Inbox/Outbox: May 23rd, 2014

(from bookriot.com
by Kit Steinkellner)


I have so many books I liked in my Outbox! I hope everything in my Inbox holds up in the same way!!

INBOX (Books Acquired)

Little Friend by Donna Tartt

I am Team Goldfinch and I am Team Secret History (Oh MY GOD am I Team Secret History) so I’m not sure why it’s taken me so long to get to Tartt’s middle novel The Little Friend. I think it’s because I heard around the reading water cooler that it’s not as good as The Secret History? But… I don’t care? I’m just happy to have another Tartlet to eat up because after this it’s going to be probably nine years before we get another doorstop sized novel from our dear Donna.

Brutal Youth by Anthony Breznican (Thomas Dunne Books, June 2014)

I know Anthony a little bit on Twitter and think his film reviews in Entertainment Weekly are smart times, smart times. So I’m looking forward to cracking open his dark parochial-school set novel. Fun fact: I went to Catholic school my freshman year of high school. And it WAS dark. So I very well may end up relating hard to this.

OUTBOX (Books Finished)

#Girlboss by Sophia Amoruso

The CEO and Chief Creative Officer of $100 million-dollar clothing company Nasty Gal does her spin on Lean In. Well, actually, it’s more like if Lean In and Bossypants had a baby and that baby had a HEAVY bass line. This book is almost too much fun. Part-memoir, part How to Succeed in Business for millennials, the book has great stories and great advice and the story of how Nasty Gal went from an eBay biz to an empire is compelling stuff. Also, I listened on audiobook and narrator KILLED it.

Frog Music by Emma Donoghue

I love Emma Donoghue with the fire of a thousand suns. Frog Music tells the story of the unlikely friendship between two women on the fringes of society in San Francisco during the summer of 1876. Crossdressing, sexy dancing, whoring, a smallpox epidemic, a lost baby, and at the center of everything MURDER MURDER AND MORE MURDER. This is the hottest, weirdest, smartest, saddest version of the historical novel. LOVE. Also listened on audiobook, also LOOOOOVED the narrator.

An Untamed State by Roxane Gay

I’ve been hearing about this book for MONTHS now. Once I got my copy, I tore through it in about 36 hours. This is a motherf—er of a debut, and I mean that with the highest compliments. The story of an American woman who is kidnapped in Haiti, brutalized beyond belief during her imprisonment, and then released broken back into the world. This book chewed me up and spit me back out and has stayed with me ever since my read. Get your copy, steel your nerves, and then throw yourself headfirst into this first-rate novel.

And that’s about it for me? What’s going down in your In and Out boxes?