The Weight of Blood by Tiffany D. Jackson
I saw Spaceballs before I saw Star Wars. I saw Robin Hood, Men in Tights before I saw Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves. And I read The Weight of Blood before I read Carrie. And honestly, I think I made the right choice! I can’t imagine reading a story like Carrie from the perspective of a white guy in the 1970s, no matter how many times he claps back at JKR. I had some preconceived notions about this book – mainly I thought it was […]
Moriarty by Anthony Horowitz
Warning: While I try to avoid any outright spoilers, you might want to skip this review if you are planning on reading this novel. Summary: I found Moriarty entertaining enough, but compared to the fabulous House of Silk, it’s downright disappointing. Kind of like how Cars would be a decent enough animated movie from any other studio, but from the studio that created Toy Story, WALL-E, and The Incredibles, you’re like “Lame, Pixar.” Now, the review: I’m sitting in a little Japanese restaurant eating my lunch, […]
Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas
Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J. Maas
So after hate-reading most of Sarah J. Maas’ Throne of Glass series last year (haven’t been able to get through the last one yet), I decided to embark on reading her Court of whatevers series, because I needed something fluffy and vaguely risque. (Important note: I do NOT mean it dismissively when I say something is fluffy. Just because it is written largely for teenage girls does not mean it is therefore automatically inferior!) I actually enjoyed it much more than I expected–at least until […]
Snow-White and the Seven Dwarfs: A Tale from the Brothers Grimm by by Randall Jarrell (Translator), Nancy Ekholm Burkert (Illustrator)
Snow White in New York by Fiona French
So my sister is getting her Master’s degree in Art Education. She’s currently in a class about picture books (or something along those lines). Her homework for this week was to compare three different versions of a picture book, so since I thought at least two of the three books would work for me for bingo squares, I joined her in reading the books for her homework. We got my nine year old niece involved too. She actually read the books aloud to us, which […]
Mycroft Holmes by Kareem Abul-Jabbar and Amy Waterhouse
This is the story of Mycroft Holmes, older brother to the famous Sherlock Holmes. If you are a fan of Sherlock at all you know Mycroft as the meddling older brother, the suit, the government lackey who is constantly pestering and annoying Sherlock by trying to get him to do things. How do you think Mycroft sees the situation? This book actually starts before that. Sherlock is still a teenager (possibly early 20s) and living at school and Mycroft is the young Secretary to the […]
A Conspiracy in Belgravia (Lady Sherlock #2) by Sherry Thomas
In setting up the prompts for our Sherlock Retellings Book Club I realized one of the parameters I use when deciding if something is a good retelling or remix: a good retelling for its own sake, needs to have enough of the original’s connective tissue without feeling like it’s been made using tracing paper. In the Lady Sherlock series Sherry Thomas split the various characteristics across several characters and I think it worked really well to not have direct analogs for the most part. Its […]
