Ibi Zoboi’s Pride is a modern retelling of Pride and Prejudice set in Brooklyn. The best adaptations take a familiar story and use it to explore contemporary issues. Once we identify each new character with it’s P&P counterpart, we understand where they fit in the story and then we can move on to the meat of it. We know class is going to be a part of the conflict, and since this is a modernization, we know getting the 5 Benitez sisters married off isn’t a motivation.
Our culture might be in jeopardy and I still had to make the damn pun
Bingo entry 4 – my “so shiny” book is appropriately from Ken Jennings, because he’s now in the “I’ll buy a book about ladders if they wrote it” category for me. After having read Because I Said So, Maphead, and my favorite, Brainiac – a book about his Jeopardy experience and the popularity of trivia that includes actual trivia questions. Be still my heart – I’ll read anything he writes, much less something as attuned to my own interests as a book about how humor […]
But what of Barry the swim instructor? Does he get a happy ending?
A few years ago (I don’t know…maybe 2007?), back when I was addicted to watching Craig Ferguson’s Late Night show, he had an interesting episode in which he sat and talked to his friend Stephen Fry. No monologue, no questions on cards, no skits, no dancing horse. Just a conversation between old friends. It was fascinating. They talked about all sorts of stuff, but what I remember most was their discussion about writing fiction. Fry had several books, their good friend Hugh Laurie had just […]
I Will Sparkle Like a Wealthy Woman’s Neck
CBR bingo entry 3 leads me to my “Birthday” space for Sloane Crosley, who turned 40 August 3rd this year. (And yeah, she was gonna be my “so shiny!” entry but Ken Jennings was born in May and I don’t get that many books hot off the presses because I’m cheap, AND her debut was I Was Told There’d Be Cake, for pete’s sake, so I had to change her to my birthday square. But I still liked how the title works with her tone; […]
Not in my Wheelhouse. Or beach house for that matter
Second bingo entry for “Not in my wheelhouse,” which is a rough category for me as I really will read pretty much anything. The best I could come up with is that I tend not to read books like this – I don’t want to call them women’s books because a) reductive, b) there’s tons of books by/for women that aren’t like this, and c) saying I don’t read books like this and then calling them women’s books smacks of “I’m not like other girls” […]
Yeah, I’d have snubbed it too
This is my first bingo square attempt, for having been shortlisted for the Man Booker prize. And boy oh boy am I not surprised this didn’t get it. I liked Then We Came To The End well enough; The Unnamed slightly less so. But MAN did I not care for this book. The plot revolves around our dentist protagonist and his attempt to track down the identity thief posting cultish religious (or anti-religious? The book insists it’s sort of both but reading this thing through […]
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