A Word About Awards

DEMON COPPERHEAD by Barbara Kingsolver   Awards: BookTube Winner 2023, James Tait Black Winner 2022, Oprah Book Club 2022, Pulitzer Winner 2023, Women’s Prize Winner 2023   Nominations: Carnegie Longlist 2023, Dublin Longlist 2024, NY Times Finalist 2022   Date Read: September 2, 2025   From Kirkus Reviews: “Inspired by  David Copperfield , Kingsolver crafts a 21st-century coming-of-age story set in America’s hard-pressed rural South. It’s not necessary to have read Dickens’ famous novel to appreciate Kingsolver’s absorbing tale, but those who have will savor the tough-minded changes she rings on his Victorian sentimentality while affirming his stinging critique of a heartless society. Our soon-to-be orphaned narrator’s mother is a substance-abusing teenage single mom who checks out via OD on his 11th birthday, and Demon’s cynical, wised-up voice is light-years removed from David Copperfield’s earnest tone. Yet readers also see the yearning for love and wells of...

THE BEE STING by Paul Murray   Nominations: Booker Finalist 2023, BookTube Winner 2024, Kirkus Finalist 2023, NY Times Finalist 2023, Rathbones Folio Finalist 2024   Date Read: January 6, 2024   From Kirkus Review: “ An Irish family’s decline is rendered in painful, affecting detail.   The opening line says “a man had killed his family” in another town, and “rumours swirled about affairs, addiction, hidden files on his computer.” Are these portents of what awaits the Barnes family, who will inhabit the next 650 pages? Certainly they are struggling with an array of problems. In the wake of a recession, the Volkswagen dealership run by Dickie Barnes has seen sales plummet amid a surge in complaints about repair work. A disgruntled client’s son threatens to beat Dickie’s boy, PJ, with a hammer. PJ's sister, Cass, is struggling with a fickle bestie and booze. Their mother, Imelda, facing her neighbors’ schadenfreude, has stopped shopping and dreams that a flood is taking...