Justine suffers from near-incapacitating hypochondriac whose mother died from a rare disease everyone refused to believe she had. Damn good reason to have health anxieties, I say. She struggles through each day as if it’s her last in case that elusive vein will explode in her brain. But living on edge is almost too much for her hunky, yet simple-minded boyfriend, Cubby. That is until she meets Packard, a mysterious Turkish restaurant owner, who says he can save her hypochondriac self-implosion. Justine (and myself!) is skeptical to say the […]
Millennials are so screwed if this is our future.
I was surprised to find California by Edan Lepucki on several “Best” lists this year. While I did find it to be an easy, quick read I didn’t find the story itself to be as entertaining or engrossing as many of the reviews lead me to believe it would be. I didn’t regret reading California, but I certainly wouldn’t credit Lepucki with having written “a gripping and provocative debut novel” either. Frida and Cal live in the woods. Alone. In a shack. Apparently the […]
When in Rome…
Rabid fandom is one reason I’ve yet to watch Titanic and never got into Friends, Lost, among many other highly successful films and TV shows. Instead, I tend to dedicate my viewing time to the underdogs, which is to say that a lot of the shows that I do like tend to get cancelled, i.e. Arrested Development, Life, Chicago Code, Human Target, Men of a Certain Age. To date, The Good Wife is the only one of my faves to have escaped that fate. With that said, you can imagine how resistant […]
“Our youth is wasted, We will not waste it…”
We Were Liars is about a very rich family, the Sinclairs. The oldest grandchild, Cadence, is one of the Liars, her cousins and a family friend. They spend wonderful summers on the family’s private island, with their big houses and golden retrievers. One summer is marred by a terrible accident. Cadence can’t remember the details, but the next time she returns to the island, everything has changed. It’s a bit of a mystery, and the ending has a big twist. I thought We Were Liars […]
Imagine if Harry Potter was all about the Dursleys.
OK, it took me forever to finish The Casual Vacancy. I probably should have liked it—I know almost all of my friends did—but I just couldn’t with the Little Britain mentality and Middle England class warfare antics that J.K. Rowling describes with such unvarnished authenticity. Having lived in England for a few years, I found the petty, mean-spirited antics of the main characters to be just too real to make this an enjoyable read. Mrs Smith Reads The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling
How ’bout we just keep this particular Circle broken?
I read The Circle back in August while on a family vacation in San Francisco/Silicon Valley. Needless to say this made Dave Egger’s exploration of life and culture in a dystopian, data-centric near-future all the more depressing. Mae Holland is thrilled when a good friend from college recruits her to come to work at The Circle. Mae starts at the bottom, as a call center customer service rep who fields calls from world-wide clients to help make sure their experience of Circle products and services […]
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