Book Review: "Martyr!" by Kaveh Akbar

“Can you imagine having that kind of faith?” Cyrus asked. “To be that certain of something you’ve never seen? I’m not that certain of anything. I’m not that certain of gravity.”

This book was on lots of critics’ and Bookstagram friends’ 2024 best-of lists. I had meant to read it last year but didn’t get around to it, so it was my first read of the new year.

The son of Iranian immigrants, Cyrus grew up under the specter of grief. When he was an infant, his mother was killed when her plane was inadvertently shot down over the Persian Gulf. His father, who worked at a farm killing chickens, died shortly after Cyrus left for college.

A recovering alcoholic and addict, Cyrus wants to be a poet and fancies himself a provocateur. He becomes obsessed with martyrs (unsurprisingly) as a topic for his poetry, and is drawn to a terminally ill artist whose final work is spending the rest of her life in a museum.

He also is inspired by his uncle, who was shattered by his time in the Iranian military. His uncle used to dress as the Angel of Death and ride through the battlefields, so that vision would be the last thing dying soldiers saw. And when Cyrus finds a painting of his mother in an art gallery, he realizes that all he was told about her may not be true.

Kaveh Akbar is a poet, so it’s not surprising that his prose is really beautiful. I just felt like the book was really disjointed; the narration shifted among many characters and between past and present. This was tremendously thought-provoking, however.

Book Review: "Small Rain" by Garth Greenwell

“As a teenager I had assumed life would be short, too short to prepare for anything, in those years when I failed my classes and made my mother despair, when life was only long enough for appetite; it seemed to me that any life worth living could only be short.”

In Garth Greenwell’s beautifully written new book, a writer finds himself in excruciating pain one day. He’s rendered nearly immobile at times, hoping the pain will pass. While his partner begs him to go to the hospital, because the story takes place during the pandemic, he is hesitant to go and face the possibility of getting even sicker.

After nearly five days, he finally goes to the emergency room. It appears he has a tear in his aorta, and no one can figure out what might have caused it. Stuck in the ICU, he experiences the highs and lows of the healthcare system, and confronts fears about his own mortality.

At the same time, he ruminates on his relationship with his partner, his mother, and other family members. He also reflects on everything from his childhood to his career path, as well as the impact poetry, music, nature, and academia have had on his life.

This is Greenwell’s third novel, after What Belongs to You and Cleanliness. Each book is loosely based on Greenwell’s real life experiences, and build on each other (although each can be read as a standalone), which imbue them with an emotional gravity.

I’ve been an enormous fan of Greenwell’s work for a while now, but nothing could prepare me for the immense power of this book. It captures love, fear, hope, taking chances, and ambition so incredibly well.

Book Review: "Call Us What We Carry" by Amanda Gorman

Call Us What We Carry is a collection of powerfully soaring, inspiring, relevant poems by the National Youth Poet Laureate.

Like many across the world, I marveled at the incredible talent of Amanda Gorman during President Biden’s inauguration, when she became the youngest presidential inaugural poet in U.S. history. Her poem, “The Hill We Climb,” dazzled me, leaving me emotional, breathless, and endlessly replaying the video of her reading on YouTube.

This collection examines the pandemic and how it affected our collective consciousness. It looks at history, race, bigotry, despair, hope, rebuilding, and capturing the spirit of our country. It feels both immensely ambitious and yet so timely, viewing the world from a distance and yet close-up at the same time.

I don’t read a lot of poetry so this was a wonderful change of pace for me. The design of the book itself is incredible too—some poems are formatted into different shapes, the book needs to be turned in different ways to get to different parts—and it adds to the experience. Each poem is also uniquely told.

Wonderfully, “The Hill We Climb” is included in Call Us What We Carry, and I watched her once again on YouTube as I read that poem. It remains as mesmerizing today as it was over a year ago. I’d imagine the audio version of this book might be incredible. Gorman’s talent is truly a gift.

Book Review: "In the Wild Light" by Jeff Zentner

Jeff Zentner's latest YA novel is a powerful, poignant story about family, friendship, heritage, love, and finding yourself.

