Half Cannonball! Somehow, I escaped high school without ever having read The Catcher in the Rye. I’m not sure how, since it feels like we read every other book in the world. Maybe the nuns weren’t crazy about old Holden Caulfield. And strangely, while I have always been aware of Holden, I never really knew his story. So I embarked on what is arguably Salinger’s best known, and most divisive, work without having any idea what to expect. The novel opens just before Christmas, with […]
I wouldn’t mind taking my breathing room in Tuscany…
Years ago, I read a book by Susan Elizabeth Phillips called Glitter Baby. It was chick lit, but it wasn’t half bad. Boss, who purports to be a book snob but secretly devours celebrity biographies and the much jucier autobiographies, made fun of it, and now Glitter Baby is office shorthand for trashy romance novels. So when I was looking for something light (and free on the library’s website), I found Breathing Room, and figured that I couldn’t go wrong with another Phillips. Dr. Isabel […]
Mr. Maybe You Should Skip This One
I think the first Jane Green book I read was Family Pictures, and it was fantastic, so I had pretty high hopes for Mr. Maybe, but unfortunately, it fell flat for me. Libby is a twenty-something single woman living in London. She works in PR, handling mainly local B-list celebrities, including the local morning news personality Amanda. She has a best friend, Jules, who is married to an awesome guy named Jamie, and a relatively good circle of friends. But the one thing she doesn’t […]
It’s the end of the world as we know it…
Ender’s Game arrived in my inbox from JB with this note: “Read this now…better than whatever you are currently reading.” Since I was reading Every Day, I can’t agree with that statement, but I can say that once I finished Every Day, I blew through Ender’s Game in just a couple of days and loved it. Ender’s Game is the first book in what eventually became a quintet about Andrew “Ender” Wiggins, the youngest of three brilliant children, who is chosen for Battle School, an […]