The wonder mentioned in the title is a young girl named Anna who lives in a small village in Ireland and has reportedly not eaten any food for four months. The protagonist is a widowed English nurse, trained by Florence Nightingale, who comes to the village as an impartial judge to examine the claims of the village. The nurse is judgmental of the poverty of the Irish village and skeptical of the community’s claim that this girl is somehow getting nourishment from God. Lib the […]
Circus of Inhumans
Yes, it’s book six in a series. You can probably go out and read the first five books before reading this one, but since this one takes a turn with a new character, Antimony Price, the youngest member of the Price siblings, you might be able to just read it on its own. Antimony is the younger sister, and the aimless one who has not found a vocation or career, and is still living at home with her parents. But that all changes when her […]
A Fun Read Not Heavy on the Sci-Fi
Sometimes, a bookclub pick ends up really working well. This book was described to us as being like Firefly but I’m not really sure if I totally buy the comparison. But it was still enjoyable. The story begins with a young woman who is fleeing Mars and signs up to be a sort of secretary/translator to a working ship. The ship works by poking holes in space, creating wormholes, or something of that sort. I think they explain it in the book, but not in […]
The Nest? More like the Mess!
Don’t be fooled by the wonderful description of this book! It’s supposedly an amazing debut novel about a dysfunctional family and the front cover has a blurb by Amy Poehler. It was even voted as the best book of 2016 and made it to the Goodreads finalist lists. The book takes place in New York city and it’s about the Plumb family, four children who grew up in a fairly dysfunctional house and then made their way in the world. The Nest in the title […]
The Stars Are Out Tonight
Tor.com has a book club where you can download a free ebook every month and this book was one of their selections last year. Even though I grew up reading a lot of classic science fiction, I am sometimes wary of it because it isn’t necessarily that compelling. For instance, reading something like the Foundation books by Asimov, where it’s a lot of ideas hitting you left and right but no characters to really anchor the story. While Spin has its roots in that sort […]
Jodi Picoult Does Racism
Jodi Picoult is one of those authors I think of as “easy reading.” Her books are written in a way where thing are pretty well laid out for the reader. She does tackle topics that can be controversial or morally ambiguous but does it in a gentle way where she’s not alienating most readers. I found out that my mom’s book club was reading this book and purchased a copy for her, and figured I would read it myself. The book is the story of […]