I was seriously afraid that I’d be wasting my time on yet another damsel in distress story where the awkward boy gets to find himself and be the hero, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that Bone Gap played with all those expectations and tropes in an unexpected way. This was shortlisted for the National Book Award, so I was hoping it’d be good. It was! Bone Gap is a strange town with some serious secrets. Finn and Sean are two young men/boys just […]
Didn’t live up to its potential
When a very, very old manuscript filled with the specifics of circus life in the 1700’s finds its way into the hands of a research librarian named Simon, he doesn’t quite know what to make of it. His grandmother’s name is written in the book, but he’s not sure how the book connects to their family. While researching the book and his family history, he realizes that all the women in his family have died from drowning on the very same day. What makes it […]
Okay, I Just Have to Admit It, I Hate Magical Realism
I tried, I really did. After Beloved, I thought I had turned a corner on my animosity for the magical realism sub-genre. Then I read this book and I just give up. There are hours of my life that I wasted reading this. (I know for some people, this is their favorite book ever, and if that describes you, just move along, there’s nothing for you here. Just turn around and never look back.) I bet you’re wondering what this book is about. So am […]
Has everyone been reading Nalo Hopkinson without me?
Sometimes, when one is introduced to a gifted writer who has been crafting fine works for going on two decades, one feels both excited to have found such a trove and yet irritated to have not known about her sooner. This is how I feel after reading Nalo Hopkinson’s first novel Brown Girl in the Ring, published in 1998. The novel won several awards and was nominated for a Philip K. Dick Award. It is an absolutely fascinating combination of dystopian future, Caribbean folk tale, […]
Reading Under the New Moon
The Strange Library combines two things that I love dearly: libraries and strange supernatural occurrences. The story begins with a boy returning his books to the library. When he asks the librarian for help finding more books, she directs him to a confined room in the basement where a small old man helps him locate three gigantic volumes on tax collection in the Ottoman Empire. However, when he tries to check the books out, he is told that he must instead read the books there, […]
Pretty Confusing, Vol. 1: . . . uh, what?
So I had to sit on on this one for a while before even committing to a star rating, and even now I’m still not sure about it. I mostly only chose three because it seemed like the most neutral option. This book is hard to think about, hard to digest, and hard to categorize. Ultimately, that’s probably a good thing. Confusing and hard to categorize generally at least means ‘original.’ And Pretty Deadly is certainly original. But it’s also confusing and confounding and hard to […]