The 7th graders at Washington Academy Middle School “stage” a coup (read, are assigned to create a 7th grade experience after a bloodless revolution) and spend a chapter or so trying to determine what an optimal 7th grade experience would be (by committee). While voting on a proposal, the 7th graders discover that the FBI has, surreptitiously, evacuated the rest of the school and are preparing to search for a treasure of national importance. What ensues is a race against the clock as the 7th […]
Twelve metres of shorn grass
Darren Keefe is “…a talented freak with no mooring,” a bad boy cricketer that never quite reaches his potential. As a young player rocketing towards the pinnacle of Australian cricket, Darren had little oversight or true coaching – no one wanted to change what was working, and if a coach tried to reel him in, his mother switched him to another team. When he starts making money, the troubles start: drugs, drinking, corruption in cricket, toxic masculinity, and so forth. There is a noir mystery […]
“Civilization is the way one’s own people live. Savagery is the way foreigners live.”
How to begin? I have wanted to read books by Octavia Butler for years and somehow never picked one up until now. Wild Seed wasn’t’ an easy read, although the language is beautiful, the characters are compelling and change over time (in many ways!), and the plot is complex and interesting. The story takes place over several hundred years and the characters mostly live day-to-day having children, falling sick, getting married, eating food – with powerful ancient beings living day-to-day next to more “ordinary” psychic […]
Deep wells of loneliness
Silas Jones and Larry Ott are two sides of a coin in a small Mississippi town. They meet as children, where Larry is the town comic book reading, horror aficionado weirdo and Silas is the new kid – poor, black, and new to country life. They become friends for a time, bonding over proximity, loneliness, and a shared love of nature and horror. Over time, however, Silas moves on to sports and other friends. Fast forward to adulthood, where ‘Scary’ Larry is a pariah because […]
I wanted to savor it…
This is not my favorite Jackson Brodie book, but Kate Atkinson’s When Will There Be Good News? was a wonderful read – especially for the character Reggie. Despite the murders, train wrecks, kidnappings, etc., it is a surprisingly positive book, with lonely characters finding ways to make families, wild goose chases resolving not in surrender but in more wild goose chases, and characters developing and growing in satisfactory ways. Atkinson writes beautifully. She has a witty style and focuses on developing characters that she clearly […]
Mmmmmm. Butter chicken.
My rating for this is probably a 3 for the first 1/2 and a 4 for the second. I picked out Tarquin Hall’s The Case of the Deadly Butter Chicken: A Vish Puri Mystery almost a year ago when I was visiting Macalaster College with my niece. I hadn’t read any of the other books in the series, but thought it looked amusing and I love books that really place you in a location. It wasn’t necessary for me to read previous entries to understand […]
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