Spoiler alert: Lily is going to break your heart. This is something the book lets you know in the first few pages, so I don’t feel too bad revealing it. But she is going to keep breaking your heart for all the hundreds of pages with her deeply dachshund (aka doxie) ways of being. The deep bond with her person, the intelligence and stubbornness, the territorial barking, and the exuberance are all deeply endearing. Rowley captured that unique, persistent doxie bark so that hearing Lily’s “voice” was […]
Or Whatever
I normally paint myself as someone who will trade a decent plot for beautiful prose, but perhaps I have found my limit for that as being somewhere around 300 pages. I don’t think I’m treading new ground to say I thought The Goldfinch would never end. There is such a thing as too much perfection. Tartt has a magic about her writing – without any obvious brush strokes, you are in a scene – you can see and smell and feel everything. She is a […]
All the Most Annoying Parts
I am a weirdo who watches the films first if there’s a film of a book. Because I’m either going to want to watch it anyway if I like the book, or someone is going to “make me” watch it. By make me, I of course mean enthusiastically encourage me enough that I feel guilty if I don’t and/or adds it to the our Netflix queue so that I watch out of desire for snuggles. Also, if I read the book first, there’s little chance […]
Curiosity Should’ve Killed The Cat… Tris
The main theme to Divergent is that there are two sides to every coin. Or, in this case, every faction. Humanity has been divided into five factions: Abnegation (selflessness), Amnity (kindness), Candor (honesty), Dauntless (bravery), and Erudite (knowledge). Each believed, on inception, that theirs was the way to prevent future war, and at age 16 the children of this world must choose which they believe. Each faction has their own headquarters and initiation, and if you choose a faction that is not the one you […]





