August 2025 media
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The Magician of Tiger Castle: Pitched as the first novel for adults from Louis Sachar (though personally I think it’s comfortably YA), this is a breezy fable about an immortal magician from a fictional European kingdom. It occasionally evokes Sachar’s magnum opus Holes, particularly in the way the plot jigsaws together, though with its own distinct, slightly sardonic flavor. I read through it in a single afternoon, grinning the whole time.
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The Serviceberry: This is by Robin Wall Kimmerer, who you may know from Braiding Sweetgrass. It makes a straightforward and compelling case against the excesses of capitalism, using the reciprocal gift-giving of indigenous societies as her example and the nonhuman natural world as her metaphor. Kimmerer has a real talent for expressing subtlety with plain language, such that her points shine through without the prose feeling overworked.