Emily St. John Mandel has become an author like John Green or Liane Moriarty for me — I read her first book and adored it, so I sought out her earlier books and remain largely disappointed. Of the three I’ve read by her — Station Eleven, Last Night in Montreal and now The Singer’s Gun — this book definitely disappointed and irritated me the most. Anton Waker grew up with parents who ran a store filled with stolen goods, and a little bitch of a cousin (with whom he implies that he fell […]
I spent this whole book wondering if I liked it or not — not a good sign
I liked Station Eleven, so I grabbed a couple other Emily St. John Mandel books from the library. Last Night in Montreal — the author’s debut — is, like, pretty good, but not good-good — you know what I mean? I liked it, but the author’s sort of drifty, dreamy narrative style doesn’t work as well here as it did in Station Eleven. And while I desperately wanted to know how it ended and solve the central mystery, I didn’t really enjoy the journey getting there. “It was beginning to dawn on her […]
Let’s go to battle school for a while
I read Ender’s Game for the first time when I was maybe 8 or 9 years old. I remember distinctly that my mom borrowed it from the library for herself, but I thought it was for me and had the whole thing read by the time she noticed I stole it from her bag. That’s the appeal of the Ender books — particularly the first — children and adults can both enjoy and learn from them. I’ve reread Ender’s Game and its sequels every few years […]
Post-Apocalyptic Shakespeare
I read a million reviews of Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven on this site, so I finally found myself a copy. Y’all were right — this was a good read! “The beauty of this world where almost everyone was gone. If hell is other people, what is a world with almost no people in it?” A super flu hits the world and wipes out just about everyone. 20 years later, Kristen and her band of musicians/actors travel North America, putting on performances for the small pockets of civilization […]