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Book Review: ‘Such Lovely Skin’ by Tatiana Schlote-Bonne
Never in my memory has a book kept me from sleep or made me avoid everyday objects. Officially, Such Lovely Skin (Page Street Publishing) by Tatiana Schlote-Bonne is the most unsettling book I have...
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Book Review: ‘Brazos’ by Justin Carter
This January, while visiting Tulsa with a friend, I made an effort to reconnect with my redneck roots. We went firing at an indoor gun range. Across the street was a church with a sign announcing the...
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Fully Booked: Novels that shake skeletons from their closets
I love narratives where the past, a past, any past, comes screaming into the present. It doesn’t matter if what happened is relevant to the heroes of the story or deeply woven into their family tree —...
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Book Review: ‘(Re)present: Racism and Resistance in Iowa’
Important books exist. They are written and published every day. There are people dedicated to creating and publishing work that changes and educates people. Sometimes, they put out important work that...
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Book Review: ‘My Father Called Us Monkeys’ by Mario Duarte
Cover for My Father Called Us Monkeys. — courtesy of Ice Cube Press.When my friend Mario Duarte asked me to read his latest book, a series of connected short stories about a Mexican-American boy...
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Book Review: Vince Gotera — ‘Dragons & Rayguns’
I remember learning about the concept of allusion in childhood, as a burgeoning nerd. Kids these days would grok it best as the Captain America “I understood that reference” meme, which itself is...
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Book Review: Ben Miller — ‘Pandemonium Logs’
Lockdown isn’t a happy memory for most of us, and navigating the topic of COVID-19 somehow hasn’t become easier in the months and years since. We don’t talk about the tolls the pandemic has taken on...
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Book Review: ‘The Monsters We Make’ by Kali White
The Monsters We Make book cover. — courtesy of Crooked Lane Books.I grew up in the era of stranger danger. I was a generally anxious child even on my best days, a veritable nightmare on my worst; my...
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Book Review: ‘The Wilderlands’ by R.E. Bellesmith
Cover of The Wilderlands. — courtesy of the author.I have apparently never read fantasy before The Wilderlands by R.E. Bellesmith (November 2024). I didn’t know that. I thought the various books I read...
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Plain Spoken: Iowa’s conservative despots police the power of song-flight in...
Kate Doolittle/Little VillageWhen you crack open a ’70s sci-fi/fantasy paperback like On Wings of Song, you expect to slip into a world wholly unlike your own. For an Iowan living through Inauguration...
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Fully Booked: Send your mind on a hike
I want summer weather. I want sweat on my brow and aches in my legs. July backpacking is on my list of goals this year: spending five days hiking for miles on an island with no wifi. I wish to filter...
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Book Review: ‘Hot Dreams’ by Rachelle Chase
Seasoned authors know that the best way to get readers invested in their characters is to make them as relatable as possible. Highlighting the flaws of central figures is essential in creating a story...
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Book Review: ‘My Lady Melisende’ by Misty Urban
There is a special type of book that I affectionately refer to as the “kettle corn book.” Growing up, there was no food that my stepmom could eat more of than kettle corn. It was simultaneously awing...
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Plain Spoken: Casual lust and barbaric violence mingle in the minds of...
Horacio Castellanos Moya is one of the writers Iowa City is luckiest to have. He was born in Honduras but raised in El Salvador, where he lived and worked for many years — in addition to Mexico City,...
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Book Review: ‘Disturbing the Bones’ by Andrew Davis and Jeff Biggers
As a teenager, Dan Brown changed my brain chemistry. My obsession with his books grew from my more youthful, and more naive, obsession with Indiana Jones — back before I understood that cultural...
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Book Review: ‘Far From Broken’ by Kelsey Bigelow
According to the back of the book, Kelsey Bigelow’s Far From Broken (2024) collection is “an expansion of her spoken word album Depression Holders and Secret Keepers” which was released in advance of...
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Fully Booked at DMPL: Dystopian tales taking on new meaning in 2025
Recently, I’ve found myself falling back into my middle school routine of reading every dystopian book I can find. Whether it’s prompted by the dystopia-themed escape room I’ve been working on at Des...
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Fully Booked at ICPL: Two addictive 2024 video games
Video games encourage creativity, problem-solving, and are an immersive way to tell a story. In other words, they’re a perfect fit for libraries! These titles were a couple of my favorites from last...
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