I’m almost ashamed to admit that until this year, I had never read any Octavia Butler. When I went through my original SciFi reading phase in high school, she was never even mentioned amongst my nerd-kin friends, and now, though I’m late to the party, I know I have found one of the best writers, of any kind, of the modern age. Kindred is Butler’s best selling novel and is still required reading for many university and college writing and gender studies programs. The story […]
One of those dystopian futures that really could happen.
If I had read this book three years ago, I would have wept my way through to the end. Since things have improved a bit for my family since then, I was able to read The Subprimes with a much clearer eye toward the outer extremes of wealth inequality which Carl Taro Greenfield imagines for the United States of the future. Greenfield does manage to put a humorous spin on a rage-inducing topic, and for that, he deserves kudos. While I have no doubt […]
A sadly disappointing mystery by an author I really like.
I’ve just realized that I really need to keep up with my reviews, as I opened this draft and had to think long and hard about the book to remember what it was about. That might actually be my review, right there. Mrs Smith’s actual review of The Skeleton Road by Val McDermid
Why that 4.0 GPA isn’t going to get you anywhere.
“Colleges should remember that selecting students by GPA more often benefits the faithful drudge than the original mind.” ― William Deresiewicz, Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of America’s Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life I found William Deresiewicz’s Excellent Sheep through reading one of his early articles which formed the basis for this book. As someone who attended state universities, then went to art school, I have felt the sting of feeling comfortable with my well-rounded education and intellectual curiosity, then slowly realizing that […]
Religion makes some people kinda cray cray.
I had wanted to read Under the Banner of Heaven for quite a long time, and finally found a copy at my local used book store this year. I started and stopped reading several times, to pick up lighter, less gruesome novels, but I kept coming back to read this intense, true-crime novel, that is less about the horrible murder of a 24 year old mother and her 15 month old daughter (and it was violently and insanely horrible), as it is about a fundamentalist […]