Our bad guy in The Shining Girls is pretty damn creepy, even if he’s never really fleshed out as a character. He’s discovered a run-down house with a wealth of treasures inside, a house that allows him to step out into any year between 1929 and 1993. The house also has a room full of souvenirs, and a wall with names — the names of “shining” girls that Harper will hunt down, or has hunted down, or will hunt down again. “And he’s sorry he ever […]
Nothing to Envy. Plenty to Fear.
Barbara Demick’s Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea is a really hard book to read. Not the writing — it’s wonderfully written — but the subject is so dark and depressing that I had to keep putting it down and stepping away. But it’s hard because it’s true — people are living in fear and famine in North Korea, and if we don’t learn about it, how will anything change? “It is axiomatic that one death is a tragedy, a thousand is a statistic. So […]
Instruction Manual with No Instructions
Caitlin Moran’s How to Be a Woman is definitely one of the funnier memoirs I’ve read. I’m not so sure about some of her advice/opinions, but as she herself states, it’s possible to admire someone even if you don’t agree with 100% of what they say. “What is feminism? Simply the belief that women should be as free as men, however nuts, dim, deluded, badly dressed, fat, receding, lazy and smug they might be. Are you a feminist? Hahaha. Of course you are.” “So here […]
This book gave me hives
Kimberly Rae Miller and I could NOT have had more different childhoods. I have a neat freak mother who instilled in me a fear of clutter and mess at a young age. OCD runs through my family, and while I have a lot of minor tendencies towards it, I have an aunt who’s house is spotless as a result of her brain not allowing her to stop cleaning. When I get anxious or angry, I clean or throw things away. It’s the best way for me […]