I watched “Gone With the Wind” when I was thirteen and came out distinctly disappointed at the end of the interminable film. At thirteen, I couldn’t put into words what was so disappointing about it, the costumes had been beautiful, the sets glorious. There was a love story, and the plot was easy to follow. But it left me wanting. As an adult, I know that it was Scarlett who disappointed me. I had never yet in my young life come across a main character […]
It Did Its Job
I totally stepped out of the comfort zone for this one. It was both a romance (which I never read) and a story taking place in my least favorite decade (1980s), but in the spirit of CBR Bingo I went full speed ahead. Our New Jersey native, Stephanie Plum, is down on her luck, recently laid off from her job as a lingerie buyer, and the creditors are calling. She needs some fast cash, and because this is New Jersey, her cousin Vinnie is a […]
Here, There Be a Lot of Info Dump
One of my students suggested this book to me last year, and I finally got around to getting it from the library. If I was twelve years old again, I would have absolutely loved this book and been hooked for the duration of the series. It was fanciful, had a cute ending, and hit all the correct markers for decent kids’ fantasy, but the older I get, the harder a time I have sinking into YA fantasies, and this book was no exception. Our three […]
Hooked Until the Epilogue
I was so, so about this book until literally the last three pages. Don’t read them. Skip the Epilogue, it’ll just ruin the previous 300 pages. Why am I so angry about 3 pages? Because the rest of this book was so freaking good and so absolutely timely and necessary, that to be so stupendously let down in 3 short pages just felt wrong. Where was the editor on that one? But I digress, A River of Stars follows Scarlett Chen as she finds herself […]
A Romance? Historical Fiction? Who Knows?
Through some rabbit hole on the internet, I stumbled across the name Anya Seton and a fancy cover for her book, The Turqouise. Intrigued, I waited patiently for the inter-library loan snail to bring it to me, and boy was I surprised when the book delivered was a battered hardcover bound with actual thread and smelling of an octogenarian’s basement. While slightly put-off, I accepted it anyway and went home to discover the strange and satisfying pleasure of reading an old book. I ripped my fare share […]
Pratchett Did It Better
I haven’t read a Vonnegut since high school and thought it might be nice to revisit some of the “greats” this summer. I went into Cat’s Cradle cold, and while it was amusing at times and made some fine points, it was exactly what I expected a post-modern classic written by a man of his time to be….In a word: meh. Our narrator starts on a quest to write a book about the day the Atomic Bomb hit Hiroshima, but instead ends up finding religion with a […]
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