This was just excellent! Zentner is one of my absolute favorite YA authors, and this book was another reminder why.

“I’ve seen that life is filled with unimaginable horror. But it’s also threaded through with unimaginable wonder. Live through enough of the one, maybe you’re due some of the other.”

Cash lives in the tiny rural town of Sawyer, Tennessee, raised by his beloved grandparents since his mother died from opioid addiction. He’s content for his life to consist simply of going canoeing on the river, mowing people’s lawns, and spending time with his best friend, Delaney.

When she makes a remarkable scientific discovery locally with Cash’s help, it gets Delaney a full ride to a prestigious Connecticut boarding school, where she’ll finally be challenged academically. She convinces them to award the same opportunity to Cash, since she can’t imagine undertaking this adventure without him.

Cash doesn’t want to ride Delaney’s coattails, and with his grandfather’s emphysema worsening, he fears leaving Tennessee for a life he never imagined. But the thought of Delaney struggling all alone is also too much to bear.

How do you make the choice between those you love? How do you know if going after something you never thought you’d have is worth the risk of losing what you know? How do you find the courage to let people in?

I loved everything about this book. I went to bed with puffy eyes from crying but it was just so good. (And if you love this, definitely read The Serpent King, if not all of Zentner's other books.)

Book Review: "The Long Road Home" by Braden Hofeling

Braden Hofeling's The Long Road Home is a beautifully written and heartfelt collection of poems, prose, and personal essays.

So, what’s your feeling on poetry? Do you read any? Do you read it occasionally or are you a big fan? Is it a genre that you know you’d like to read more of but there never seems to be enough time?

I definitely fall into that latter category. When i read poetry I often marvel at how much it touches and/or moves me, but it’s not a genre I gravitate toward frequently. But when my friend Braden Hofeling asked if I’d be interested in reading his new collection, I jumped at the chance.

This is a fairly short book, and many of his poems are very brief, so there are a good number of them. I can’t tell you how often I marveled at his use of language, emotion, and imagery to draw the reader in. There were so many poems that made me say, “YES!”

These are poems about love, relationships, family, dreams, nature, fears—and they are punctuated with beautiful artwork from Madison Bird.

There were too many poems to choose a favorite from, so here’s a brief one I really enjoyed, called “Slippery”:

When I tell you I’m falling
I don’t mean in love
I mean I’m slipping through your fingers

If you enjoy poetry or are curious about it, The Long Road Home is a beautiful collection to try. Braden Hofeling provided me with a complimentary copy of the book in exchange for an unbiased review. Thanks for making it available!

Book Review: "The Poet X" by Elizabeth Acevedo

Wow. This was absolutely phenomenal. What a powerful gut punch.

Elizabeth Acevedo's National Book Award-winning The Poet X is deserving of every single accolade that comes its way. This immensely moving novel-in-verse will light a fire inside you while it takes your breath away.

Xiomara Batista is about to start her sophomore year at a high school in Harlem. She has been the object of male attention since she grew tall and her body grew curves. Her fiercely religious mother has only mistrust for Xiomara, as she is convinced that a teenage girl with a body like that will only get into trouble. But Xiomara spends more time fighting the jeers and the curious stares, and standing up for her meeker twin brother, Xavier, whom she refers to as "Twin."

"The other girls call me conceited. Ho. Thot. Fast.
When your body takes up more room than your voice
you are always the target of well-aimed rumors,
which is why I let my knuckles talk for me.
Which is why I learned to shrug when my name was replaced by insults.
I've forced my skin just as thick as I am."

The best way Xiomara finds to combat everything that threatens to bring her down—her mother's religious fervor and mistrust, her father's disregard, the secrets that Twin seems to be hiding, and her growing desire for a boy to like her—is to write. She fills a well-worn leather notebook with her thoughts, her fears, and her poems. As her new English teacher encourages her to join a poetry club, Xiomara knows her words can't ever be heard by others or her secrets will fly away.

