Ordinary Monsters by Miro, JM
Bingo Row 1 – Black Ordinary Monsters by JM Miro feels nostalgic. I suspect a lot of that is because the book looks so much like my long gone copy of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. It’s a big black book with the silhouette of a flying bird on the cover. I only noticed it in a bookstore because I thought it was Jonathan Strange. There are a few other similarities I noticed between the two, but it’s been so long since I read the […]
Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao
Bingo Row 3 – I The first thing I noticed about Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao was that the book was dedicated to Rebecca Schaeffer. That set a strong tone for the book. It indicated that the author felt some strong connection with a long dead actress whose death influenced stalking laws, and it indicated that the topics would be about how society and men treat women and celebrities. It turns out the book was dedicated to a different Rebecca Schaeffer than the one […]
Fruits Basket Collector's Edition, vols. 1-12 by Takaya, Natsuki
Bingo row 4 – family Dostoevsky’s the Idiot is a novel about someone who is so kind and good that everyone assumes he’s an idiot. Prince Lev is a “modern” day Jesus, unappreciated and destroyed by the times. This review isn’t about that book, but I thought about it a lot as I read Fruits Basket by Natsuki Takaya. (I had previously watched its anime adaptation, so The Idiot connection was brewing and boiling when I started reading. It’s also not a unique comparison.) Tohru […]
Chicano Frankenstein by Olivas, Daniel A
Bingo Row 4 – Green I’ve been meaning to read Chicano Frankenstein by Daniel A Olivas for one reason. The title is Chicano Frankenstein, which I find intriguing. It’s a modern retelling of Frankenstein, making it a post modern Prometheus. (I made myself laugh). But really it doesn’t have many parallels with the inspiration because the protagonists are nice and reasonable. In a world where corpses are reanimated for labor or something, some reanimated man just lives his life as politics and human rights issues […]
Savage Appetites: Four True Stories of Women, Crime, and Obsession by Monroe, Rachel
Bingo Row 5 – borrow I got it from the library. Savage Appetites: Four True Stories of Women, Crime, and Obsession by Rachel Monroe opens and closes with a rich lady from Chicago. Although one was heiress rich and wanted crimes to be solved and the other was horse riding lessons rich and wanted to be a famous mass shooter; they weren’t really in the same social bracket or true crime fangirl bracket. But I thought they made good bookends. I always enjoy things about […]
Rum: a Distilled History of Colonial Australia by Murphy, Matt
Bingo Row 2 – culture Before Matt Murphy’s Rum: a Distilled History of Colonial Australia, I knew very little about Australia. And since most of that was from that Simpsons episode, it would be more accurate to say I knew of Australia. But I did know a decent amount about rum because I am interested in it (I drink it sometimes too), so I knew a large gap in my rum knowledge was in Australia’s history. Because everything else I knew about Australia was rum […]
