Paula Bomer spoke at my MFA last August and I’ve wanted to read some of her work for a while after listening to her presentation. Since her work is ridiculously funny while also being incredibly deep, I thought this would be a nice follow-up to Rachel Cusk’s memoir on motherhood, and it did not disappoint! Bomer is as funny and deep in her writing as she was in person. This short story collection focuses on the many facets of dysfunction that can (and often do) […]
But what do the Faeries DO all day?
I would have loved this book so hard as a twelve-year-old….sadly, I’m no longer twelve, and that means I’m no longer the intended audience for this book. One of the folklore professors at school recommended “The Perilous Gard” to me as one of her favorite, nostalgic, go-to books on Fairies. Maybe I went into it with the wrong expectations. Maybe I should’ve schooled my disappointed “oh, it’s YA” when I found it at the library. Maybe I should have walked away slowly from this book….but […]
An Important Voice
I’m taking a non-fiction elective this semester, and one of our required readings is “A Life’s Work: On Becoming a Mother.” I knew nothing about it before opening it, and as a person who’s already a little bit terrified at the idea of someday being responsible for the survival of another human being, this book hit me hard. The prose is absolutely beautiful. Cusk’s words flow out naturally and accessibly even as she’s unpacking serious emotion, and I blew through this book in about two […]
The Invisible Ireland
This book was suggested to me for my novel research, and I have to say, I found it incredibly helpful in understanding the late 19th Century/early 20th Century Irish mentality about Faerie culture. “Meeting the Other Crowd” is a collection of stories accumulated over several decades by folklorist, Eddie Lenihan. Most of the stories are only a few pages long, and range from little anecdotes about a neighbor who knew a guy over in Killkenny who told the story about what happened to his cousin, […]
Welcome to the 80s
If I was writing this review back when I’d read this book the first time, I would have given it a firm 5 stars and been proselytizing it all over the place. It was the first urban fantasy I’d ever encountered, and the story really got me as a college aged writing major. With that being said, I did a close-read on it for my MFA, and d*mn those close readings for ruining a book I have such fond memories of! This is not to […]
The Asides Are the Best
I’m on a Pratchett kick right now, going through and reminding myself how much I adore the Discworld books. I did a close-read for my MFA on “Lords and Ladies”, and even though my paper was based on how Pratchett expertly weaves Celtic folklore in with his parody of a “Midsummer’s Night’s Dream”, I found the things I really enjoy about Pratchett’s writing are his glorious, humorous, and bountiful asides. “Lords and Ladies” follows Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg as they battle a mythical force […]
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