I don’t always look too closely when I add books to my library hold list. Until I downloaded it and finally read the description, I assumed, based on the title, that The Girl Who Smiled Beads would be a novel. It’s a very novel-y title. I was very wrong. This book is the memoir of a young woman, only a year younger than me, who survived the 1994 Rwandan genocide and the years of displacement and brutality that followed. Clemantine Wamariya (originally Uwamariya) was six years […]
Well now I gotta see the movie
With the film due for release tomorrow, this book has been ALL OVER Cannonball Read, so I’d like to thank a number of reviewers for bumping it up my TBR including, but not limited to: teresaelectro, kdm, Lollygagger, and llp. Pray for rain this weekend so I have an excuse to go to the theater. The writing itself felt rather rote (it’s a glorious wordplay if you say it aloud), but technical skill isn’t why these books have become so popular. It’s the sumptuous scenery […]
Huh?s all the way down
So I realized after the fact that it’s pretty easy to find stories set in my current city, but when I think “home” I think “Texas” which is how I ended up Googling “new books set in Texas” and how I ended up reading Hollow, by Owen Egerton. It’s not a bad book, especially not the first two thirds or so. It’s just that by the end I was a whole lot of blinking-white-guy.gif. It goes more than a little off the rails. I appreciate that […]
Jane Eyre sees dead people
As a woman raised and educated in America, I have read a good chunk of the Brontë/Austen collection of literature – I dunno, I just never really cared for it. It always carried the scent of English class, which is odd, because I liked my English classes. And I really liked the teacher I had for 10th grade English class, which focused on British literature where we read stuff like Wuthering Heights, et al. But these and Dickens always made me just say “eh” which is […]
Hard to read while rolling your eyes
Like most Texans, I was raised very religious. Like most people who have religion shoved down their throats for 18 years, I am now an atheist. Atheism isn’t why I hated The Shack, though, it’s because it’s a fucking terrible book. I realized pretty quickly I didn’t like this book, given how shoddily the words are put together. I don’t even want to call it writing. I think I digested about 20% of the overall book, followed along completely, and still felt I gave it too […]
Engaging story with a couple of leaps
The book summary said something about Station Eleven (which I love) so I definitely spent the first half thinking this was the author of Station Eleven and fair warning, it’s not. However, Peng Shepherd is a worth successor and I do recommend this book, just be prepared for a few leaps of logic along the way. The plot of The Book of M centers on a major what if – what if our shadows held all our memories? And what if those shadows could be lost? In a […]
- « Previous Page
- 1
- …
- 29
- 30
- 31
- 32
- 33
- …
- 46
- Next Page »