Austin Frerick’s captivating and necessary book Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America’s Food Industry (March 2024, Island Press), is a road trip through America’s heartland — but not the one depicted in Grant Wood’s paintings of rural Iowa. Where Wood depicted an early 20th century lush with rolling fields of green, Frerick’s contemporary […]
Book Reviews
Posted inBook Reviews
Book Review: ‘Be Not Afraid of My Body’ by Darius Stewart
Again and again in his new memoir Be Not Afraid of My Body (Belt Publishing, February 2024), Darius Stewart manipulates language, takes topics that are otherwise coated with stigma and hushed tones and makes them plain, reinvents form and expectations and insists that poets are taking over prose. Somehow, without maintaining any strict chronology or […]
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Book Review: ‘Secret Pizza: A Midwestern Fairytale’ by Brenden Greeley
Let’s start by getting all the toppings on the table. Better than a decade ago, I self-published a comedic novel titled Murder by the Slice. It drew heavily on my own experiences as a pizza delivery driver in Cedar Rapids as a young man. The book was received fairly well locally (and a bit beyond), […]
Posted inCommunity/News
Fully Booked: Books for the ’90s kid in all of us
There’s nothing wrong with an adult who likes to read children’s books. (I’m a children’s librarian; therefore, an expert on these matters.) Children’s books can provide a much-needed escape, along with being quick reads – you can devour these in a day or two. If you’re an elder millennial, a ’90s kid, like me, these […]
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Book Review: ‘The Renegade Nuns on Wheels MC, Post Apocalypse, Lost Nation, Iowa’ by Jason Thomas Smith
The newest book by Jason Thomas Smith was released on Sept. 24, 2023. That’s just four days before my most recent birthday, and even reading it now, months later, it feels like a present, gift-wrapped and handed to me on a silver platter. It starts with a desolate town and one lone priest out of […]
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Fully Booked: Velvety voices and vivid scenes
Every night for the past eight years, sometime between 8:30 and 10 p.m., my child has had the comforting voices of myself or his father lull him to sleep with a great story. I need that comfort, too, and I get it from my beloved audiobook narrators. They bring fiction to life, stories floating in […]
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Book Review: ‘This American Ex-Wife’ by Lyz Lenz
“My marriage ended on a Monday.” Lyz Lenz opens This American Ex-Wife: How I Ended My Marriage and Started My Life (out Feb. 20, 2024) this simply. And she pulls no punches in laying out her nonfiction narrative that interrogates the traditions and institutions behind marriage. We follow the arc of Lenz’s divorce — her […]
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Book Review: ‘Black Punk Now’ edited by James Spooner and Chris L. Terry
I’m a sucker for an anthology. Short work requires a certain balance of delicacy and force that long-form writing can work around, and the curation process of selecting, collecting and presenting those pieces is its own truly under-discussed art form. It’s something that I love to do, and I especially enjoy experiencing thoughtful examples of […]
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Book Review: ‘A New History of Iowa’ by Jeff Bremer
“History doesn’t repeat itself,” the saying goes, “Historians repeat each other.” There’s some truth in that, but the bigger truth is that most people just repeat whatever version of history they learn in school, seldom venturing far beyond what they learned in a general survey course. (Many LV readers may be exceptions to that rule, […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Fully Booked: Chinese children’s stories for a new year
One of the top picks for the weekly Chinese Bilingual Storytime at the Iowa City Public Library (Fridays at 10:30 a.m.) is The Rice in the Pot Goes Round and Round by Wendy Wan Long Shang. While singing along to the sweet family-themed picture book, kids and parents can enjoy a big feast of Chinese […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Book Review: ‘The War Begins in Paris’ by Theodore Wheeler
As a reader, I have largely ignored the historical fiction genre. The War Begins in Paris (2023), by Theodore Wheeler, shows me that I have been remiss. Through it, I’ve learned that at its best, the genre turns a mirror toward the reader and subtly pushes us to see history repeating itself. And it can […]
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Book Review: ‘Sundog’ by Melissa Conway
“At the end of January 2018 I sat in a coffee shop sipping a tea I couldn’t afford and reflected on the last month I barely survived. This exercise became a monthly meditation on time passing, what it’s like to live in a body, as a self, something holy, a wrong turn.” This introduction to […]
