The Witch Elm by Tana French
I had such a hard time starting this book, not because I didn’t want to start it, but because I didn’t want to finish it, and I knew that I would have hit the bottom of my unread French books. I had also heard it was the best of the Dublin Murder Squad books, and I have to disagree, but even her worst for me was a four star, so no shame in being beaten by your own works. And it’s not like this was […]
Be Different by John Elder Robison
I’m a big believer in an introduction not being anyone’s best work necessarily, you want to hook a reader but not give all of the wonder of future works away. My favorite Robison book is either Look Me In The Eye, his debut; or possibly Switched On, but this is a solid start for anyone interested in either book. Interestingly, Look Me In The Eye was more of a memoir with a mystery – Robison details his experience with what was then called Asperger’s (a […]
Choose Wonder Over Worry by Amber Rae
If something applies to everyone, then it’s functionally useless. Any time I see a facebook post reading “you’re beautiful and things will get better” I think “OK. And?” I guess that’s my way of saying that I’m not really a good self-help book candidate, as if the Daria quote of the title wasn’t enough of a tip-off. But, it’s what got chosen for my work book club, so I might as well unload my strongest vitriol here so as not to offend the chooser of […]
It's all a game by Tristan Donovan
Back when I was trying to be a Renaissance Nerd, covering all facets of nerddom, I was invited to play Twilight Imperium, described to me as Babylon 5 meets Risk in a sort of intro to tabletop games. I admittedly didn’t feel the greatest that day, so I likely would have left regardless, but after an hour and a half or so of not much, I apologized and said I’d like to play again sometime. I was then informed “oh, we haven’t started, this was […]
The Bad Beginning by Lemony Snicket
There’s a lot that I liked about this book, but the author’s affectation of using challenging words relative to the age of his audience (Yay! Do more of that!) and then defining them in a subclause (Boo! Do less of that) ends up undermining what he’s trying to do. I was a precocious reader (is there a CBR participant who wasn’t?) and the only thing I disliked more than a book too simple for my reading level was one that pretended it wasn’t. Calvin and […]
Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson
So, I may have fudged the numbers slightly; Winesburg, Ohio technically was published in 1919. That said, eras are funny things – you think of the disco era as the 1970s, but it pushed well into the 80s; you look at the 1990s and forget that the grunge era sidled right up to bubblegum pop with only a couple years in between, I refuse to think of the 2000-2010 era as a discrete entity and everything from about 2005 to present feels like “near past.” […]
