I haven’t been as excited about a new book in a while as I was to pick up the newest installment in Sara Gran’s Claire DeWitt mysteries. While I didn’t love it as well as City of the Dead, Claire DeWitt and the Bohemian Highway, the second in the series, definitely entertained me and keeps me eagerly anticipating Claire’s next adventure. In this entry, we find Claire living in San Francisco, mentoring a budding detective, and snorting more cocaine than I thought humanly possible. Paul […]
CB VI #2: The Fault in Our Stars
I kind of wish I could sue John Green for emotional damages because this book fucking broke me. I’m talking, full-on, Clair-Danes-worthy-ugly-crying-alone-in-bed broke me. Ugh. I mean, in a good way. But still. I haven’t fully recovered from this book. Hands-down, Hazel’s dad is one of my favorite dads in literature. I love my father, I have the best dad in the history of ever, but if you offered to let me swap for Hazel’s dad, I’d have to stop and consider it. There’s a […]
the spectacular now
The Spectacular Now follow Sutter, a high school senior in Oklahoma, as he navigates life mostly drunk. His life changes when he breaks up with Cassidy at the same time his best friend gets into a serious relationship. He meets Aimee who is a SciFi nerd with a crappy home life. The two forge an unlikely relationship (Sutter believes he is some sort of mentor to Aimee) and change one another’s lives. Loved it. Tharp perfectly captures an aimless 18-year-old in the middle of nowhere, […]
heartburn
Last year I read two of Nora Ephron’s memoirs (I Feel Bad About My Neck and I Remember Nothing) and as a huge fan of Sleepless in Seattle and You’ve Got Mail I decided to start the year off with her first novel Heartburn. Reading this so closely after her memoirs and knowing the inspiration for this novel was her second marriage made this first person novel feel like another memoir. It confused my senses. If you don’t know, the plot follows cookbook writer […]
Fairy Tales for Angry Little Girls
I picked this up on a whim at the library, I’m always looking for things I can read with my kids. (That’s my excuse for reading a lot of YA dystopias, though we all know I read them anyway!) Apparently this is a fairly known comic strip, though this was my first exposure. The characters are a multicultural cauldron of little girls, reacting with all the coolness and sarcasm so perfected by the average preteen. Perhaps were I more familiar with the strip I would […]
A work of Dickensian depth and breadth
This nearly 800-page novel is a revelation – it is one of the more complex literary works I’ve read in a long time and proved impossible to put down. The Goldfinch tells the story of precocious 13-year-old Theo Decker, who lives alone with his mother in New York City until their unplanned visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art on the day terrorists decide to blow the museum up. Theo’s mother dies in the disaster, but Theo survives and manages to extricate himself and return […]