I read Fan Girl a year or so ago and while it didn’t rock my world like Eleanor and Park, I enjoyed it and I remember finding the fan fiction that the main character wrote kind of interesting—in a Harry Potter meets . . . well, fan fiction kind of way. By the way, if you haven’t read Fan Girl, there are spoilers ahead about the two main characters so “carry on” at your own risk. Rainbow Rowell found the dueling teen wizards that her […]
I Think This is the Start of a Beautiful Friendship
I’ve been meaning to start the Inspector Gamache series by Louise Penny for the last year. Several of my friends are huge fans and reading their reviews on Goodreads made me sure that I would enjoy this series too. For Christmas, one of the themes of the gifts I got my sister was “first book in a series” and I ended up buying her a boxed set of the first three Louise Penny books. This, of course, meant that I could read them after she […]
Literary Equivalent of Peppermint Joe-Joes
Two Jojo Moyes books in the last two months . . . it’s definitely been that kind of semester. Yes, I’m a stressed out teacher and I’ve needed the literary equivalent of comfort food lately. Moyes does a nice job of creating a story that is just real enough, just chewy enough, yet also hopelessly sweet and optimistic. That is, she clearly believes that even when people stumble and muddle their way through things, there is a purpose and ultimately things will turn out all […]
I’m Keeping the Interlibrary Loan Librarians Guessing
After reading a good review in CBR7 and many more earlier this year, I used my college’s Interlibrary Loan to request Bitch Planet: Book One and I was not disappointed. This comic poses a future or maybe an alternative present where “compliance” is required of all women and that means conforming to the wishes of men—being passive, agreeable, and of course, thin. Society attempts to correct those who don’t “comply” but those who aren’t able to be “saved” are sent off world—to the titled “Bitch Planet.” I […]
Single White, Really White, Female
A big thank you to my wonderful English department colleague, who when I said I needed to read a non-superhero-related graphic novel, took me to his office and pulled a bunch of books off the shelf and loaned them to me. Anya’s Ghost was the first one I read, and I devoured it in one sitting. Anya is a typical teenager, broody, slightly exasperated by her mom and brother, and trying to distance herself from Dima, a nerdy and much more recent immigrant from Russia. […]
There Are a Lot of Cadillacs in this Desert
I picked up The Water Knife by Paolo Bacigalupi and then realized that it fulfilled one of Book Riot’s Read Harder challenges. Dystopian novel. Check. Though every third book I pick up seems to be about some post-apocalyptic scenario or another, this one worked well for me on a number of levels. Bacigalupi creates an all too real future where water has become a precious commodity and the southwestern portion of the U.S. is a violent and collapsing morass of “states” fighting for water rights—complete […]
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