My book club picked The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz for our February get together. This is the reason I love book club, because I would never have picked up this book on my own. Also, like every other female book club, we drink large amounts of wine. But we always read the book! The novel is centered around Oscar, a tragic and hopeless lame teenager, during his high school and college years. Oscar is overweight, socially awkward, and just […]
Hello, Clarice
Last year I decided to read the Hannibal novels after I watched the first season of NBC’s Hannibal. For those of you who have not seen Hannibal, please watch it. Don’t let them cancel it on me! Claire Danes’s husband plays Will Graham, and his crazy face rivals her cry face! And man, these Hannibal Lecter books are FUN. I highly doubt I need to summarize the plot, but in case you have not been alive for the past twenty-five years, Hannibal Lecter is a convicted serial […]
One Choice Will Define You…Or Make You Fall Asleep From Boredom
Allegiant is the last novel in the Divergent young adult trilogy. I picked up the series after a friend told me it was similar to The Hunger Games. Yes, the series are quite similar. Both trilogies are set in America’s near future, after a war of some sort. Both feature heavy handed governments and arbitrarily divided citizens. And of course, both feature a young teen heroine who is just a little bit different or “special” than everyone else. I really enjoyed the first book in Divergent series. It was […]
“We’re all dead, son. Some of us are just a little further along than others.”
For my fourth cannonball read review, I decided to read some Young Adult fiction. YA is the ultimate mind escape for me, and a really good one can be an effective mini brain vacation. A lot of buzz was generated by Rick Yancey’s novel The 5th Wave, and I decided to jump on the reading bandwagon. Now, while my greatest fear is some sort of zombie/alien/vampire attack that forces civilization to live in caves again, I can’t help but enjoy any post-apocalyptic books. And teen romance […]
Thinking Twice Before I Ride on the Tube Again…
While my first two novels appear to be unread as part of Cannonball Read, I am absolutely positive that my third choice of book has been reviewed multiple times. After years of owning the novel, I finally picked up Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere. My sister purchased it for me many years ago, as I have a fascination for the London Underground system. I am glad I waited until now to read it, as I was a bit of snoot back in my younger days and could […]
“The brain is a monstrous, beautiful mess.”
This is Susannah Cahalan’s story of how she lost her mind for a month. Susannah was a normal, healthy mid-twenties woman living in New York City. She had a great job as a reporter, a wonderful boyfriend, and a network of friends and family. She was described as outgoing and talkative, and seemed to be the life of the party. Then one day in 2009, she slowly slipped into a state of paranoia, developed seizures, and could no longer control her movements or thoughts. She […]