When she and her lab partner, Aman, begin a flirtation which grows ever more intense, Xiomara knows her mother's rules. She is not allowed to date, not even allowed to go anywhere with a boy. But for the first time, she decides to disobey her mother and spend time with Aman. She feels happiness, desire, guilt, confusion, but more than that, she can't quite understand why these feelings are wrong.

"How does a girl like me figure out the weight
of what it means to love a boy?"

But secrets can only be kept secret for so long. When Xiomara's secrets are exposed, their discovery, and her mother's reaction, threatens everything—her relationship with each of her family members, her self-worth, even her ability to express herself through poetry. She is lost, adrift, until she finds one beacon to help guide her back on course.

At times this is a difficult book to read because Xiomara's mother is so unflinching in her beliefs and so outwardly cruel to her daughter. In a small way, she reminds me of the mother in Celeste Ng's Little Fires Everywhere, because you just can't understand how a mother's love for her child could turn so twisted and cruel, even though you learn the reasons behind it.

Xiomara is a truly unforgettable character, and although you don't see him as much, I loved Twin as well, and wished he was more of a presence at times. To watch someone who has always carried herself with so much bravado find herself so vulnerable is sad, but you hope that she'll bounce back even bigger and stronger than she was.

I absolutely loved this book and read it in one day. I am not a fan of audio books but I am considering listening to this one, which Acevedo narrates herself, since she is an award-winning slam poet. I was utterly mesmerized by Acevedo's words and how they metamorphosized into such a memorable voice for Xiomara—simultaneously tough and soft, passionate and fearful.

This is a book about family, religion, friendship, young love, wishing you could be who your parents want you to be but not wanting to give up who you are, and the transformative power of words. The Poet X is a book I won't soon forget.

"I only know that learning to believe in the power of my own words has been the most freeing experience of my life. It has brought me the most light. And isn't that what a poem is? A lantern glowing in the dark."

Book Review: "Sea Prayer" by Khaled Hosseini

Khaled Hosseini's Sea Prayer isn't a book—it's a poem. But it's more than a poem—it is, in essence, a letter written from father to son, a prayer lifted up on the eve of a journey away from their war-torn country, a journey which could prove tremendously dangerous.

In less than 50 pages, Hosseini's words and the beautiful illustrations break your heart. This was inspired by the story of Alan Kurdi, a three-year-old Syrian boy believed to have drowned during his family's attempts to flee their country, but it could be anyone's story. The remembrances of better times, reflections of a country once utterly beautiful but now devastated by war and the resulting effects, words that a young boy might not understand now but might grow to appreciate later.

I read this in just a few minutes and it punched a hole in my heart. We often don't take the time to think of what families must go through when they leave their homes which are welcoming no more. We don't think about their fears, their memories which make them reluctant to leave, the dangers they face along the way.

Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns, will donate his proceeds from this book to the UNHCR (the UN Refugee Agency) and The Khaled Hosseini Foundation to help fund lifesaving relief efforts to help refugees around the globe.

Sea Prayer is short and powerful, and once it is read it will not cease to be felt or forgotten. Thank you, Khaled Hosseini, for reminding us of the emotional and physical costs of immigration.

Book Review: "Night Sky with Exit Wounds" by Ocean Vuong

The most beautiful part of your body
is where it's headed, & remember
loneliness is still time spent
with the world.

To read Ocean Vuong's Night Sky with Exit Wounds is to be dazzled by gorgeous lyricism. I picked this up as part of my exploration of contemporary poetry I have been experimenting with over the last several weeks. It's amazing the breadth of talent that exists in this genre.

I realized after reading the first few sentences of Vuong's first poem just how talented he is. It certainly explains why this book won the 2016 Whiting Award and the 2017 T.S. Eliot Prize, because some of his stanzas simply took my breath away.

Use it to prove how the stars
were always what we knew

they were the exit wounds
of every
misfired word.

Vuong spent the first two years of his life living in a refugee camp, and he never knew his father. This sense of emptiness is palpable through many of the 35 poems in this collection, as Vuong imagines reasons why his father wasn't part of his life. He imagines his father meeting violent or tragic, accidental ends, or even being imprisoned. In several poems, he imagines encounters with his father at various stages of his life.

