Jack Reacher needs no introduction. His larger-than-life, soft-hearted self once again gets into a mess by doing a good deed for a pretty lady–this one with a crutch. She gets snatched off the street by a trio of bad guys and Reacher gets snatched along with her. The first part of the story is devoted to long hot sweaty hours chained together in a dark van going somewhere, and the slow build of a sort of relationship while Reacher does his best to calculate […]
We Used to Be Friends (and still are)
Since the original series was noir fiction transported to the UPN—complete with voiceover (by Kristen Bell) and a sunny California town with a seedy underbelly—it makes perfect sense to create a book series based on Veronica’s world. Actually, when I googled VM to see which network it originally aired on (I thought UPN but wasn’t sure), I read that Rob Thomas had originally conceived of the show as a young adult book series with a male protagonist but decided that a female POV would be […]
Shaking the Family Tree
This book of Munro’s short stories was the March selection for my book club and with the exception of the person who had recommended it, most of the group had found it slow going. At the time, I was only halfway through the collection and though I didn’t hate it like some of my book club friends did, I was finding it hard to connect. However, at about the halfway point, when these stories based on Munro’s family history, got closer generationally to Munro, I […]
Melancholy and Infinite Sadness
Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes had a bad marriage, and were probably both rather difficult people. I don’t know. I do know that I love their poetry, and reread both their work often. Hughes’ last collection, Birthday Letter, might not be his best, but it’s impossible for me to resist. As a commentary on Plath’s life and poetry, I don’t like it, because it seems to simplify and reduce her work, but as a collection of poems in its own right, I adore it. Birthday […]