Category: Stu’s Reviews

Genre: Book    

Grade: B+

Notable People: L.T. Ryan

Title:  Drift

Review: Ryan is beyond prolific- having self-published over a hundred books in 8-9 different serial forms. This series is relatively new and co-written with Detective Brian Shea. It shows-very inside info on detective doings, centered around Rachel Hatch, a former Covert Ops soldier now roaming around the country making bad people pay. She is an absolute takes no shit- kick ass character who struggles with emotions and connections- but is working on it. Though not the most well writhe novel I have read, Ryan is good storyteller and Hatch is a captivating subject. Big on all the bestseller lists- with a lot more where this came from.

Genre: Book           

Grade: A-

Notable People: Bryn Greenwood

Title:  All the Ugly and Wonderful Things

Review: this was a difficult book, both to read and to review. I’ll start off by saying it’s extremely well written and engaging. The characters are well developed and its sense of place is vivid. After that, it gets murky; this is a story that some would see as a touching and unlikely love story and some would see as a heinous portrayal of sexual abuse -and even incest. I wanted to put this book down many times, but stuck with it and its complexity drew me in and resulted in my telling other people to check it out, whose careers, like mine, have dealt with these kinds of taboos. It will challenge you and your opinions, values and sensibilities. In its essence, it is the story of a traumatized little girl, very emotionally limited and with a series of compulsive kinds of issues, who is trying to survive from a drug dealing and violent, neglectful family- and who finds what many would see as inappropriate love and nurturance. It’s often hard to tell who the good guys and the bad guys are in this book. Certainly not for everyone, but if you want challenge, give it a try.

Genre: Book         

Grade: B+

Notable People: Matt Haig

Title:  The Midnight Library

Review: Another in my line of books from the Chicago Tribune’s top Ten from 2023, this fantastical fable is filled with wonder and possibility. Nora Seed live in a beat down town outside of London with a dead end job and a lonely life. After her only real connection- her cat- dies, she gives up and takes an overdose. She then finds herself in the magnificently constructed and imagined Midnight Library, where she discovers her own infinite number of parallel universes and lives; which are all based on her book of regrets. Confusing? Maybe a little, but her chronicle of trying to find a life that is meaningful and her trying out of lives that might be worth living for, is quite energizing and captivating. This book was a pleasant surprise; hard to put down and well written, thought I thought it faded away at the end, and became a bit more predictable. Still, a quality read and a unique concept.

Genre: Book                               

Grade: A

Notable People: Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Title: Until August

Review: What a rare treat- a new issue from one of the great writers of the 20^th century. “Gabo” began writing a series of five novellas in 2001 and published several in next few years. This one got stuck in many iterations and then his dementia set in, and he chose to give up on it. He died in 2014 and almost ten years after his editor took it up again and his sons decided to publish it. There has been criticism of this as a money grab that Gabo did not want to publish, but it stands up as a fine part of his métier-a wonderful novella about a woman who finds totally out of character love once a year on an island she visits where her mother is buried. Classically Gabo and full, of grace and light wit. For those of us who cut our chops on a 100 Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera, this is an unexpected and magnificent gift; for those too young or unfamiliar, give it a shot, but try the classics.

Genre: Book      

Grade: A-

Notable People: James McBride

Title: The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store

Review: I got turned on to this book from the Chicago Tribune’s “Best of 2023 List”, where it was the number one rated book for the year. Award winning author, McBride, tells the striking story of Pottstown, PA. in 1936 woven around the lives of the towns’ Jews and Negroes, which are heavily intertwined and often banded together against the Between-Wars white-protestant oppression. McBride’s’ understanding and mastery of traditional Yiddish culture and idioms is impressive and his sense of the 20^th century African American experience is illuminating. The book is filled with charm and wit, richly filled in with an assortment of ode and compelling characters. It is long book and started with an absolutely alluring bang, but bogged down a bit in its middle sections. An unusual and thought provoking story that’s also quite a bit of fun.