I received Boy, Snow, Bird from an earlier CBR book exchange, but it had been collecting dust for a few years. I finally had a reason to pick it back up when my Mocha Girls Read book club selected it for a fairytale’s retold theme. Helen Oyeyemi’s novel is a VERY loose version of Snow White set in the 1950s. Boy Novak runs away to a small town to escape her abusive father. She meets a man named Arturo who isn’t quite a prince, but he […]
#CBR10Bingo: AlabamaPink – The Dud Avocado (First bingo!)
#CBR10Bingo: AlabamaPink Sally Jay Gorce is a young woman of independent means, thanks to the benevolence of a rich uncle. He’s given her enough money to live comfortably abroad for two whole years, no strings attached, as long as she comes back and tells him about her adventures at the end of the two years. Not needing to hold down a job or really do anything at all for the money, means Sally Jay spends her time flitting about Paris, taking a lover, drinking and […]
Repeating history?
I have many thoughts about this book but as always, here’s the situation that led to me reading it. This Kind of War is another book from the Army Chief of Staff’s reading list. It has also been recommended by Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis as a must-read. Secretary Mattis is known, colloquially, as the Warrior Monk due to his dedication to his craft and his knowledge and understanding of making war. He is known to be a voracious reader and believes that all leaders […]
Everything down here floats…
I’m on the tail-end of a monstrously disruptive cold, so I had to scrap my plans of having this review out by the 21st, Stephen King’s septuagenarian birthday. In the realm of missed opportunities, this rates as a fairly minor disappointment, but it would’ve fairly cool nonetheless. It is one of the most quintessentially “Stephen King” stories, and it’s recent and wildly successful adaptation should, perhaps, not be seen as particularly surprising. In my mind, it holds a premier place in his oeuvre, alongside The […]
Modern Fairytale. Race Relations. Intriguing premise, flat execution.
Ohhhhh boy. This book. This was the last pick of the local library book club of the year, and it was much anticipated. It has received much acclaim, NPR said great things about it, and but for me, and my book club, it widely missed the mark. It was NOT loved. Or liked even. At this club we (about 16 folks) go around the room and give a score to a scale of 5 and this one didn’t even get past three. And there were a […]
Ladies Who Paint
When I first started reading The Last Painting of Sara de Vos, by Dominic Smith, I was pretty sure I didn’t like it. The first chapter felt like it was about dissatisfied rich people and I was not in the mood for that nonsense. Happily, it is not about dissatisfied rich people, nor is it about the theft and forgery of a Dutch painting, which is what I thought it was about after I decided it wasn’t about rich people. Really though, it’s about three […]
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