OK, it took me forever to finish The Casual Vacancy. I probably should have liked it—I know almost all of my friends did—but I just couldn’t with the Little Britain mentality and Middle England class warfare antics that J.K. Rowling describes with such unvarnished authenticity. Having lived in England for a few years, I found the petty, mean-spirited antics of the main characters to be just too real to make this an enjoyable read. Mrs Smith Reads The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling
How ’bout we just keep this particular Circle broken?
I read The Circle back in August while on a family vacation in San Francisco/Silicon Valley. Needless to say this made Dave Egger’s exploration of life and culture in a dystopian, data-centric near-future all the more depressing. Mae Holland is thrilled when a good friend from college recruits her to come to work at The Circle. Mae starts at the bottom, as a call center customer service rep who fields calls from world-wide clients to help make sure their experience of Circle products and services […]
The Bombay in Mumbai
Thirty-seventh book reviewed as part of the 130 Challenge. When ‘Bombay’ was changed to ‘Mumbai’ many years back (it’s actually a decade or more, but seems like yesterday), I was a kid. It didn’t really affect me so much, but I used go around correcting people every time they called ‘Mumbai’, ‘Bombay’. I don’t know why I did that, maybe I asserted my sense of belonging to the city by claiming to know the correct name and declaring it to those who didn’t love it enough to care. […]
Any person you see could be capable of terrible things
(This post originally appeared on Glorified Love Letters.) What makes Ciarán West’s books interesting is how they confirm that “page-turner” is not just a cover blurb cliché. Even when one might have other things they should be doing, they can be done after “one more chapter.” Girl Afraid centers around the kidnapping of Poppy Riley, daughter of a well-known actor, Tom, who is away filming. Poppy had been left in the care of Alice, her father’s trusted assistant, and Magda, the girl’s recently hired nanny. […]
More like museum of obsession and drudgery
Thirty-sixth book reviewed as part of the 130 Challenge. It’s really difficult to capture the uneasy feeling of longing and desire that one gets when one can’t have their way. Some of us succumb to it and fall prey to obsession, going to great (and sometimes ugly) lengths to get what we want; almost always failing to get it. We all deal with such a heartbreak at least once in a lifetime and it is rare that someone comes out of it unscathed. So why would […]
Out of Denmark
My final review for 2014 is a collection of short stories by Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen), perhaps best known for Out of Africa and Babette’s Feast. This collection is my first exposure to Dinesen’s work; the title and time of year made it seem appropriate. I have read a few re-imagined fairy tales this year, but Winter’s Tales does not fit the fairy tale model. In fact, after reading the first few stories, I wasn’t sure what to make of them at all and considered […]
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