Like any good son, I pull my father out
of the water, drag him by his hair

through white sand, his knuckles carving a trail
the waves rush in to erase.

Some of the poems touch on mythological themes, some touch on more realistic, violent ones, exploring the experience of Vietnamese refugees. One poem, "Aubade with Burning City," is based on the fact that Armed Forces Radio played the song "White Christmas" as a code to begin Operation Frequent Wind, the ultimate evacuation of American civilians and Vietnamese refugees by helicopter during the fall of Saigon in 1975. The poem juxtaposes verse with lyric fragments from the song, to beautiful effect.

The more poetry I've been reading, the more I realize that just as I prefer "traditional" short stories over those which take more experimental forms and narratives, I feel the same way about poetry. At times, Vuong experiments with form, language, even writes a poem using footnotes, and those poems didn't work for me.

In the end, however, Night Sky with Exit Wounds is at times contemplative, fiery, even erotic. Vuong's power lies in his words, and the emotions he conveys through them. While poetry doesn't get the type of recognition fiction and other genres get, Vuong definitely deserves to be heralded as an artist for our time.

Book Review: "Ordinary Beast: Poems" by Nicole Sealey

Though we're not so self-
important as to think everything

has led to this, everything has led to this.
There's a name for the animal

love makes of us—named, I think,
like rain, for the sound it makes.

Continuing my foray into contemporary poetry, I recently picked up Ordinary Beast, a new collection of poems by Nicole Sealey. The book was named one of NPR's most anticipated poetry books of 2017, and reading Sealey's work, you certainly can understand why.

This is a fascinating collection, at times dazzling, at times perplexing, but continuously powerful and emotional. Sealey writes with a burning passion about love, sex, race, history, and legacy, using words that immediately conjure vivid images. Interestingly enough, while some poems appear and read more like "traditional" poems, some appear and read more like prose, but they're no less effective.

I love you, I say, desperate
to admit that
the flesh extends its vanity
to an unknown land
where all the wild swarm.
This is not death. It is something safer,
almost made of air—
I think they call it god.

The collection contains 26 poems, many of which are quite short, some of which use an experimental style of layout, which made it difficult to gauge the poem's full meaning. Since I'm close to being a poetry neophyte, I tended to enjoy those poems which were a little more traditional, the ones whose meaning seemed more evident. But even in those poems which didn't quite work for me, Sealey's talent was immensely evident, line after powerful line.

We fit somewhere between god
and mineral, angel and animal,

believing a thing as sacred as the sun rises
and falls like an ordinary beast.

I've really been enjoying this exploration of contemporary poetry. I'm learning that, just like the world of fiction, the depth of talent out there today is immense, and I'm also beginning to understand the type of works which appeal to me. Nicole Sealey is clearly an artist in this genre, and I'd encourage those of you who enjoy a mix of styles in your poetry to pick up this collection.

Book Review: "Don't Call Us Dead: Poems" by Danez Smith

After reading Rupi Kaur's gorgeous Milk and Honey (see my review), my first encounter with poetry in quite some time, I decided to delve a little deeper into the genre.

I picked up Danez Smith's Don't Call Us Dead, which was a finalist for the National Book Award for Poetry in 2017. At turns searing, sensual, provocative, tragic, and evocative, Smith's collection is a potent commentary on race, sexuality, violence, prejudice, promiscuity, homophobia, AIDS, and death. Some of the poems absolutely took my breath away, and some painted immensely vivid pictures in my mind.

i know when the wind feels
as if it's made of hands

& i feel like i'm made of water
it's you trying to save me

from drowning in myself, but i can't
wed wind. i'm not water.

The above stanzas are from "summer, somewhere," an epic poem of sorts, which envisions an afterlife for young black men killed by police. It is emotional, anger-inducing, and tremendously thought-provoking, and Smith's language conveys both the peace and security this new world provides, while at the same time recognizing the tragedies that brought those to this place.

here, there's no language
for officer or law, no color to call white.

if snow fell, it'd fall black. please, don't call
us dead, call us alive someplace better.

we say our own names when we pray.
we go out for sweets & come back.

