Minnesota Reads

The Torres-Thompson family of Southern California has crested flush financial times and is now dipping into a place where flashing plastic can have humiliating results. Scott, a programmer, and Maureen, a stay-at-home mom, have laid off sixty-six percent of their staff, both the nanny and the gardener, and have beefed up the duties of the [...]

Shalom Auslander is not for the faint of heart or easily offended. His writing is angry, bitter, hilarious, some might even call it blasphemous. It will make you squirm. It’s uncomfortable and itchy and may induce squirming, which is what makes it so fantastic. If you’re not familiar with Auslander’s short story collection Beware of [...]

Book thirteen of the Dresden Files series opens six months after our hero, Harry Dresden, sinks into the water after being shot through the heart while on his brother’s boat. He had just murdered the woman he loved, saved his daughter, and wiped out the entire vampire Red Court. In order to pull all of [...]

There was a span of time in the early to mid-aughts where I would buy every man I was romantically interested in a copy of An Invisible Sign of My Own by Aimee Bender. I probably hold the record for buying the most copies of this book. I could probably write a memoir called Books [...]

A few years ago Jodi asked me, like she has asked so many people on this website, what book I wanted to read before I died. I eschewed the Russians, the bible, all sorts of weighty tomes for this: Underworld by Don Delillo. Underworld was published when I was in college, a part time bookseller [...]

Doug Swieteck has an abusive father, passive mother, a jerk for an older brother, and he and his family just moved to stupid Marysville, New York, where the library is only open on Saturdays and everyone assumes Doug is as much of a troublemaker as his brother. Things aren’t so great for poor Doug. That [...]

In Anne Ursu’s Breadcrumbs Minnesota is a magical place covered in glittery snow and shiny ice. You remember when winter used to be like that, don’t you? As I write this review in January there’s no snow to be found, and because I’ve read Breadcrumbs I’m convinced our usually snowy state is in the thrall [...]

Historical fiction is, essentially, literary fan fiction. It’s the literary part that gives it more cred than “Friday Night Lights” superfans hanging out on a bulletin board dreamily considering what if Julie Taylor came out of the bathroom wrapped in a towel, her lips flushed and red, her skin dewy, and found Tim Riggins, primed, [...]

I was looking for a big juicy well-written novel to start out my 2012. This wasn’t it. My first impressions were hopeful: big, yes, at 609 pages. Juicy? Yes – female lead character who starts as a humble seamstress ends up a spy. Well-written? Not so much. It could be the translation, but by the [...]

Eleanor Henderson’s novel Ten Thousand Saints starts with a condensed version of the one-crazy-night premise from which entire films are built. It’s a lazy New Year’s Eve day of smoking, huffing, drinking, and snorting for Teddy and Jude. The inseparable teen-aged besties are skateboarders with next to no social currency. Teddy’s mom has skipped town [...]