Author: Fred Slusher

Why Would You Ask Me That?

I’ve spent the past eight years working in some capacity as a Professional Book Person, and one question I always hate getting asked is: What is your favorite book? My eyes are rolling just thinking about it. I always want to respond by saying something along the lines of: Really, Gretchen, why did you decide to wake up this morning and choose violence? It’s a really invasive question to just throw in someone’s face.

After all, there are infinite reasons why one person loves a book while another person hates it. It’s subjective. It’s about taste. It’s about someone’s cultural background and how it’s shaped their life experiences. It’s about their class status, money, and power. It’s about the way(s) in which people conceptualize God, their spirituality, and the After. It’s about the intersection of identities that determines the amount of social capital a person wields. It’s about race, language, and citizenship status. It’s the difference between who is considered an immigrant and who’s considered an expatriate. It’s about (dis)ability and access to basic social services. It’s about where everyone fits in the big soupy melting pot of humanity. Plus, there’s the whole issue surrounding which works get canonized and which works fall (are pushed) into obscurity, and how the reason for that most often corresponds to the ways the author’s identity(ies) are either marginalized or elevated.

I said all that as a preface to my own (subjective) list, which is always changing, because *I* am always changing. Without further ado, here it is:

  • The Hunger Games (trilogy) by Suzanne Collins
  • The Neapolitan Quartet by Elena Ferrante
  • The Color Purple by Alice Walker
  • The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
  • Boy Erased: A Memoir by Garrard Conley
  • Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed
  • Dear Mr. You by Mary-Louise Parker
  • Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
  • The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
  • Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli
  • Call Me by Your Name by André Aciman
  • When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
  • The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
  • Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl by Carrie Brownstein
  • Truth & Beauty: [A Friendship] by Ann Patchett
  • Calling a Wolf a Wolf by Kaveh Akbar
  • Don’t Call Us Dead: Poems by Danez Smith
  • Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body by Roxane Gay
  • All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
  • Keep Moving: Notes on Loss, Creativity, and Change by Maggie Smith

Thanks as always for being a faithful reader of The Voracious Bibliophile. If you like what you see, please follow, like, comment, and subscribe to my email list to get notified of new posts as soon as they drop. You can also email me at thevoraciousbibliophile@yahoo.com or catch me on Twitter @voraciousbiblog. Keep reading the world, one page (or pixel) at a time.

All Aboard the ARC: Anthony and the Gargoyle by Jo Ellen Bogart and Maja Kastelic

***Note: I received a free digital review copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.***

Sometimes a picture really is worth a thousand words. Anthony and the Gargoyle tells the story of Anthony, a little boy who lives with his parents in a house full of photographs. These pictures tell the story of his life and his parents’ lives before him. In the background of some of them, you can see Parisian landmarks beside the smiling happy couple.

In one of the photographs, Anthony can be seen holding a pet rock. One day, this rock breaks open and from it springs a gargoyle that teaches Anthony an important lesson: sometimes loving something means being willing to let it go. He also learns along the way that love doesn’t end at separation—it can break any boundary and traverse any distance.

Perfect for fans of Aaron Becker’s Journey trilogy and Molly Idle’s Flora and Her Feathered Friends series, Anthony and the Gargoyle is sure to delight readers of all ages. It is due to be released on October 5th, 2021, and is now available to preorder wherever books are sold.

Thanks as always for being a faithful reader of The Voracious Bibliophile. If you like what you see, please follow, like, comment, and subscribe to my email list to get notified of new posts as soon as they drop. You can also email me at thevoraciousbibliophile@yahoo.com or catch me on Twitter @voraciousbiblog. Keep reading the world, one page (or pixel) at a time.

All Aboard the ARC: Garlic and the Vampire by Bree Paulsen

***Note: I received a free digital review copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.***

Garlic and the Vampire is in my opinion one of the best graphic novels written for younger readers to come out in the past decade. It tells the story of Garlic, who lives in a community of anthropomorphic vegetables created and cared for by Witch Agnes, a benevolent sorceress who teaches her vegetables the value of hard work and giving back to one’s community.

When we first meet Garlic, she is shy, passive, and timid. When a vampire is discovered to be living in the castle near their community, Garlic is decided to be the only one who can safely determine whether or not he is a threat to the humans who live in the village. She reluctantly decides to go despite her fears, knowing it’s the right thing to do.

Along the way she becomes braver, learning to rely on her own inner strength. When she finally confronts the count she learns that just because someone is different doesn’t always mean they’re to be feared, and that the best way to find out about someone else is to talk to them.

Garlic and the Vampire is due to be released on September 28th of this year and is now available to preorder wherever books are sold.