Other poems deal with men struggling to fight their sexuality, yet succumbing to promiscuity, to risky sex and furtive hookups that they know could doom them. The poem "bare," deals with taking that risk.

if love is a room
of broken glass, leave me to dance
until my feet are memory.

Smith's words are sometimes brutal, sometimes explicitly sexual, sometimes painful. This may not be a collection for everyone, but it should be, because it helped me think about the families left behind when their children are lost to violence, the men raised to be masculine but who struggle with embracing the reality of who they are, how those diagnosed with HIV and AIDS struggle with their mortality.

Not every poem worked for me, but those that did left me mesmerized. Smith is an absolutely incredible writer, and I'll definitely pick up another of his collections. This is poetry that may make you uncomfortable, but it dazzles at the same time.

Book Review: "Milk and Honey" by Rupi Kaur

Wow.

I really didn't know what to expect when I picked up Rupi Kaur's exquisite collection of poetry and prose. Poetry is often hit or miss with me—I totally appreciate it as an art form but sometimes I just don't get it. (I'm as creative as the next person, but sometimes my brain is tired and just wants to be told what something means rather than struggle to decode it. Sorry, I'm a Neanderthal.)

Milk and Honey is about happiness and despair, hurt and joy, love and sadness, and finding the strength to overcome your struggles. It is at times erotic, poignant, empowering, harrowing, and a celebration of all of the amazing qualities of women. Divided into four chapters—the hurting, the loving, the breaking, and the healing—each deals with a different step in relationships, both with someone else and with yourself.

most importantly love
like it's the only thing you know how
at the end of the day all this
means nothing
this page
where you're sitting
your degree
your job
the money
nothing even matters
except love and human connection
who you loved
and how deeply you loved them
how you touched the people around you
and how much you gave them

Some of the poems are accompanied by small illustrations. I'd imagine that the print version of this book would make a beautiful gift for someone; I'm not sure if I missed out on something reading it on my Kindle, because I'm not 100 percent sure if each separate page is a separate poem or if the book is just laid out strangely. (I am also not quite sure if only some of the poems have titles or if each poem has its title at the end, meaning the stanzas between titled pages represent one poem.)

Kaur is an absolutely dazzling writer. Her words evoke emotion, sexuality, femininity, anger, and hope. While perhaps some of this resonates more for women than for men, I still found this incredibly touching, incredibly moving, incredibly motivating, and at times simply breathtaking.

you might not have been my first love
but you were the love that made
all the other loves
irrelevant

This collection won't be for everyone. You need to be willing to put aside conventional notions of punctuation, capitalization, and the way sentences are divided. But more than that, you need to be willing to be vulnerable, to listen to Kaur's messages, and feel the feelings she is trying to convey. If you can do that, you will be richly rewarded by the beauty of Milk and Honey.

Book Review: "Fire Sermon" by Jamie Quatro

When Garth Greenwell, whose book What Belongs To You (see my review), absolutely blew me away last year (it even ranked in the top five of the best books I read in 2016), took a pause from his social media hiatus to encourage people to read Jamie Quatro's Fire Sermon because of its absolute beauty, you can believe I listened.

I've got to say, Greenwell didn't steer me wrong. This book contains some of the most gorgeous prose I've read in some time, although the book as a whole didn't quite hit a home run for me. Still, there's so much raw emotion here—love, loss, hope, regret, fear, grief, wonder, and need—so it's really something.

"Was it something we carried in ourselves—something I sent out to you, and you sent out to me? Or did it exist independently, a potential fire hovering in the middle space between us, appearing only when we looked at one another? In which case, the second we stopped looking, the fire disappeared."

Maggie and Thomas met in college and married shortly after graduation. Maggie is a scholar, but is willing to put her educational pursuits on hold while she raises the couple's two children. She is happy (for the most part) doing her part to be the dutiful wife, devoted to her husband, her children, and God. While their relationship isn't perfect, she knows Thomas loves her passionately, and she feels secure in their life together.

