Kate Padilla has long enjoyed reading, and for the last decade, combined her writing skills and book pleasure to review books for Authorlink.
Kate’s journalism career began in high school with a weekly column in her hometown newspaper, and later, after graduating from the University of Wyoming, she moved into newspapers as a reporter and editor and also as a radio news director. She subsequently worked as a U.S. Senate staffer helping write legislation and then as a public lands manager for the Department of Interior until her retirement. Now, she is an award-winning poet, artist and writer living in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Her passion is exploring, traveling to places not often frequented by tourists, ranging from Albania in the Balkans to isolated Honduran islands in the Caribbean.
Not surprisingly Kate favors foreign authors because they immerse her in other worlds and cultures, books such as those written by Nobel Prize winner Naguib Mahfouz, who writes about the Arab world, or Milan Kundera, from Czechoslovakia. Any book written by women with Latin or Mexican roots is a must, she says, listing authors Isabel Allende and Sandra Cisneros as idols. She never passes up a poetry book sent her way, though they are a challenge to review because the poetry is subjective. She also enjoys a good detective novel, and at times, magical fanaticism. Her review favorites include offerings from the Library of America, a nonprofit that collects and preserves writings from America’s key authors. If she had a genre she doesn’t prefer, it would likely be most Western novels. Her pet peeves are preachy religious or moralizing books, those that demean women or have disregard for the environment.
Bandwidth, Eliot Peper, 47 North - Eerily, Eliot Peper’s futuristic-thriller, Bandwidth, mirrors today’s reality with computer hackers manipulating voters, government policies made via Twitter and world leaders confronting climate change.
Elmore Leonard: Westerns, Terrence Rafferty Editor, Library of America - Generation X folks more likely recognize Elmore Leonard as a pulp-fiction crime novelist and screenwriter focused on the “mob” and Mexican drug cartels, but his early writing zeroed in on America’s “wild west.”
Reconstruction, edited by Brooks D. Simpson, Library of America - The Library of America’s new release, “Reconstruction,” richly details promise and betrayal during the turbulent post-Civil War era in the United States and invokes a deep sense of melancholia.
Olivia Twist, Lorie Langdon - Lorie Langdon’s new young adult book, “Olivia Twist,” remakes Charles Dickens’ classic “Oliver Twist” and serves up a pleasurable read with countless thrills.
Winter Sisters, Robin Oliveira, Random House - Robin Oliveira’s haunting thriller, “Winter Sisters,” loosely based on a 19th-century historic snowstorm that buried Albany, New York, also shines light on early 20th-Century age-of-consent and sexual-assault laws.
Book Review: Limelight, Amy Poeppel, Atria Books - Allison Brinkley, who has just moved from Dallas to New York City, gets a dose of big-city driving when she crashes into an unoccupied BMW while retrieving her child at school.
It's My Party, Jeanette Watson, Turtle Point Press - Jeanette Watson’s memoir, “It’s My Party,” will make your eyes glaze. Alas, it’s like a bad party encounter, when somebody rambles on about riches and “famous” people his or her family has wined and dined.
You Were There Before My Eyes, Maria Riva, Maria Riva’s illuminating historical novel, “You Were There Before My Eyes,” is marketed as an adventure and love story of two Italian immigrants.
Peter Taylor Complete Stories, Library of America - Author Peter Taylor produced a respectable amount of work during his lifetime, yet he never enjoyed the notoriety of other 20th-century writers even though he won the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for his novel, “A Summons to Memphis.”
Dinner at the Center of the Earth, Nathan Englander, Random House - In his spy thriller, “Dinner at the Center of the Earth,” Nathan Englander takes us into the tragic and heartbreaking conflict between Israel and Palestine.