Thanks as always for being a faithful reader of The Voracious Bibliophile. If you like what you see, please follow, like, comment, and subscribe to my email list to get notified of new posts as soon as they drop. You can also email me at thevoraciousbibliophile@yahoo.com or catch me on Twitter @voraciousbiblog. Keep reading the world, one page (or pixel) at a time.

All Aboard the ARC: Machete: Poems by Tomás Q. Morín

***Note: I received a free digital review copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.***

I’m going to be honest with you. When I first started reading Morín’s forthcoming collection Machete, I didn’t think I was going to like it—and then it snuck up on me. Pretty soon, I couldn’t stop drinking in words, even when they were sharper than a mouth full of knives. Machete is one of those collections poised to become era-defining, and I think if we somehow make it past climate change and the threat of nuclear proliferation we’ll remember it as one of the essential works of the pandemic. With its tonal shifts, manic ebullience, and hyper focus on finding the sublime in the quotidian, it is the perfect read for a world that has been forced to stand still even while it’s on fire. I can’t wait to put it in people’s hands.

Machete: Poems is due to be released on October 12th of this year and is now available to preorder wherever books are sold.

Thanks as always for being a faithful reader of The Voracious Bibliophile. If you like what you see, please follow, like, comment, and subscribe to my email list to get notified of new posts as soon as they drop. You can also email me at thevoraciousbibliophile@yahoo.com or catch me on Twitter @voraciousbiblog. Keep reading the world, one page (or pixel) at a time.

Quote for the Day: July 26th, 2021

I survived because I was tougher than anybody else.

Bette Davis

Bette Davis was and remains one of the greatest actresses to ever grace the silver screen. In every performance she gave, she crackled with electricity, eliciting laughter as well as fury, and beauty as well as pain. Her career spanned more than fifty years and during that time, she took home two Academy Awards for Best Actress and racked up credits in more than one hundred films.

In every performance she gave, she crackled with electricity, eliciting laughter as well as fury, and beauty as well as pain.

Her work ethic was unparalleled and her wit unmatched. She was one of those rare beings on earth who are aware of their power and own it, wielding it to their advantage. It is my hope for my own life that I can live with the same level of courage, tenacity, and fearlessness that Bette Davis did. I feel like that would be a good start.

Thanks as always for being a faithful reader of The Voracious Bibliophile. If you like what you see, please follow, like, comment, and subscribe to my email list to get notified of new posts as soon as they drop. You can also email me at thevoraciousbibliophile@yahoo.com or catch me on Twitter @voraciousbiblog. Keep reading the world, one page (or pixel) at a time.

Almost to 800!!!

I just wanted to take a second here and thank everyone who has given my blog a chance. Thanks to all of you, my blog is almost at 800 views! That might not seem like a lot to some people but for me it’s incredibly validating. I’ve always loved sharing my opinions on books, movies, and more, and having a platform to do that brings me so much joy.

Thanks as always for being a faithful reader of The Voracious Bibliophile. If you like what you see, please follow, like, comment, and subscribe to my email list to get notified of new posts as soon as they drop. You can also email me at thevoraciousbibliophile@yahoo.com or catch me on Twitter @voraciousbiblog. Keep reading the world, one page (or pixel) at a time.

Book Review: The Tale of a Niggun by Elie Wiesel (Author) and Mark Podwal (Illustrator)

***Note: I received a free digital review copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.***

If you’ve not yet read any of Elie Wiesel’s work, you’re doing yourself a great disservice. The Holocaust survivor and Nobel laureate was a self-appointed chronicler of memory who made it his life’s work to never let the world forget the crimes of the Nazi regime and their supporters.

The Tale of a Niggun is based on factual events and tells the story of a rabbi who is given a dire ultimatum: either choose ten Jews from his community to be hanged on Purim to avenge the sons of Haman or else they will all perish. How does one begin to make such a decision? How does one retain their humanity in the face of such unspeakable violence?

The rabbi spends the night searching for guidance, for answers, and for clarity. In the end, he realizes he cannot condemn to death any of his people. Knowing their fate, everyone in the community begins singing a niggun—a song—that remains unbroken, that continues for all eternity, as long as human beings inhabit the earth. What the Nazis (the “enemy” in the book is unnamed but we can surmise that the amorphous “enemy” is meant to represent the Nazis) failed to realize is that you can take people’s lives, but you can’t take their spirit; you can extinguish their breath, but you can’t extinguish their memory.

The Tale of a Niggun is now available to purchase wherever books are sold.

Thanks as always for being a faithful reader of The Voracious Bibliophile. If you like what you see, please follow, like, comment, and subscribe to my email list to get notified of new posts as soon as they drop. You can also email me at thevoraciousbibliophile@yahoo.com or catch me on Twitter @voraciousbiblog. Keep reading the world, one page (or pixel) at a time.