When she resumes her teaching career, she begins a correspondence with James, a poet. At first, she is dazzled by his talent and marvels at their shared interest in theological writing, and their correspondence is professional and intellectual. But little by little, their communication transforms into something deeper, something that offers temptation, fantasy, perhaps even hope. When they finally meet, they are overcome by their feelings, and Maggie realizes all she has been missing her entire life.

Yet all too quickly, as strong as their feelings for each other run, they are consumed by guilt. Maggie must reconcile her devotion to God with her infidelity, her desire to throw everything away for James with the vows she took to love her husband until death do they part. They try to avoid seeing each other, even talking to one another, sticking solely to correspondence, but even that is tremendously difficult.

Will God forgive her? Should she confess to Thomas, even if that might jeopardize the family she holds so dear? Does she even deserve all that God gives her? Should she follow her heart, and stop caring about the consequences?

"(But would you leave a husband who, when you wake in the middle of the night, your body slick with sweat—dreaming you had to say goodbye to a man you slept with, once upon a time, but the man doesn't care, he has better things to do, he doesn't mind that he'll never see you again and the pain in your chest is so acute it forces you awake, gasping for air—this husband gets up to bring you a glass of water, then holds your hand across the mattress until you fall asleep? A man who, when your son brings home a girl who dropped out of high school and wants only to get married and have a kid, sits with her for an hour and talks about the benefits of higher education, offers to pay for her to take the GED and apply to colleges? Would you leave such a man? Or would you think: confess, repent, he is the one who should leave?)"

Fire Sermon examines one woman's struggles between the life she promised to live when she was 21 years old and the life she believes she so desperately wants, essentially a battle between duty and passion. At times powerful, at times quietly poignant, this is a book full of passion, conflict, need, and faith.

The book jumps between past and present, between Maggie's relationship with Thomas and her time with James, and also includes a great deal of theological conversation between Maggie and James, and Maggie's own conversations with God and an unidentified person. As someone who doesn't have much awareness of theology, while I understood the point that Quatro was making, I felt like those portions of the story slowed everything down and didn't quite work for me.

Maggie is a fascinating, fiery, flawed character, and Quatro draws her with such complexity. I was so taken by the storytelling and the language she used here, and I absolutely need to read her story collection now. Even though this book didn't quite knock me out, it's a story that really made me think, and I can't stop marveling at what a fantastic writer Quatro is.

Book Review: "Monsters: A Love Story" by Liz Kay

I love when a book comes from out of nowhere and charms you completely. That was definitely the case with Monsters: A Love Story. I can't remember how I found out about this book, and although the plot isn't necessarily earth-shattering, it's an enjoyable twist on the traditional love story.

Stacey Lane's world was rocked when her husband Michael died, leaving her alone with their two young boys. Michael was an actuary, a planner, someone who believed in the power of routine, not just in raising children, but in all aspects of life. This is only one area in which Stacey, a poet, feels woefully inadequate. She believes that she and her sons are doing their best to handle their grief, and she's trying to figure out exactly how to carry on.

"It's the boys and I who are floundering. Just in different ways. They want nothing more to change, and I want everything to."

She is tremendously surprised when she gets an email from a producer inquiring about adapting her second book of poetry, Monsters in the Afterlife, for the big screen. While it received some critical acclaim when it was released, this novel-in-verse (a feminist reimagining of sorts of Frankenstein) doesn't seem particularly commercial. But the next thing she knows, her book has been optioned for film, and she's flying to Turks and Caicos to meet the screenwriter and the film's male star, who also plans to produce the movie, as he's the person who first thought it would make a good movie.

Stacey is utterly unprepared when she realizes the man behind the movie is Tommy DeMarco, a certifiable movie star, utter heartthrob, and total ladies' man. It's easy to be attracted to Tommy, especially when he is such a passionate fan of her work, and of course, Stacey has been feeling lonely since Michael's death. When their intense friendship moves to the next level, the sex is intense and they really enjoy being together, but given that she lives with her family in Nebraska and Tommy lives in LA, and since Tommy has been known to sleep with nearly every younger woman with a pulse, there's no danger of their relationship going anywhere, and that's totally fine with her.

