The Trees by Percival Everett
The title “The Trees” most immediately references two ideas in this book. First, the family trees of white Southerners who suddenly find their crimes and their families’ crimes coming back to haunt them and even kill them. The second of course is as a symbol of lynching. In the novel we begin with a white family discussing the murder of one of their kin who is found dead and bound in barbed wire, his testicles cut off, and next to the body of a Black […]
Just Like Home by Sarah Gailey
Vera Crowder has A Past. A Past filled with things that are Very Bad. When she gets the call from her mother to come home, Vera very much does not want to…but she goes home anyway. Her mother, Daphne, is dying, and needs Vera to help clean up/sort through/clean out the house. The house, which is a living museum to Vera’s father, Francis – plexiglass screwed down over tabletops and carpets, everything perfectly preserved. Daphne also wants Vera to make nice with James Duvall, an […]
The Tin Drum by Gunter Grass
I first started reading this book in the spring of 2007. I know that because I had several hours of hall duty while administering state-wide tests when I was working at a school in Baltimore, so I brought this book to stand and read while for the most part I didn’t have any interaction with students. Over the course of the testing, I read about 150 pages of the nearly 600 pages. 600 pages is such a relative term as well all know. 600 pages […]
The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
Updated review September 15, 2022: Re-read this for Cannonballread’s Banned Book week. I did something a bit different for this though. I really just re-read my favorite parts of this book (which there are a lot) but then I also re-watched the movie that came out based on this book. I have to say parts of the movie were very well done, such as when Starr and her mother and others film the police with their phones when her father is being accosted by the […]
Closer to Okay by Amy Watson
Please note that I received this book via NetGalley. This did not affect my rating or review. Trigger warning: Book gives a lengthy (and much appreciated) trigger warning for suicide and mental health. Not to much to say here. I liked the ideas behind this book much more than the actual book. The first 30 pages had me exciting and then it just turned into a not so cohesive romance novel. I think if Watson had either just decided to just do a straight up […]
She-Hulk #5 by Rainbow Rowell
I guess the arrival of the She-Hulk television series must’ve been a boon for Rainbow Rowell’s comic series too, since both of the local comic book stores I’ve been to are sold out of #6. Even online retailers are out of stock, except for third-party re-sellers who are trying to make an extra profit. However, in my search for issue #6, I discovered I’d neglected to get issue #5 due to all the hubbub surrounding our big move. I managed to find what I guess is […]
