A very good and heartbreaking book to start the year with. Lemn Sissay’s powerful memoir My Name Is Why details his time in British foster care and shows the casual cruelty of the authoritarian system he was placed in. He had to fight the government for thirty years to get access to his records and he uses the paper trail of comments by his social worker, reports on his progress, and other pieces of the puzzle to show the gaps in the record and how […]
“Phoenix-like, he flamed against the cloudless sky, looking down upon our miniature school world and all the golden fields of Fairacre.”
Village School by Miss Read
CBR14Bingo: Cozy My mom had the complete set of these when I was a kid and I’d read them and feel very grown up. All I remembered about the book as an adult was a feeling of coziness and warmth, hence the bingo square. I was struck a few weeks ago with the urge to revisit these and see if my opinion had changed, so I picked up the first book and it was a good quick palate cleanser read after the longer commitment that […]
“I felt that I was now old enough to become fussy and spinsterish if I wanted to:” A Gentle Post-War Comedy of Manners
Excellent Women by Barbara Pym
This is a fast read but it has a lot of depth to it. I enjoyed it and it was the kind of book that surprises you and is counter to what you were expecting, in a good way. Excellent Women was a little outside of my normal reading pattern in that I’m not always a literary fiction type person, but this turned out to be more of a comedy of manners novel than the literary accolades suggested. And it’s good to broaden one’s reading […]
Spooky Spelunking Ahoy!
Whispers Under Ground by Ben Aaronovitch
…but before we dig in, let’s celebrate a Pulp reference! Well, our victim had a thirst for knowledge,” said Stephanopoulos. “He was a student at St. Martins College. Ha! Delightful. This series is chock full of geeky innuendo. Come for a magical rollick through London, but stay for the myriad Harry Potter, Terry Pratchett, Dr. Who, and Tolkien references- just to name a few. Somehow, despite many references to the fantasy that came before and continues to ripple around the world of Rivers of London, this […]