As Stacey and Tommy's friendship deepens and the two get more involved in each other's lives, Stacey still finds it easy to keep him at an emotional distance. After all, she's been warned not to get too serious about him. Yet as she starts dating someone more solid closer to home, she needs to figure out exactly what she wants, and if she really is content with someone who won't make her life bigger, but perhaps will make it more stable.

I really enjoyed this book even as I had a pretty strong feeling about how everything would resolve itself. I liked the way Liz Kay pretty much flipped the gender roles in this relationship, making Stacey the one who really was fine without commitment, the one who sent mixed signals. The dynamics of Stacey and Tommy's relationship worked well, and I enjoyed the book's intellectual side as well as its romantic one.

This is a fun, sweet, moving story about putting your life back together (or trying to), the challenges of single parenthood no matter how old your children are, the creative process, and the importance of trust. You may have seen this story played out before, but it doesn't feel pat or boring, just really enjoyable.

Book Review: "Paper Towns" by John Green

I have a lot of ambitions in my life, but one of the ones I wish for the most is to be as clever and well-spoken as the characters in John Green's books. While I don't know many teenagers who speak the way his characters due, I am obsessed with the way he writes dialogue, especially banter, and although I think I do fairly well for myself conversationally, I wouldn't mind the the wry observational quality of his characters.

While I believe Hazel and Augustus, the main characters in Green's The Fault in Our Stars (easily one of my most favorite books of the last several years), are the pinnacle of Green's dialogue mountain, Quentin Jacobsen and Margo Roth Spiegelman (okay, so Green knows how to name his characters well, too), the main characters in Paper Towns definitely have moments which should easily be added to his conversational pantheon.

Quentin and Margo grow up living next door to each other in a suburban Florida town. When they are younger, the two find the body of a man who apparently committed suicide, and while this discovery should have cemented their relationship, it wasn't long before Margo drifted away, finding popularity, new friends (not to mention boyfriends), and an alleged life of adventure, while Quentin is content to life a quieter life, albeit one filled with close friends, video games, and worshiping Margo from afar.

As their senior year of high school comes to close, one night Quentin is awakened by Margo, climbing into his bedroom window, dressed like a ninja. She enlists a reluctant Quentin to be her accomplice and assistant with a series of revenge-related activities throughout their area. (And while she promises no breaking and entering, she promises no such thing about breaking or entering.) While Margo's schemes push Quentin's blood pressure fairly high, and bring the duo into a few dangerous close calls, the late night ride awakens his confidence and sense of adventure, and he hopes that this will be the start of a whole different relationship with Margo.

What he doesn't expect, however, was that Margo would disappear the next day, something she has done a few other times over the years. And when he finds out that the other times Margo disappeared she left obscure clues her family couldn't figure out, he becomes convinced that she has left him clues to find her this time. He seeks the help of his two best friends, Ben and Radar, to try and determine where she could have gone, why she left, and how he can find her, so that perhaps she'll realize the new, more confident Quentin she inspired is someone worth getting close to.

But what Quentin discovers is that people's reasons for their actions don't always make sense to anyone other than themselves, and sometimes our perceptions of a person and what motivates them is vastly different than reality. He also learns about the power of quiet observation, the intensity of friendship, and his need for people to act the way he wants them to.

"Just—Just remember that sometimes, the way you think about a person isn't the way they actually are."

I really, really enjoyed this book, and it once again cemented John Green among my favorite writers. While Paper Towns has a great deal of humor and heart, at times I didn't find Margo to be as fascinating of a character as the others were, so much like Ben and Radar, I sometimes wondered why Quentin was spending so much time trying to find her. But again, Green's dialogue and his storytelling hooked me quickly and completely, and I read this book over a few hours. (You also can't quibble with a book that uses Walt Whitman's poetry as a significant plot point.)

The movie adaptation of Paper Towns comes out later this summer, and I hope it's as faithful to Green's book as the movie version of The Fault in Our Stars was. A book this good deserves an equally good movie, but like always, I'd suggest reading the book first, to get the first-hand exposure to Green's talent. And maybe it will inspire you to plan adventures of your own.

