I’m not sure where I found this book and like I read the whole thing without putting it aside and it was entertaining but I’m also not sure what I read or why. You ever have those books? The House of Broken Angels (and that’s Angel, like the Spanish name, not angel like Islington) is about a sprawling Mexican-American family and its patriarch. Big Angel is said patriarch and is more or less the main character, but the book is about more than him. It’s […]
Stick around for the second half
I’ve always wanted to visit Ireland, but definitely not the Ireland in this book. The Heart’s Invisible Furies tells the story of post-World War II Ireland, a country culturally under the thumb of an oppressive Catholic Church. Most of my understanding of the legal impact of Catholicism in Ireland was in relation to abortion rights (or lack thereof) and horrifying institutions for unwed mothers, so it makes sense that it would be an equally horrible, horrible place to be gay. And oh boy. So this is […]
Like reading the show
Despite being born after the finale aired, I grew up on M*A*S*H. My parents bought each season on DVD as it was released and I’ve watched each episode at least three times. Maybe it doesn’t hold up quite so well watching it again as an adult (remember that episode where the guys in the Swamp convince a senior officer Hotlips is into him and he sexually assaults her … for laughs? Yeah.) But reading this book brought me right back to it all. The show (and […]
Read this book
I don’t always look too closely when I add books to my library hold list. Until I downloaded it and finally read the description, I assumed, based on the title, that The Girl Who Smiled Beads would be a novel. It’s a very novel-y title. I was very wrong. This book is the memoir of a young woman, only a year younger than me, who survived the 1994 Rwandan genocide and the years of displacement and brutality that followed. Clemantine Wamariya (originally Uwamariya) was six years […]