A history of incest, dragons, and a woman's right to the throne

Do blondes have more fun? If you’re constantly watching you back lest your relative stab you in the back maybe not so much. Fire & Blood takes you back to beginning of the Targaryen rule of Westeros. There are baby dragons, plenty of incest, incompetent men and queens pulling the strings. There’s girl power and an uprising of the 99%. Basically feels like the 2011 (#occupyWesteros). If you read the Game of Thrones books you’ll feel right at home.

Librarians on Horses

A woman is stuck in a bad marriage. Bored with nothing to do and no friends, she joins a group of outsider librarians who deliver books to outside towns. Trouble always finds women on horses, especially when the town is filled with racists, the religious and closeted alcoholics.

Thank you to Gage Heyburn for recommending this book to me!

A good kid discovers a reform school’s covered-up history of abuse and murder

A good kid with a good future ahead of him is in the wrong place at the wrong time. He finds himself attending The Nickel Academy, a reform school for juvenile boys. Quickly learning that doing the “right” thing gets you nowhere except whipped until you black out (or much worse), he befriends a fellow Black boy who has a different way of survival. The Nickel Boys [2019] by Colson Whitehead is set in the 1960s but is based on the real-life Dozier School for Boys that shut down as RECENTLY as 2011 when unidentified bodies were dug up on campus. Were politicians, businessmen, and policemen in on it? You bet.

Four friends wrestle with abuse, shame, and loyalty

Are you emotionally ready for 800 pages of heartache? A Little Life [2015] by Hanya Yanagihara is set in NY and follows four friends - Willem, J.B., Malcolm and Jude - with different aspirations, privilege, relationships, and temperaments. Before taking a quiz to see if you’re a Willem or a Malcolm, let me say that this is not a boys version of Sex In the City. Or any version of it. A Little Life is excruciatingly painful to read. We watch them grow up, grow apart, be there for one another, disappoint each other. We also learn about their pasts and the pains, physically and emotionally, that influence who they become. Beautiful and harrowing, this novel is one that might take you a while to read but is worth the journey.

Thank you to Will Simpson and Andy Whalen for recommending this book to me!

Life goes on for two wartime friends whether they like it or not

An Englishman and a Bangladeshi walk into a bar. Again and again. Old habits die hard, and these two friends, bound together by WWII, can’t seem to move on. While several years have past, they now have wives and children, neighbors and in-laws - all with opinions of their own. Everyone is on the brink of disaster, including the city of London. But at least they have the bar, their usual orders, and the “incident” that keeps them together. White Teeth [2000] by Zadie Smith is as funny as it is moving.

Boyhood but with a reluctant art thief

Kid takes a painting from museum that was attacked by terrorists. He goes on this nuts adventure trying to protect this bird painting. He befriends a Russian kid in Las Vegas, an old antiques refurbisher, a former classmates’s mom, and a girl who also survived the museum attack. There’s alcohol, drugs, guns, car chases, international destinations…it’s as if Fast and the Furious was wearing tortoise shell glasses. I’m not really doing this book justice. I mean it is a Pulitzer Prize winner. Read The Goldfinch [2013] by Donna Tartt if you have a lot of time on your hands. It’s good and anxiety-inducing (just return the damn painting!!!!), but it’s long.