Minnesota Reads

My personal Top Five Favorite Books lost scientific credibility years ago when I realized there were at least three times as many books crammed into this personal category of honor. I hadn’t re-evaluated what I had loved in many years, so instead of swapping out, say, The Edible Woman by Margaret Atwood for, say, A [...]

Perhaps the worst thing that can happen to a book is to be nice. Nice is boring. Nice is forgettable. Nice is something you continue reading in hopes that it will get un-nice, it will either turn vile or ascend to greater heights. Nice is a drag. I can remember with exacting detail why I [...]

The characters in Dan Chaon’s short story collection Stay Awake are quiet. They have experienced loss: a person, themselves, or a ring finger that popped off after a nasty spill from a ladder. Maybe they are leaving something. Or maybe they aren’t even aware yet of the loss, like baby Rosalie, born with an additional [...]

Today is Valentine’s Day so it’s only appropriate that I’m here to talk about John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars the sweetest love story I’ve read since, well probably Steve Brezenoff’s Brooklyn, Burning. I thought it would be a longer period of time between sweet love stories. I was wrong. Again, that’s fitting because [...]

Today, it’s rare for me to read a romance novel, but when I was a young teen I immersed myself in the scandalous bodice rippers. I even had a favorite author, Minnesota’s own LaVyrle Spencer. My favorite book was Vows, a historical romance about a tomboyish girl who works in her father’s stables and the [...]

The first thing you should know is that I’m a pussy. When I imagine pitting myself against another adult human being in combat, I imagine my own arms flailing, missing targets, a sort of bird-like noise coming from my throat. If I found myself in a situation where I was on an island with 41 [...]

Many people put Divergent by Veronica Roth on their best lists last year, with a lot of them saying it was the new Hunger Games. I really should stop listening to praise like this, claiming something is as awesome as my Hunger Games, because they almost inevitably let me down. Divergent was good, and when [...]

I had to pay a fine for keeping A Prayer for Owen Meany two weeks past its due date. This was in the last days of 1990. I was eighteen and had yet to grow into the book quitter that I am today. Back in 1990 I did not care so much for the first [...]

When Ursula Le Guin praises someone’s work, it’s time to take notice. On the cover of Akata Witch by Nnedi Okorafor, Le Guin is quoted as saying: “There’s more vivid imagination in a page of Nnedi Okorafor’s work than in whole volumes of ordinary fantasy epics.” I’m happy to say that Le Guin didn’t exaggerate. [...]

I no longer actively seek out books I know I will hate. The anaerobic thrill of speed reading through adjective abuse and gender stereotypes has lost its thrill and now I simply prefer to read things I like and not read things I don’t like. Goodbye, Tao Lin. Adios, Stephenie Meyer. On the other hand, [...]