Book Review: "I Regret Everything" by Seth Greenland

"Our lives are lived with the illusion of control and then there are moments rare as wisdom when we abandon the pretense that we are masters of our fate."

New York City wills and trusts lawyer Jeremy Best has nearly always taken the safe choices in his life, causing him more regrets than he'd like. He does have one interesting secret: he's also a poet of some promise, publishing under the pen name Jinx Bell. He certainly dreams of renown, but beyond having his poems published in a few literary journals, he keeps his talent hidden.

He is utterly unprepared for the arrival in his life of Spaulding Simonson, the 19-year-old troubled daughter of his boss. Although she refers to Jeremy at age 33 as "already halfway to dead," somehow she knows that Jeremy and Jinx Bell are one and the same. And she loves his poetry. Spaulding is unpredictable, emotional, even erratic at times, but fiercely intelligent and immensely talented.

Jeremy can make a long list of reasons why he shouldn't get involved with Spaulding, the least of which is he's on the partnership track at his law firm and he's just received news that shakes him to his core. But he can't seem to get her out of his system, and she is inexplicably drawn to him, particularly as he encourages her to live her own life and never give in.

Seth Greenland's I Regret Everything is a story of an unlikely couple, one who is trying to be less predictable and one who is trying to take control of her life for perhaps the first time. It's the story of letting your heart have power over your head, even though that's the last thing you're comfortable doing. It's also a story of wordplay, of poetry, of creativity. Because the book shifts in perspective between Jeremy and Spaulding, the tone shifts with their personalities, which is unsettling for a brief second, but wonderful once it kicks in.

I absolutely loved this book. It threw me for a loop a few times (in a good way), and I wondered just where Greenland would take the plot, but Jeremy and Spaulding are such unique characters that drew me in instantaneously. Greenland is such an excellent writer, and his narrative occasionally has a near-poetic quality. I couldn't sleep last night, so I devoured this book in practically one sitting, and as much as I loved it, I'm disappointed it's done. Bravo.

Book Review: "Love, Dishonor, Marry, Die, Cherish, Perish" by David Rakoff

When I heard David Rakoff's book was written entirely in verse,
I thought to myself, "Could there be anything worse?

"Trying to ascertain plot from each rhyming couplet,
Would it be good enough to be worth all that trouble?" It

Seemed an idea that was rather pretentious,
And struggling with verse can be rather contentious.

But the critics they raved, hailing the book's success,
Saying this was Rakoff at his very best.

The glory of this triumph was somewhat diminished,
By the fact that Rakoff died shortly after it was finished.

But now that I've read it, and allayed my fears,
I can say it amused me and moved me to tears.

The writing insightful, the characters complex,
And it amazed me how well their stories intersect.

It was a quick read, 'though I savored each word,
I can't believe I ever thought this idea was absurd.

I loved the way these characters' lives unfolded in stages,
A novel's worth of plot and emotion in just a few pages.

So if, like me, you're skeptical about this book,
I can assure you it's definitely worth more than a look.

It's a book you'll want to recommend to your crowd,
And it's infinitely more fun if you read it aloud (even to yourself).

Don't worry if poetry's not your idea of fun,
You'll feel tremendously fulfilled when you're all done.

I really loved this, and I'm completely sincere,
When I say it's one of the best I read this year.

So thank you for enduring my attempts at a tribute,
Clearly rhyming is not my strongest suit.

Ahem. I couldn't resist.

This is a phenomenally written, emotionally compelling book, one of the most unique I've ever read, and I loved every minute of it. David Rakoff has created a masterpiece of interconnected stories-in-verse about characters in some sort of emotional flux. Some of the connections come as an utter surprise, but the emotions they generate are truly genuine. As the title suggests, Rakoff's characters are involved with all of those verbs in some way, and I only wish he had lived, because I'd love to read more about them.

Believe me, I was truly skeptical of this concept, but I am so glad I gave it a shot. And you should, too.