I picked up Life After Life by Kate Atkinson despite some trepidation about the Groundhog Day premise but was ultimately impressed. When I started seeing A God in Ruins (2015) on bookshelves, I was eager to read another book by Atkinson. However, I was yet again put off by the premise. I was surprised that Atkinson chose to write about the Todd family, the same family that she’d focused on in her previous book. Specifically, she focuses on Teddy, Ursula’s younger brother and a pilot in the […]
Someone quiet Franklin, I want to hear more about Eleanor.
I’ll get this out of the way at the outset: I didn’t like this book. Why give it four stars, then, you ask? Well, it’s not a bad book. There’s nothing wrong with it, per say. I just didn’t like it. It took me eight months to read it. I’d like to blame it on the fact that my family increased by one 7 pound boy during that time, but there’s no getting around the fact that I simply struggled to get through this. I […]
Words as Weapons
This book’s masterful use of language makes everything I write about it seem pale in insubstantial. I don’t have the words to say how beautifully McEwan put words together. The words are good in this one, guys! The words! Part of the reason I loved this one so much is how I related to young Briony. A lot of times, people think kids are dumb (and they kind of are, even scientifically because the lobes are still forming), but that doesn’t mean they don’t have […]
Sympathy for the Devil
The more I think about this book, the more conflicted my thoughts become. On a purely visceral level, I really enjoyed this book. I gasped, I laughed, I even considered crying over it. On an intellectual level, I can appreciate the craftsmanship, the clockwork (or perhaps more appropriately, dollhouse puzzle-work) machinations of the plot. But there’s something that holds me back from fully praising this book. Read the rest at Pop Culture Penalty Box.
That Cover Artist is Getting Lazy
He or she just painted the skull on the plane this time! Where’s the nuance in that? It’s no Grim Reaper on a ski lift, I can tell you that. A skull in the clouds would’ve been more imaginative. In all of the Henry Tibbett books I’ve read so far, his wife, Emmy, seems to usually be a prop for him to take on vacation or call occasionally, saying he’s going to be late so keep the roast warm because what else could she possibly be […]
A really good read, but I don’t get all the fuss.
This was a really good book on a lot of levels: 1. Good as historical fiction. Excellent particularly because we get POV characters on both sides of the conflict. 2. Good as literary fiction (at least, according to my standards). I prefer my lit-fic to be on the accessible side, and not to focus exclusively on middle-aged white man problems. But it’s also got extra levels if you want to go digging. 3. Good as writing, in the sense that the sentences strung one after […]
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