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I blog book reviews and other musings at kalireads.com. I read a lot of books. I write about them. Get in on it.

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This Is Your Brain On Dating: The KaliReads Guide To Dating Books

“I don’t need to read about what should come naturally,” I told my sister, after she insisted I pick up some dating books. I’d been swiping my way through the world of online dating, and my adventu…

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Charlie Jane Anders’ ‘All The Birds In The Sky’ Is The Harry Potter For Adults You’ve Been Waiting For

And at the last, a war between magic and science that would leave the world in ashes. At the center of all this were a man and a woman, who were still children now. ― Charlie Jane Anders, All the B…

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Scare Slowly, Then All At Once: Andrew Michael Hurley’s ‘The Loney’

IF IT HAD another name, I never knew, but the locals called it the Loney— that strange nowhere between the Wyre and the Lune where Hanny and I went every Easter time with Mummer, Farther, Mr and Mr…

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Lavie Tidhar Imagines A Future City Both Strange and Familiar In ‘Central Station’

Space was full of questions, life was a sentence always ending in an ellipsis or a question mark. You couldn’t answer everything. You could only believe there were answers at all. ― Lavie Tid…

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Oh, A Bay Area Book-Festin’ I Did Go

This last weekend I was totally excited to fly out of a record-breaking desert heatwave in Arizona, and attend the Bay Area Book Festival in Berkeley, California. Big names and small presses came t…

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‘Area X’ Meets ‘And Then There Were None’ In Abby Geni’s ‘The Lightkeepers’

Abby Geni’s The Lightkeepers is part Area X trilogy, with a swirl of And Then There Were None. It is a bit Jon Krakauer meets Alice Seobold. The novel takes place on the Farrallon Islands, a …

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BLOG TOUR: Is Fiona Barton's 'The Widow' The Next 'Gone Girl'?

Fiona Barton's debut novel The Widow echoes Karin Slaughter's Pretty Girls, Stephen King's A Good Marriage, and Lisa Lutz's upcoming The Passenger. How well do we know anyone, especially those clos...

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Michael Kardos Asks Us To Believe In 'Before He Finds Her'

It was the truths that made the people grotesques. The old man had quite an elaborate theory concerning the matter. It was his notion that the moment one of the people took one of the truths to him...

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All The Amazing Movies Based On Books Headed Your Way

Really, who needs to read when you can go watch the movie version of these books? Just kidding. I always read the book first, then go see the movie. High Rise, based on the novel by J. G. Ballard S...

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Jenny Lawson Makes Us All 'Furiously Happy'

Without the dark there isn’t light. Without the pain there is no relief. And I remind myself that I’m lucky to be able to feel such great sorrow, and also such great happiness. I can grab on to eac...

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Cecilia Ekbäck's 'Wolf Winter' Is A Gothic Survivalist Thriller

Cecilia Ekbäck’s ‘Wolf Winter’ Is A Gothic Survivalist Thriller

“Wolf Winter,’ she said, her voice small. ‘I wanted to ask about it. You know, what it is.’ He was silent for a long time. ‘It’s the kind of winter that will remind us we are mortal,’ he said. ‘Mortal and alone.” ― Cecilia Ekbäck, Wolf Winter Each Halloween, I like to read a horror novel. This year marks the second in a somewhat accidentally created tradition, in which I review a macabre and…

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The Nightingale: How War Affects Women, How Women Affect A War

I started listening to Kristin Hannah's The Nightingale on audiobook and stopped several times this year. I would get through the first few chapters, as an older woman relays a tough childhood in F...

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Alright, here it is. A best books list. I was going to do a traditional best books list, including all the books, but I haven't even finished A Little Life. I got to the part after all is revealed ...

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Drench Yourself In The Sweet, Sweet Sap of Jennifer Weiner's 'Who Do You Love'

People are hard on Jennifer Weiner. I'm probably too hard on Jennifer Weiner. She speaks up for her genre, those books that the literati cast aside as chick-lit. She speaks out against guys like Jo...

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Happy Thanksgiving! Here Are Some Books I'm Grateful For Today...

Happy Thanksgiving! Here Are Some Books I’m Grateful For Today…

Happy Thanksgiving, y’all! Thanksgiving means one thing, and that is gluttony. No, just kidding! Thanksgiving means gratitude. I wanted to take some time to appreciate a few books out of the many on my shelves I’m grateful for. These are random, and there is no order! , said the shotgun to the head. by Saul Williams — My first of many totally brilliant live encounters with the endlessly talented…

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Karin Slaughter Takes On Family And Other Gruesome Things In 'Pretty Girls'

Karin Slaughter is legit. I say this having only read one of her huge Will Trent/Grant County series, Criminal, which didn't totally blow me away. Where I did fall in love with that story was in it...

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Garth Risk Hallberg's 'City on Fire' Is Too Big To Describe Here, But I Can Try

For what Carmine Cicciaro had learned by then, and I suppose I had, too, concerned not only the baffling multiplicity of all things, but also their no less baffling integration. No amount of art, e...