Thorn arrived in my mailbox for the Kid for her birthday from my friend who lives in Alaska. Her wife went to college with Intisar Khanani, and so they sent her a signed copy and a note that maybe I should read it first. And since I was in a slump, and she had a book report due on something else, I snagged it, not expecting a whole lot, which just goes to show you about expectations, because this book blew me away. Thorn is […]
Reality Bites
I picked up Domestic Violets in the bargain bin at Barnes & Noble and opened to the first page, where our hero Tom Violets was deep in the middle of a conversation with his penis, desperately trying to give it a pep talk, because his wife was waiting in the bedroom, dressed in Victoria’s best, and his little buddy was not cooperating. If my penis were a writer/director, it would be Woody Allen – small, neurotic, and, frankly, hit or miss. Just as things are […]
Leaving’s hard, but it ain’t the hardest thing
Boss read Descent about a year ago and praised it quite a bit, but I dismissed it because the way he described it didn’t really hold my interest. He gave me the basic premise and just kept telling me that it was good, but I wasn’t in the market for a mystery or a thriller, and so I shrugged it off as we tend to not always have the same taste in books. But then I was at Barnes & Noble recently, and nothing else […]
Up on the Roof
It’s tough to write about suicide and not glamorize it or, alternately, vehemently condemn it. Most of the time, suicidal characters have Big Trauma in their lives, and so, to some extent, their desire to end their lives is understandable, at least from a literary point of view. Or on the other side of the coin, suicide is used as a tool to show how selfish a character is, to show the destruction left behind, and the character is vilified. But in A Long Way […]