Growing up in a small town somewhere in America (schools, family-themed restaurant, lots of cars, a bunch of huge churches, a Wallmart, a couple of multiplexes, so many trees), Mikey and his sister Mel (don’t call her Melinda) are just trying to get through their final year of high school, hoping that something so momentous happens that the indie kids have to blow up the school gym again. Who are the indie kids, you ask? The indie kids are the ones that all the YA […]
I loved all these crazy birds
This is a deliciously weird book, and if people have love-it or hate-it reactions to it I could not be less surprised. There are often very pretentious and meta conversations among geeks regarding the differences that delineate (with very fluid, hazy borders) fantasy and science fiction. Sometimes, this happens because of “bad” sci-fi, that doesn’t actually explain its science very well, and gaps in the world building may as well be explained by magic. All the Birds in the Sky deliberately takes this idea and […]
A good book, but I still prefer the Lizzie Bennet Diaries
3.5 stars I have mentioned more than once my immense fondness and love for the YouTube series The Lizzie Bennet Diaries. I read the companion book about Lizzie, and the sequel of sorts, about Lydia. I was of the opinion that Pride and Prejudice had been modernised pretty successfully already. But as we have seen in the last few years with the many different iterations of Sherlock Holmes, in films, books and TV, a really good thing can inspire a lot of different interpretations. Eligible […]
If the titular widow lived up to the cover blurb, this would have been a book worth reading
I must have put this on my TBR because I’m a sucker for marketing and this book was supposed to be this year’s Girl on the Train, which was that year’s Gone Girl, and so on it goes by that publishing rule that says that female authors are good for certain things, and right now that thing is “suspenseful books about marriages where things aren’t all that they seem and also there is an unreliable narrator and someone is dead/missing.” I don’t mind how many […]
Theater references and a portrait of a perfectly imperfect marriage
When I first finished this book, I *thought* I had a lot of strong opinions about it. Like, “Lotto is EXHAUSTING!”, or “These lucky bitches have a Shiba Inu puppy, and what do I have? Nothing!” But now, I’ve sat on it for a week, and all I can really muster for Fates and Furies is a “Meh.” I’m on record somewhere claiming that I love character-driven work, but also elsewhere claiming that a truly compelling plot can make me overlook deficiencies in other areas […]
Should be required reading for everyone
Arnold “Junior” Spirit doesn’t exactly have an easy time of it. Born poor and hydrocephalic, it’s pretty much a miracle that he survived infancy. Suffering from stuttering, his over-large head, bad eyesight and frequent seizures, he’s routinely picked on by both children and adults on the Spokane reservation, finding solace in basketball, his drawing and his best friend Rowdy. When Junior transfers away from the school on the reservation to get a chance at a real education, Rowdy feels deeply betrayed, like Junior’s sold out […]
- « Previous Page
- 1
- …
- 18
- 19
- 20
- 21
- 22
- …
- 27
- Next Page »