Book Blog — Robin Gaines

“Books are not only the arbitrary sum of our dreams, and our memory. They also give us the model of self-transcendence.”

—Susan Sontag

THE BLIND ASSASSIN by Margaret Atwood (Kindle) Oh, this novel! The writing! The interiority of the narrative. The evocative description. The cool irony. The genius of layering three stories within the story. Iris and her younger sister

Robin GainesSeptember 27, 2023

IN THE ORCHARD  by Eliza Minot A long prose poem to motherhood describes this sweet and tender novel. Over the course of one day, a mother of four—from infant to preteen—ruminates on the minutia of parenting and expands it to the

Robin GainesAugust 29, 2023Tom Lake; Ann Patchett; Eliza Minot; In the Orchard; Yellowface; R.F Kuang; Romantic Comedy; Curtis Sittenfeld

MALIBU RISING by Taylor Jenkins Reid The author hits a sweet spot in this novel, that beating heart of change that is plot and the protagonist’s deep epiphany. The Riva children, offspring of a neer do well-famous father and a caring b

Robin GainesJuly 31, 2023

ALL ABOUT LOVE: NEW VISIONS by bell hooks   Is it an overt pun to say I loved this book? Part self-help, part memoir, hooks gives us the literary template for, in its simplest form, what every person on the planet strives for, to

Robin GainesJune 25, 2023

LIKE A ROLLING STONE: A MEMOIR by Jann S. Wenner (AUDIBLE VERSION) This was enjoyable to listen to for many reasons. The name-dropping—family vacations with the Springsteens. Private island weekend getaways with Mick Jagger. And the ba

Robin GainesMay 22, 2023Like a Rolling Stone: A Memoir; Jann Wenner; Signs: The Secret Language of the Universe; Laura Lynne Jackson; Finding the Bones; Nikki Kallio; Hello Beautiful; Ann Napolitano

LOST & FOUND: A MEMOIR by Kathryn Schulz Structured in three sections titled “Lost,” “Found,” and “And,” this lyrical memoir on the loss of the author’s father and her finding love would seem all too familiar subject matter if it w

Robin GainesApril 21, 2023Mrs. Caliban; Rachel Ingalls; Surrender; Bono; Lost & Found; Kathryn Schulz

THESE PRECIOUS DAYS: ESSAYS by Ann Patchett Patchett writes with unflinching honesty and a keen eye for life’s big and small moments. All, she portends, are meaningful in their sorrows and joys. Among the twenty-three essays, we are tr

Robin GainesMarch 19, 2023These Precious Days; Ann Patchett; The Easy Life; Marguerite Duras; Sea of Tranquility; Emily St. John Mandel

MY TRADE IS MYSTERY by Carl Phillips   Poet Carl Phillips writes about the writing life in My Trade is Mystery as if talking to a friend over dinner. Eloquently and honestly, he waxes on his experiences surviving forty years as a

Robin GainesMarch 1, 2023

DINOSAURS by Lydia Millet A sweet sweet novel about big big themes. I loved this one. Millet’s gaze is on Gil and the cast of neighbors and friends living in a suburb of Arizona. Gil has left a failed relationship in New York City and

Robin GainesFebruary 9, 2023

NOTHING TO SEE HERE by Kevin Wilson Lillian and Madison are roommates at a boarding school when Lillian, the scholarship student, takes the blame for an incident that gets her booted out of school. While Lillian wallows in her mother

Robin GainesJanuary 24, 2023

FESTIVAL DAYS by Jo Ann Beard This book sat on my TBR pile for months. I loved Beard’s The Boys of My Youth , but Festival Days blew me away and rose to my favorite book status for 2022. Is it creative nonfiction with a mash-up of f

Robin GainesDecember 31, 2022Intimations; Zadie Smith; The Hero of This Book; Elizabeth McCracken; Foster; Claire Keegan; Festival Days; Jo Ann Beard

COMPOSED by Rosanne Cash I first fell in love with Rosanne Cash’s literary writing before her songwriting. In Bodies of Water, Cash mixes stories with essays about motherhood and music, loneliness and aging, love and divorce. In Com

Robin GainesNovember 28, 2022

PERFECT TUNES by Emily Gould Laura leaves her midwestern hometown after college for NYC to find success as a musician. It’s the late 90s and early aughts. With her roommate, Callie, they form the band, The Groupies. But, after a tragi

Book ReviewsRobin GainesNovember 16, 2022

BOMB SHELTER: LOVE, TIME, AND OTHER EXPLOSIVES by Mary Laura Philpott The author and her husband hear a pounding in the middle of the night and find their teenage son on the bathroom floor having an epileptic seizure. So begins Philpot

Robin GainesSeptember 29, 2022

LATE IN THE DAY by Tessa Hadley This novel was my first foray into Hadley’s fictional worlds, and it won’t be my last. The novel opens with the death of one of the four main characters, Zach. His death shakes loose the four main charac

Book ReviewsRobin GainesAugust 24, 2022You Have a Friend in 10A; Maggie Shipstead; Body Work: The Radical Power of Personal Narrative; Melissa Febos; Late in the Day; Tessa Hadley; Ghost Lover: Stories; Lisa Taddeo

VLADIMIR by Julia May Jonas The cover leads one to believe it’s a romance novel. A man’s hunky torso. Suggested hint (wink) of a hand covering a crotch. Within its covers, the story hardly reads as genre romance. But more like dark iro

Robin GainesJune 3, 2022

OH WILLIAM! By Elizabeth Strout From the author of Olive Kitteridge and My Name is Lucy Barton comes Oh William! —a novel continuum of Lucy’s life as a famous novelist and her strange relationship dance with her first husband, Wil

Book ReviewsRobin GainesMay 5, 2022Lily King; Five Tuesdays in Winter; Renata Adler; Speedboat; Mouth to Mouth; Antoine Wilson; Elizabeth Strout; Oh

ON EARTH WE’RE BRIEFLY GORGEOUS by Ocean Vuong I had heard so much about this novel and put it off because, along with the sad subject matter (the world is sad, so get over it), I was warned you will read and then read again each s

Book ReviewsRobin GainesMarch 21, 2022Miriam Toews, Fight Night, Objects of Desire, Clare Sestanovich, Who is Maud Dixon, Alexandra Andrews, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, Ocean Vuong

CRYING IN H MART by Michelle Zauner Zauner, the frontperson for the band, Japanese Breakfast, writes about her relationship with her dying mother, her Korean identity, and food with equal parts rebellion, curiosity, and familial love.

Book ReviewsRobin GainesFebruary 7, 2022

Deborah Levy wrote a trilogy of autobiographical memoirs about motherhood, marriage, and female ambition. I read them all. Starting with:  THE COST OF LIVING by Deborah Levy  The second book in Levy’s memoir trilogy examin

Robin GainesJanuary 4, 2022