Book of the Month – Page 2 – Princeton Writes

Book of the Month: Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese

admin2023-11-01T10:46:15-04:00

Cutting for Stone (2009) by Abraham Verghese Critical Evaluation “But all the rich detail in the world is as nothing if you don't have command of emotion and narrative. One could argue, given everything from ER to House, that medicine cannot help but be dramatic, but that isn't necessarily true: Verghese's achievement is to make the reader feel there really is something at stake - birth, love, death, war, loyalty. There's no smug postmodern self-undermining (otherwise known as irony) here: the mythic arises seamlessly from the quotidian; telepathy or saintly intercessions are simply accepted - as they often are in Ethiopian [...]

Book of the Month: Cutting for Stone by Abraham Vergheseadmin2023-11-01T10:46:15-04:00

Book of the Month: The Vaster Wilds (2023) by Lauren Groff

admin2023-09-11T15:03:19-04:00

The Vaster Wilds (2023) by Lauren Groff Critical Evaluation "Groff’s novels often account for a character’s entire life, propelling the reader through a cascade of keenly articulated, outward-facing presents, rather than cogitations on the past. “The Vaster Wilds” is much narrower in time frame, taking place over just a few weeks, and more urgent in its objectives. Pursued by threats real and imagined, the girl is driven by a sovereign hunger, and Groff is lyrically, painstakingly attentive to the textures of her craving. The girl finds a nest of baby squirrels and roasts them on a spit; she swallows oysters she finds [...]

Book of the Month: The Vaster Wilds (2023) by Lauren Groffadmin2023-09-11T15:03:19-04:00

Book of the Month: How to Stand Up to a Dictator (2022) by Maria Ressa

admin2023-05-22T16:12:11-04:00

How to Stand Up to a Dictator (2022) by Maria Ressa Critical Evaluation "What flows through this, Ressa’s memoir, is a strong ethical sense that journalism has to be grounded in honesty and truth-telling, in evidence and incontrovertible facts. An experienced and acclaimed journalist, Ressa made her career at CNN, setting up and running the Southeast Asia Bureau during the 1990s. Born in the Philippines then raised and educated in the US, she had returned after graduation and found her way into the media at an exciting time – colonialism had ended and democracy seemed possible. "Populist governments either cultivate pro-government [...]

Book of the Month: How to Stand Up to a Dictator (2022) by Maria Ressaadmin2023-05-22T16:12:11-04:00

Book of the Month: The Shell Collector: Stories (2002) by Anthony Doerr

admin2023-05-22T15:55:43-04:00

The Shell Collector: Stories (2002) by Anthony Doerr Critical Evalulation "Reading Anthony Doerr's fine first collection of stories is like eavesdropping on a group of people who are standing at a picture window inventing tall tales about the wilderness they see outside. But while the perspectives of the characters in 'The Shell Collector' range widely, from a lonely New England teenager to a Liberian refugee in Oregon, two themes unite the book's storytelling: hunting and being hunted, holding on and letting go. In one story, an outdoorsman from Montana falls in love with a magician's assistant who has the power to [...]

Book of the Month: The Shell Collector: Stories (2002) by Anthony Doerradmin2023-05-22T15:55:43-04:00

Book of the Month: To the Lighthouse (1927) by Virginia Woolf

admin2023-05-22T14:53:00-04:00

To the Lighthouse (1927) by Virginia Woolf Critical Evaluation "Once again Mrs. Woolf makes use of her remarkable method of characterization, a method not based on observation or personal experience, but purely synthetic, purely creational. Clarissa Dalloway is a marvelous synthesis, and it is just for that reason that 'Mrs. Dalloway,' which has been identified because of its modernity with the "Ulysses" school, differs from it in character fundamentals, for it is as objective as "Ulysses" is autobiographical and observational. There is nothing 'photographic' about Mrs. Woolf's characters, here or in 'Mrs. Dalloway.' Neither Clarissa nor Mrs. Ramsay has anything autobiographical [...]

