To be honest, I’m still not totally sure what to make of this book. I really, really wanted to like it more than I actually did. It started out slow with glimmers of interesting plot threads, but ultimately The Robber Bride just kept stringing me along. Every time I started to get into the plot, the … [Read more]
Recent Reviews
Two more novellas, which were a more successful venture than the last two
I definitely should not have spent a bunch of time in my last review bloviating about whether I like novellas or not, because it seems they're all I have time to read recently. I've been waiting a long time for both of these to come off hold at the library, and perhaps it was the waiting making … [Read more]
The holiday my father promised wasn’t a holiday
[Stunned silence] What an amazing experience reading this book this was. Harrowing, lyrical, horrifying and achingly beautiful. I am still kind of stunned. 8 year old Peggy lives in London with her mother Uta, a concert pianist and James her father, unemployed and part of a survivalist group. … [Read more]
Totalitarianism, up close and personal in post-Mao China
The Vagrants has got to be one of the grimmest novels I’ve read this year, and yet it is a book I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend. The author grew up in Beijing of the late 1970s, the tumultuous post-Mao period in a China which had emerged from the horrific Cultural Revolution without plans to … [Read more]
“People don’t alter history any more than birds alter the sky, they just make brief patterns in it.”
I’m continuing on with my march through the Discworld novels, and after having realized that I had perhaps gone too far down one path without veering off to some others in my review of Maskerade I decided to go back to the beginning and pick another tack to start down. Luckily for me my friend … [Read more]
Starships Were Meant to Fly, Hands Up to Touch the Sky
Ask the Passengers by A.S. King is a touching little book about something I really hadn't thought about more than just in passing (and really that's a huge shame on me)-- and that is--what is it like to be a teenager and not be exactly sure of one's sexuality? I grew up knowing that boys did … [Read more]