

The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood Remember how Margaret Atwood and I are besties? Remember how we totally enjoyed a cocktail together at the Rare Book Room in Strand Bookstore? Remember how I got my copy of The Blind Assassin signed by Her Majesty? Now that I've gotten the entirely exaggerated bragging out of the way... There is a reason this book was an international bestseller and winner of The Booker Prize (look guys! I can read too!) This is the tale of the utter d


Bear's Best of 2015!
As we start to wind down 2015, I've been seeing a lot of best-of lists. You know I need everyone to know what I think. So here are mine. My favorite books published in 2015. I'm ready for you, 2016... come at me, brah! Have you ever read a debut novel by an author and saw in stunning clarity the respect and awards in that author's future? Chigozie Obioma's first novel gave me that vision from the first paragraph. [read more] The greatest and most transformative moments i


The Heart Goes Last by Margaret Atwood
The Heart Goes Last by Margaret Atwood “For The Handmaid’s Tale, the rule was that I wouldn’t put anything into it that people had not done at some time in some place. I brought them all together but each of the individual things had already been done by somebody at sometime,” -Margaret Atwood as I sat 8 feet from her at Book Riot Live And this is exactly what I've always loved about Atwood's work. So often it comes across to people as satire of a dystopia that we should be


Finding your people... Book Riot Live
Last Spring, I was staring at a website... obsessively refreshing even though I knew registration didn't open until 11am. And my c̶r̶a̶z̶i̶n̶e̶s̶s̶ persistence paid off when at 10:58am, I was able secure my spot at Book Riot Live. Book Riot has felt like my book spirit animal since shortly after it's inception. Finally a book site that wasn't trying to be highbrow, snobby or ironic. No hipster beards, manbuns or JFranz lovers here (alright, alright , I'm okay with the bear


Someone should have their reviewing permissions revoked.
As The Grapes of Wrath depresses the ever-lovin' shit out of me, this blog cracked me up. Below are a few of my favorites.
One-Star Book Reviews "Ever since women (deservedly) got the vote, feminists have
had to scrounge for stuff to gripe about. Take Ally McBeal, for example." "Complete drivel... This book has no conflict." "Pure crap." "I feel bad because of the slavery..." "This may be called feminism, but it is total crap
for the fact that not all feminists are inco


"You've got to jump off cliffs all the time, and build your wings on the way down."
If you know me, you know that books about dystopian societies are totally my jam. It began with a grade school reading of The Giver and continued on to The Handmaid's Tale, 1984, Brave New World (from which my precious Aldeux was given his name) and more recently The Hunger Games. Today, we celebrate the life of an author who gifted us with one of the most seminal pieces of dystopian fiction... Fahrenheit 451. This book is especially important to book lovers the world ove


Ciao! Adios! Au revoir! مع السلامة!
Or in English... GOODBYE! Well, I failed. I still have not finished Don Quixote. I'll join his crazy windmill-fighting ass again once I'm back from BearAllen's Mediterranean Adventure™. But for now, I'm allowing myself, for eight WHOLE days, to read whatever I want to read. It'll be glorioooooooooooous!
So far my list consists of these definites:
11/22/63 by Stephen King (thanks for lending it to me, Jen!)
Let's Pretend This Never Happened by Jenny Lawson (aka The Blo