Literary Fiction - Eat, Tan, Read

Don’t Get Stuck in a Genre Rut

When I was younger I used to only read Stephen King, R.L. Stein, Dean Koontz, you get my drift, pretty much thriller and horror only. When I was in High School, I stared my first job as a barista and found my co-worker’s copy of Nora Robert’s novel Lawless. That was my intro into great Romance novels. I very rarely left that comfort zone of those authors though. I had no idea the books I was missing out on.

The past several years I have made changes in the way I choose what books to read and I have been picking up ones that I normally wouldn’t. I join reading challenges that prompt me to choose books outside my comfort zone. We are two months into the year so far and my genre resume has already been so vast, Literary Women’s Fiction, Contemporary Realistic Fiction, New Adult Romance, Literary Fiction, Crime and Comedy Thriller, Poetry, and Non-fiction Memoir.

Here are a few that I have thoroughly enjoyed recently:

My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell – Literary Women’s Fiction, Dark Academia
Memorial Drive: A Daughter’s Memoir by NatashaTrethewey – Non-fiction Memoir
Because Of Jenny by Brad Neaton – Literary Fiction
Accidental Activist: Justice for the Groveland Four by Josh Venkataraman and Barbara Venkataraman – Non-fiction Memoir
Handle With Care by Jodi Picoult – Contemporary Realistic Fiction
An American Marriage by Tayari Jones – Literary Fiction
On Island Time: Kayaking the Caribbean by Scott B. Williams – Non-fiction Memoir, Travel
The Kite Runner by Khalid Hosseini – Contemporary Realistic Fiction
American Predator: The Hunt for the Most Meticulous Serial Killer of the 21st Century by Maureen Callahan – Non-fiction True Crime
The Alice Network by Kate Quinn – Historical Fiction

I hope that this will give you the push to expand your reading beyond your comfort zone as well. There is a whole world out there to explore. Don’t be afraid to check them out.

Book Review – Because Of Jenny

Because of Jenny by Brad Neaton

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Literary Fiction

CW: depression, suicide, drug use and addiction, sexual assault

I was gifted this book by the author. This is an honest review.

“People would rather continue believing that addicts, the homeless, those struggling with mental illness—the outcasts ever-present on the outskirts of society—are just complicit denizens, thereby minimizing the complexities at the root of social issues and negating any self-imposed moral pressure to empathize.”

“There’s no hyperbole here: I was being asphyxiated by a depression that pervaded every aspect of my life, and I was lost in that depression the same way someone gets lost in the woods at night—with no fixed reference point and every direction leading nowhere.”

Eric is an 18 year old with severe depression and beyond the verge of suicide. After a failed first attempt, he knows he will try again but before he does he decides to pay for some female company. He responds to an online add and meets Jenny. Jenny is a heroine addict, desperate for money, her friend convinces her to put the add online, it’s easy money.

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Book Review – My Dark Vanessa

My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Literary, Women’s Fiction, Dark Academia

“Come and be worshiped, come and be caressed,
My dark Vanessa, crimson-barred, my blest
My Admirable butterfly! Explain
How could you, in the gloom of Lilac Lane,
Have let uncouth, hysterical John Shade
Blubber your face, and ear, and shoulder-blade?”

“He compared my hair to the color of maple leaves, slipped poetry into my hands – Emily, Edna, Sylvia. He made me see myself as he did, a girl with the power to rise with red hair and eat him like air.”

“Shielded by the desk, he reaches down and pats my knee gently, gingerly, the way you might pet a dog before you’re sure it won’t turn mean and bite you. I don’t bite him. I don’t move. I don’t even breathe. He keeps writing notes on the poem while his other hand strokes my knee and my mind slips out of me. It brushes up against the ceiling so I can see myself from above – hunched shoulders, thousand-yard stare, bright red hair,”

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