I was a little nervous when I first started this one. Y’all were posting a review a day, gushing over it, but it took me a while to get into it. I think my problem was I was listening to it as audiobook while running, so I only got about an hour a day. And it starts a little slow. And whiny (Simon). But once Baz shows up — the whole thing takes off and I fell just as much in love as y’all did. […]
…would probably be just fine, thank you
Written in 2007, Alan Weisman’s The World Without Us examines exactly that: what would happen to the world if all the humans suddenly disappeared? The answer basically boils down to: the world would probably be much happier and healthier, thank you very much. “All of us humans have myriad other species to thank. Without them, we couldn’t exist. It’s that simple, and we can’t afford to ignore them, anymore than I can afford to neglect my precious wife–nor the sweet mother Earth that births and holds us […]
Poor Fat Charlie
God, I love this book. A spiritual sequel to American Gods (similar modern-day mythology vibe, less conspiracy theory), Anansi Boys focuses on the spider trickster, Anansi, and his poor son, Fat Charlie. “That’s an Anansi story. ’Course, all stories are Anansi stories. Even this one.” Anansi is a god — a spider god, a trickster god. Anansi was also know as Mr. Nancy, and he was Fat Charlie’s mostly-absent, incredibly embarrassing father. When Mr. Nancy passes away, Fat Charlie finds out from an old family friend that his father […]
Say your prayers
You know that movie 50 First Dates, where Drew Barrymore lost her memory in a car accident, and Adam Sandler has to make her fall in love with him every day, reminding her of their history and generally recreating her whole world for her since the accident? Yeah, this book is just like that — only Adam Sandler might be trying to kill Drew Barrymore and she has no one she can really trust. “We’re constantly changing facts, rewriting history to make things easier, to make them […]
Good read with a stupid, stupid ending
Don’t you hate it when the last 50 pages of a novel derail the whole damn thing? Sabine Durrant had me 100% hooked on Under Your Skin almost up until the end — which infuriated me (particularly since I was reading it as an e-book and couldn’t fling it across the room). So Gaby Mortimer is a pretty successful woman: hosts a daytime talk show, married to an equally-successful businessman, has a little girl. She’s not quite happy — she kind of hates her job, her […]
Interesting Characters, Incredible Writing
Isabel Allende’s Portrait in Sepia, which I read earlier this year, is the sequel to Daughter of Fortune. I read them in the wrong order, but it doesn’t matter too much in this case. In Portrait in Sepia, we find out what happens to Eliza’s granddaughter, Aurora del Valle — a young lady being raised in San Francisco. In Daughter of Fortune, we learn how Eliza Sommers made it there in the first place. “She has a fixation on love. Strong trouble. The girl left her window open one […]
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