In my reading history, there is a longstanding tradition of Stephen King books and summer. When I was in high school and started my first summer job lifeguarding at the local park district pool, I spent a lot of time on my breaks talking with the cashier, Amy. She was a year older than me and I remember she always had a Stephen King novel with her. On her recommendation, I read Carrie, The Stand, and my favorite, The Dead Zone that summer and those […]
Sweet Dom Wins Me Over
This book surprised me. I would not have picked it up on its own (BDSM, contemporary, May/Decemberish) but it was part of a loose series (Spires) that I had really enjoyed up to this point, and I have started trusting Alexis Hall in general, so I read it and really kind of loved it. Laurie is a sub in the bedroom but out of it he is a successful doctor in his late thirties (I think he is thirty nine but I might not be […]
Sometimes when a famous author
is primarily known for one major work, I go read a smaller work, for a couple of reasons. 1) I almost always like the major work better and well, that makes sense, since it’s the major. 2) I am often worried that when I like a writer, reading their major work will ruin anything else they’ve written. 3) Often the major work is a more challenging text to read. In this case, it’s all three, especially given that Robert Musil’s major work is like 1800 […]
“Holding the leaf inches away from the fire, I repeated the words that my family had been taught since basically the beginning of time: ‘My name is my self, and I give them both freely…'”
The Quick family is responsible for keeping their town safe. They receive offerings, take something from the person, and use that to maintain the cliff on the outside of town. If they were to stop? Rocks fall, everyone dies. The one rule of the Quicks is that they don’t steal from family. Guess how well that works? In the meantime, Aspen has been spending the summer with his grandma and aunt. Being the upstanding guy he is, Aspen gets his best friend’s girlfriend to break […]