jodiwilldare's reviews
1523 reviews

Mark Watney is fucked. He says so in the first line of Andy Weir’s sci-fi sensation The Martian. Mark’s been left for dead by his other astronaut buddies after an accident. While the rest of the crew hurtles back to Earth, their two-month mission aborted after only six days due to a windstorm, Mark has to figure out what to do about his predicament. Read more.

If you have been living under a rock and haven’t heard of Roxane Gay, get thee to Google. She’s an amazing writer — smart, thought-provoking, funny, poignant. Reading her whether on Tumblr or Twitter or in Salon is fantastic. If I hadn’t crowned Christa my very favorite writer on the Internet for life, Gay could probably rest comfortably in that throne.

So it was great gobs of anticipation that I took up Gay’s novel about a prickly lawyer who is kidnapped from her parents’ Port-au-Prince estate and then held captive for thirteen days while her father wrestled with making a point about, umm, convictions, maybe? Read More.

Ugh, seventh grade. Do you remember it? That awful year when everything is changing at a pace you aren’t quite sure of — your body, your friends, the rules of society. Kevin Brockmeier nails it in A Few Seconds of Radiant Filmstrip: A Memoir of Seventh Grade. Read more.

Rob Lowe’s latest memoir Love Life is as dull and disappointing as the first one, Stories I Tell My Friends, was charming and delightful. Sad trombone. Read more.

A new short story collection by Lorrie Moore had me giddy with anticipation when it arrived on my doorstep lo those many months ago when the arctic February winds howled and most of Minnesota was frozen solid. Last night I finished the short eight-story collection once again as winds howled, only this time they were accompanied by lots heat, humidity, thunder and lightning.

As much as I love Lorrie Moore’s writing I have to admit this one was kind of a slog, which says a lot because the collection is comprised of only eight stories. Read more.