Written a decade ago, Geography Club (2004) spawned a book series and a recent TV movie. An engaging read, I can understand why this debut novel by Brent Hartinger is so successful. After all, it was written at a time when stories featuring gay characters were rare. Read the review, here.
Living in the Aftermath
A surprisingly quick read at 192 pages, Hush (2002) is a complex YA novel that lingers. It offers readers a glimpse into the effects of events outside of some people’s control, and the harsh, seemingly bleak but ultimately hopeful aspects of living. In the aftermath of Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, among countless others, Hush becomes an evocative, relevant, and poignant read. Read the full review, here.
Strong Start, Weak Finish
If not for the humor in the exposition of her epistolary novel, I’d have never read, much less bought Maria Semple’s bestseller, Where’d You Go, Bernadette (2012). A satire of the Seattle-based super rich and privileged, I found myself not liking many of the characters because they typified so many of my stereotypes of the super rich: delusional, entitled, competitive, paranoid, and money/power/status obsessed. Despite my less than positive review, the novel is well-written and stylistically inventive. For these reasons, it gets three rather than two stars. Read […]
When in Rome…
Rabid fandom is one reason I’ve yet to watch Titanic and never got into Friends, Lost, among many other highly successful films and TV shows. Instead, I tend to dedicate my viewing time to the underdogs, which is to say that a lot of the shows that I do like tend to get cancelled, i.e. Arrested Development, Life, Chicago Code, Human Target, Men of a Certain Age. To date, The Good Wife is the only one of my faves to have escaped that fate. With that said, you can imagine how resistant […]
By Lying, Cheating, and Cheating, Yes, “This Is How You Lose Her”
Junot Diaz’s This Is How You Lose Her (2012) is an eight story collection of machismo, misogynistic narratives centered around Yunior, a seemingly compulsive cheater who is forced to face the consequences of his actions. Never having read Diaz before, I had no idea what to expect, and after reading epigraph by Sandra Cisneros, I used my knowledge her structure and style from The House on Mango Street (1984) to guide me. What ensued was a rather confusing read. Unlike some who found Diaz’s use of Spanglish to be the […]
“Not Only Can I Act, I Can Also Write!”…But Not As Well
I’m a bit of a perfectionist, so to date, I have written two complete short stories which I first wrote many years ago. Since then, they’ve been in a constant state of revision because they lack a certain je ne sais quoi for publishing. I wish other writers were as self-aware: Amazon is currently filled with published novels that are truly the works of amateur writers. One such amateur work is Molly Ringwald’s When It Happens to You: A Novel in Stories (2012). At $1.99 at the time of […]
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