Sometimes I read something and I wonder if I have just really missed the point. Such is the case with Colm Tóibín’s Nora Webster. Nora Webster takes place in Ireland in the late 1960s, a time of social turmoil and ripe for interesting story-telling. It is the same town in which the heroine of his novel Brooklyn was raised but aside from a quick cameo by her mother, it’s not really a sequel by any means. Nora has recently lost her husband Maurice (to what […]
Beach Reading in November
I have a huge back log of Kindle Deals of the Day on my Kindle, and I like to go back to Amazon to see where I was in my life when I decided I wanted to read something. I purchased Janet Evanovich’s One for the Money in June of 2016, right in the middle of maternity leave. I think I just assumed I would be getting a lot of reading done while I endured night feedings, day feedings, and got stuck under a finally-sleeping […]
Shrill
I think there’s a movie or show quote somewhere to the effect of “I used to think if I cared about one thing I’d have to care about everything.” That’s a fair description of me. To be perfectly honest, I’m politically (and just generally) lazy. I don’t get into Facebook arguments about ridiculous right-wing conspiracies or correct people when they make tasteless jokes. I don’t campaign for politicians, or even volunteer to drive folks to voting booths. I didn’t write “#metoo” on Facebook the other […]
Lady Detectives
And now I have reached half cannonball! Yay me. I mean I know it’s not a full, but I’ve set the bar at half for a few years now and I’ve yet to make it there (whether I read the books or just failed to review them). My twenty-sixth book this year is T.E. Kinsey’s A Quiet Life in the Country, a charming tale about an eccentric aristocrat-turned-sleuth in early twentieth century England, Lady Hardcastle, her servant-turned-bff-slash-detective friend Flo, and a dead body in the […]
Magic! Paper Dogs!
Reading an incredibly disappointing novel, for me, makes me long for something simple and easy. Luckily, the book I’d chosen from all the ones waiting on my Kindle was perfect for that. Charlie Holmberg’s The Paper Magician is the first in a series of fantasy novels about a young apprentice magician, Ceony Twill. Ceony has just finished her studies at the Tagis Praff School for the Magically Inclined; much to her chagrin she has been assigned an apprenticeship with a paper magician. Ceony had always […]
Coney Island Love Story
There are certain settings I think automatically lead to interesting stories worth exploring. Two of them are early 20th century New York and ‘freak shows.’ Alice Hoffman’s The Museum of Extraordinary Things takes both of these on. Museum is the story of Coralie, a talented swimmer playing mermaid in her father’s museum of unusual people, animals and artifacts, and Eddie, a Russian Jewish immigrant with a serious chip on his shoulder and a talent for photography. There are many things I disliked about this novel, […]
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