Arts & Culture

Get in the Fall Spirit with a New Fiction Release

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October is going to be a big month for new fiction releases! There are many new books that will be a part of current series and others that will be the first of a new series. Two new books are slated to come out on October 3. The first is a romance called Wildfire by Hannah Grace. This will be the second book in the Maple Hill sports romance series; if it is anything like the first book, it will be the perfect comfort read for fall. Grace’s books are usually light-hearted and easy to read, with cute scenes of romance and not too much depth. 

Arts & Culture

The Defiant Joy of ‘The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue’

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If you are looking for something to give you back some hope and remind you to find your own sense of a “defiant kind of joy,” The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue is the perfect book to settle in with. Hers is a story you will certainly not forget.

Arts & Culture
COURTESY OF PENGUIN BOOKS

Upward Spiral: Turtles All the Way Down by John Green

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If I closed my eyes, I could picture vividly the last time I read a book by John Green. I was high school sophomore then, and had the luxury to spend entire afternoons reading non-academic books. The book I picked that day was The Fault in Our Stars, and it made me stay in the same armchair for hours. Fast-forward four years, and there are some things that haven’t changed all that much. The heroine of John Green’s new novel Turtles All the Way Down is much like Hazel Grace as she’s a quirky, nerdy sixteen-year-old girl who embarks on an adventure and encounters friendship and love along the way, all the while battling a chronic illness that stands between her and happiness.

Arts & Culture

Mohsin Hamid’s Novel Exit West Opens Doors to the Migrant Experience

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Mohsin Hamid’s latest novel Exit West tells the compelling story of migrants Saeed and Nadia as they face the challenges of a nameless country in the midst of civil war. In fleeing their country, the couple passes through Greece, England and the United States and face literal and psychological obstacles on their way. Hamid successfully penned a novel regarding a pertinent topic with an anonymity that appeals to human experiences of abandonment and cultural detachment that explicate the migrant experience to his readers. Through simple but poignant prose, Hamid spins a tale of anxiety and hope that is equally engaging and humbling. Mohsin Hamid is an internationally bestselling author and essayist who is known for tackling topics that shake global social and political spheres.

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Skimming the Surface

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I spent the warm week of spring break in Ithaca, lounging around in shorts and reading trashy best-sellers. Having read some positive reviews of the book The Commoner, by John Burnham Schwartz (Vintage Contemporaries, 2009), I decided to armchair travel to the royal compound in Japan.

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Book Review: Forgetting the Salt

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Sarah Jefferis’s collection, Forgetting the Salt, is filled with full-bodied, no-nonsense poems, some of which read slow and detailed, full of causality and precision, and others which rush the reader through as if on a “water slide” of images and sounds. The stories and characters, and specifically the way in which the information about them unfurls throughout the collection, are so compelling, they should be left to discovery of the reader. Clues about the speaker’s mother’s Laundromat, her discovery of various facets of her sexuality and of the “grief on the hip bone / of fear” which has been present in her life, are dropped throughout the collection.