stuff and Nonsense and tagged with grief-lit, Patrick deWitt, Sample Saturday, Sheila Heti, Sigrid Nunez March 9, 2019

Sample Saturday is when I wade through the eleventy billion samples I have downloaded on my Kindle. I’m slowly chipping away and deciding whether it’s buy or bye.

This week, all three books are ones I’m seeing everywhere – thought I’d try a sample rather than simply succumbing to the hype. Continue reading →

The Top 50 from the Best Books of 2018 List of Lists

Posted by Kate W in Stuff and Nonsense and tagged with 2018, A. J. Finn, Akwaeke Emezi, Andrew Roberts, book list, Chloe Benjamin, Curtis Sittenfeld, David Sedaris, Denis Johnson, Esi Edugyan, Gary Shteyngart, Idra Novey, Kristin Hannah, Lauren Groff, Leïla Slimani, Leslie Jamison, Ling Ma, Lisa Brennan-Jobs, Lisa Halliday, Luis Alberto Urrea, Madeline Miller, Meg Wolitzer, Melissa Broder, Michael Ondaatje, Michelle Obama, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Olga Tokarczuk, Olivia Laing, Ottessa Moshfegh, Pat Barker, Patrick deWitt, R. O. Kwon, Rachel Cusk, Rachel Kushner, Rebecca Makkai, Richard Powers, Rumaan Alam, Sally Rooney, Sarah Perry, Sayaka Murata, Sheila Heti, Shobha Rao, Sigrid Nunez, Susan Orlean, Tara Westover, Tayari Jones, Tommy Orange, William Trevor, Zadie Smith, Zora Neale Hurston December 9, 2018

This is my annual community service to book-bloggers – a list of the books that appear most frequently on all of the lists (37 of them) I listed on Best Books of 2018 – A List of Lists.

Here it is, the 2018 Commonly-Agreed-by-the-People-Who-Publish-Best-of-2018-Book-Lists-Before-December-31 top 50 books. Continue reading →