This book belongs in the hands of people whose cultures are misaligned. This book belongs to people whose words overlap, whose minds are many places, who hear a rhythm in every background. Shane Book’s All Black Everything (University of Iowa Press) is a promise kept. It is an altar to the church that gave him […]
Book reviews
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Fully Booked: Interactive books to flip over
By Casey Maynard Children love books that defy traditional format categories: picture book biographies, early reader comics, longform illustrated novels, graphic novel nonfiction. The combinations offer endless variety for readers. Lucky for us, publishers are delivering! Here is a brief list of books on Iowa City Public Library’s new children’s shelves featuring more than one […]
Posted inBook Reviews
Book Review: ‘Labyrinths’ by Christopher Okigbo
The Iowa Writers’ Workshop and the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program (IWP) have long brought writers of international stature to the Greatest Small City for the Arts. Many of these writers are Nigerian, and include recent workshop graduates Adedayo Agarau and Romeo Oriogun, recent IWP participant Wana Udobang, and (through the School of Journalism […]
Posted inBook Reviews
‘The Worldly Game: The Story of Baseball in the Amana Colonies’ by Monys A. Hagen
In “The Obvious Child” — the lead single from Paul Simon’s 1990 Rhythm of the Saints album — the iconic songwriter sings “The cross is in the ballpark.” It’s a striking and unexpected image in the flow of the song, and it has always seemed to me a sharp encapsulation of several intertwined threads of […]
Posted inBook Reviews
Fully Booked: Get well-versed this National Poetry Month
Originally launched in April 1996, National Poetry Month celebrates the contributions of poets and their art. Poetry can be especially meaningful for youth as a tool of self-expression, of making sense of new things. Great poetry offers multiple ways to think about subjects using an toolkit of poetic devices. Though obviously longer in form, novels […]
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Book Review: ‘Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America’s Food Industry’ by Austin Frerick
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 […]
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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 […]
Posted inBook Reviews
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 […]
Posted inBook Reviews
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 […]
