I can’t wait to get started on these books! Thank you so much, Black Raven!
Dystopian Utopia
Scythe by Neal Shusterman
Imagine a future where war, poverty, crime, illness, disease and death have been conquered. Sounds like paradise, right? But the thing is, without death, the world becomes overpopulated and all the problems return. In Scythe, the first book in a trilogy, Neal Shusterman imagines this world where all knowledge and information is overseen by a god-like universal information storage system called the Thunderhead and where the world population is “managed” by individuals called scythes. Scythes are feared and revered and are an authority unto themselves. […]
Life: it’s not nothing
The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida: A Novel by Shehan Karunatilaka
The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida is the winner of this year’s Booker Prize. Set in 1980s Sri Lanka, the action takes place amidst the violence of Tamils versus Sinhalese versus Indians, not to mention a variety of outside groups and organizations connected to them. The main character is a photographer and gambler, the gay son of Burgher/Tamil mother and Sinhalese father. Maali Almeida says he is not on any side partaking in the violence in Sri Lanka, that his goal is to take the […]
Arthurian Legend, Feminist Perspective
Half Sick of Shadows by Laura Sebastian
It’s no secret that I am a huge fan of re-imagined classics: Achilles, Circe, the Trojan women — I love a take on a well known tale from a marginalized perspective. Of course, all of those that I mentioned are Greek myths, with which I have quite a bit of familiarity. On a recent trip to the bookstore I found Half Sick of Shadows, which really piqued my interest — the story of King Arthur and Camelot from the perspective of Elaine Astolat, Lady of […]
Moriens sed Invictus ~ Dying but Unconquered
O Caledonia: A Novel by Elspeth Barker
O Caledonia was originally published in 1991 and was reissued last year with a new introduction by Maggie O’Farrell. I’d never heard of this book before but saw it at the bookstore. The cover looked like it would be suitably dark for a Halloween-ish read, and it is. This book might be for you if you enjoyed I Capture the Castle (Dodie Smith) or We Have Always Lived in the Castle (Shirley Jackson) as, like those two novels, it features a teenaged protagonist living in […]
Blind Date with a Book
Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
Last spring I read about something called “Blind Date With a Book” that sounded like fun. Libraries apparently do them, and it involves choosing a book, wrapped in paper so you cannot see the title, based on some descriptive words (mystery, romance, other voices, etc). It’s a fun way to change up your reading and maybe try something you wouldn’t have picked for yourself. Over on Etsy, a number of sellers offer this same service for a range of fees and I decided to give […]
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