The Oscar-nominated and Golden Globe-awarded Hamnet is causing some contentiousness (okay, that’s going too far) among my friends. Half of us watched the movie first and liked the movie better. The other half of us read the book first and are loyal to the book, Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell. Hamnet was the first O’Farrell I…
First things first, I guess; the title and the promise of The Drowned Woods (by Emily Lloyd-Jones) doesn’t work. There are no drowning woods. There is a city that goes underwater, mostly off-screen. Once you get past that (which I invite you to do right now), it’s smoother sailing. Blurb: Mer plans to live the…
We’ll begin with a list that you’ll find nowhere else: My Best Reads of 2025. It’s possible that not a single book on this list was published in 2025, just that I read it in 2025. (Turns out a few of them were published this year. See asterisks.) Some of them were published hundreds of…
I like to pay attention to the literary prize winners. To a certain extent, you can trust that they’ll sift through a whole lot of books (though not even close to all the books) and come up with some good reads. Not all of them will jive with you, sure, but it’s a good place…
You have found the Starving Artist blog about books, writing, and publishing. Please follow the drop-down menus to navigate around the page (lots of reviews! some news) or just scroll down to read the blog. And why the moniker? See the first two blog posts from 2012.
Yes, I know it’s now March 1. Hush. I had been looking forward to Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino, another one of those lauded, literary sci-fi reads like The Ministry of Time (which it turned out I didn’t love). Where did I land on this one? I don’t know. I feel torn. I liked it. It…
Senlin Ascends (The Books of Babel #1) by Josiah Bancroft might have been the first book I was excited about in 2025, like as I was reading it. I just somehow didn’t expect it. I suppose the cover doesn’t give much (including the mood) away. I don’t hate the cover, but the overall impression is…
Not to be confused with Night Watch (Discworld #29) by Terry Pratchett. Night Watch by Jayne Anne Phillips won the Pulitzer Prize in 2024, which was how it caught my attention as a giant doorstop of a hardcover book. Then it caught my attention again when it went to paperback, because what the heck?—it was…
This is largely a story of first-in-a-series. It’s also a long story because the most yet-unreviewed book of 2025 (for me) is speculative fiction. Let’s jump right in. It feels like I read The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley forever ago, maybe in a different life. Or maybe I was yanked through a wormhole…
Still continuing the multi-book reviews so that I can catch up. It’s difficult for me to believe I haven’t reviewed the first of the two books in this category because it feels like years ago (and it was several months). (There will be plenty more YA in the speculative fiction review, which will be about…
If I’m ever going to catch up with my reviews, I am going to have to post multiple reviews at once and make them a little (read: a lot) shorter than normal. Maybe you’ll like that? Or maybe you want all the juicy deets? It is what it is. Let’s begin with my Christmas reads.…
I have had this ARC sitting on my shelf for a lot of 2025. However, I wanted to wait till closer to Christmas to read and review it. I like everything in its season, and I balk at people who film holiday content in the summer, etc. I mean, they kinda have to, but I…
I am in a book club that just throws a book at you at a club meeting, and it’s the book you’re meant to read for the next club. There is no preamble, no warning, no sneak peek. Sometimes this works for me, and sometimes it baffles me: should I read this book? I know…
Earlier this year, I discovered that I might not hate Pulitzer Prize winners. For years, I had been reacting to The Goldfinch, which I reviewed here and am not a fan of. Also, I don’t get people’s love of it. So I had written off the Pulitzer. (Maybe there was more to that emotional decision,…
I have been shoving a couple books down people’s throats in 2025, each one after I read it. One of them I’m about to introduce to you, and I can confidently say introduce because it’s not a widely known or distributed book (or author). But it should be. And he should be. At least for…
I am one of those people who likes seasons. And I don’t just mean winter, spring, summer, and autumn. I mean the seasons of life, the holiday seasons, etc. Which means that when Halloween is fast-approaching in the heart of harvest time, I am ordering spiced lattes, baking bone cookies, and streaming Wednesday. It also…
This book came out of left field, but I am so glad it did. I am in this one book club (out of seven) that reads kinda whatever these two guys (okay, they own the bookstore) choose, at least most months. They don’t reveal the next month’s read until everyone is sitting around discussing the…
Oh, I have some things to say about Kerri Maniscalco’s Stalking Jack the Ripper. The first thing is that I did not actually finish this book. I’m being honest. But I read more than half and attended a book club, listening to lots of other opinions (plus reading reviews online). (I also skipped ahead and…
I don’t think I’d read Persuasion by Jane Austen, before. I have seen versions as movies. But I hadn’t read it. Now that I have, the only one left is Mansfield Park. Synopsis: Anne Eliot is a lonely, isolated almost-spinster at 27. She was engaged, 8 years ago, to a man she loved. But that…
I would say that there’s no way to divide a room like bringing up AI, but politics, so you know… I’m bringing up AI. (Not politics.) Though you, my friends, are readers and writers, so you might tend more one way than the other. Perhaps. Do I hate AI? Do I love it? Do I…
Number two in my reading-Hamlet-adaptations is Ann Leckie’s The Raven Tower, a stand-alone and her first fantasy (as opposed to sci-fi) book (from 2019). She’s a Hugo-Nebula-Arthur C. Clarke-BSFA award winner. The Raven Tower is not one I hear mentioned frequently (or ever), and as I said, I started reading it because it was listed…
Perhaps I should have DNFed this one and put it in the ALC (advanced listener copy) graveyard where it could have avoided any scathing reviews. But I didn’t. As some of you may recall, I have been listening to advance reader copies of books as a bookseller, which allows me to weed out some books…
Not all of us are devoted romance readers. Not all of us are on the ol’ BookTok following the “smut” lit comedy and reviewers. I guess we no longer call a certain type of romance literature erotica? Because there is a scale, instead. On one end of the scale, Anne of the Island, the third…
Is it still summer? Is it the fall? Is it back to school? I suppose it depends on where you are in the country (and the world) and what your schoolyear calendar looks like. Here, school started ages ago (three weeks for my young adult and teen but in July for my year-round nephews), and…
I have been told since the drop of Olga Tokarczuk’s Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead that I needed to read it. So, when The Empusium showed up on bookshelves this year with its cool cover and then winkled its way onto one of my book clubs’ lists, I jumped at the…
the starving artist 