I really, really liked Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend, which is an incredibly blase way to compliment a book so raw and confrontational and, well, brilliant. The remaining three books in the Neapolitan Novels series build on the strong momentum established by the first and, in the process, continue to be some of the most poignant reading I’ve experienced in ages. The feelings that these books provoked in me were strong and visceral, inflamed and tender in their ebb and flow. These are not feel-good […]
A YA retelling of You’ve Got Mail that’s much better than the film, in my opinion
4.5 stars Bailey “Mink” Rydell and “Alex” have been chatting on a movie message board for months and both absolutely love classic movies. They have hit it off to the point where “Alex” invites “Mink” to his hometown to come see North by Northwest at an outdoor screening on the beach at the annual film festival being arranged in Coronado Cove. Bailey’s parents got divorced a few years back, and now that Bailey’s mother seems to be divorcing her new husband as well, Bailey has chosen […]
I want to know what it feels like to have crushes that could conceivably maybe one day turn into boyfriends
4.5 stars Sixteen-year-old Molly Peskin-Suso has had a crush on twenty-six different guys (number twenty-six is Lin-Manuel Miranda, and I share your infatuation, girl!), but these crushes have never really developed into anything and she’s never kissed anyone. Molly’s twin sister Cassie is very encouraging and tries to get her to just “go for it”, but Cassie has had flings with a number of girls, and is a lot more outgoing and confident than Molly. While they are twins, the sisters have vastly different body […]
Reading YA frequently makes me very happy I never have to revisit my teenage years
Lula and Rory are basically the “Weird Girl and What’s His Name” of the title. Odd-ball teenagers in the little town of Hawthorne, North Carolina. They are best friends, sharing an interest for fantasy and sci-f, but their deepest and most abiding love is for the TV show The X-Files, being active in the online fan community and writing a joint blog where they analyse and comment on the episodes. Both have been abandoned by parents. Rory lives alone with his alcoholic mother, while Lula […]
All ends well for the white man.
“Like all great novels, “Freedom” does not just tell an engrossing story. It illuminates, through the steady radiance of its author’s profound moral intelligence, the world we thought we knew.” From NYtimes That quote makes me want to vomit. What is it about Jonathan Franzen that brings out the white men? The “let me explain how awesomely brilliant and true and beautiful this book is”-men? This book is shite. And I’ve been reading a lot of reviews to figure out why people love it. The […]
“If getting drunk was how people forgot they were mortal, then hangovers were how they remembered.”
3.5 stars This is a book I think I ought to have enjoyed more than I did. Indeed, there was a witty irreverence to it that I liked quite a lot, a style of writing that’s equally funny and poignant. It was the style, and the somewhat absurdist musings that were brought to life by the style, that was the most salient part of the book for me. The thing is, there just wasn’t that much of a story. The concept is that a superior […]
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