Book of the Month: To the Lighthouse (1927) by Virginia Woolfadmin2023-05-22T14:53:00-04:00

Book of the Month: Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted (2021) by Suleika Jaouad

admin2023-05-22T14:30:23-04:00

Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted (2021) by Suleika Jaouad Critical Evaluation "At the tail end of trauma, most people would prefer to hand the sufferer a bucket of silver paint and a brush, and say go ahead, paint the lining. Jaouad tosses the supplies and hops into a Subaru. On the road, she opts for slowness, finding the courage to marinate in unanswered questions and be alone with her thoughts. She drives a jagged constellation, 15,000 miles across the nation, visiting strangers who wrote to her. In each interaction, we meet someone who has encountered a lightless [...]

Book of the Month: Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted (2021) by Suleika Jaouadadmin2023-05-22T14:30:23-04:00

Book of the Month: Demon Copperhead (2022) by Barbara Kingsolver

admin2023-05-22T13:56:49-04:00

Book of the Month: Demon Copperhead (2022) by Barbara Kingsolver Critical Evaluation "In 'Demon Copperhead,' Barbara Kingsolver offers a close retelling of Charles Dickens’s 'David Copperfield,' which is either a baffling choice or an ingenious maneuver from a novelist who has been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and selected for Oprah’s Book Club and regularly — inevitably, even — appears on the best-seller list of this newspaper, all while reaping a surprising quantity of stinging pans from critics. "Kingsolver’s resurrection of Dickens’s most sentimental (though cherished by many, including me) novel might seem a bit strange — as if Harry Styles [...]

Book of the Month: Demon Copperhead (2022) by Barbara Kingsolveradmin2023-05-22T13:56:49-04:00

Book of the Month: Heartburn by Nora Ephron

admin2023-04-10T14:50:12-04:00

Heartburn by Nora Ephron Critical Evaluation “Heartburn” is a comic novel, written in the first person, about cookbook author Rachel Samstat. In almost every way, Rachel resembles Ephron. It is a withering revenge novel that follows one of her most Instagramable, tote-bag-worthy dictums: “Above all, be the heroine of your life, not the victim.” With “Heartburn,” Ephron reaped artistic and financial hay from the heartbreak of her second marriage. Others have followed her lead ever since. “Heartburn” is a Washington novel and a Washington Post novel: It’s based on Ephron’s explosive breakup with legendary Post Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein, who had [...]

Book of the Month: Heartburn by Nora Ephronadmin2023-04-10T14:50:12-04:00

Book of the Month: A Grace Paley Reader: Stories, Essays, and Poetry (2017)

admin2023-03-22T11:20:40-04:00

Book of the Month: A Grace Paley Reader: Stories, Essays, and Poetry Critical Evaluation "There’s a case to be made that Grace Paley was first and foremost an antinuclear, antiwar, antiracist feminist activist who managed, in her spare time, to become one of the truly original voices of American fiction in the later twentieth century. Just glance at the 'chronology' section of 'A Grace Paley Reader' (Farrar, Straus & Giroux), a welcome new collection of her short stories, nonfiction, and poems, edited by Kevin Bowen and Paley’s daughter, Nora. 1961: Leads her Greenwich Village PTA in protests against atomic testing, founds [...]

Book of the Month: A Grace Paley Reader: Stories, Essays, and Poetry (2017)admin2023-03-22T11:20:40-04:00

Book of The Month: Now Is Not the Time to Panic by Kevin Wilson (2022)

admin2022-11-28T14:00:34-05:00

Book of The Month: Now Is not the Time to Panic (2022) by Kevin Wilson Critical Evaluation “This story is much more likely to break your heart than your funny bone. Wilson is witty, to be sure, and he has a firm grip on the absurdity of domestic life, particularly families and their strange, terrarium-like realms. But if there’s comedy here, it’s steeped in melancholy. Crucially, this strange summer of 1996 is framed in the novel as a set of wonderful and horrible events that took place 20 years ago during a worldwide spasm of anxiety about “the shantytown filled with [...]

Book of The Month: Now Is Not the Time to Panic by Kevin Wilson (2022)admin2022-11-28T14:00:34-05:00

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