This book was so cute. Another reviewer — I think on CBR, might have been Goodreads — astutely pointed out that the main character would have hated it. Absolutely true, but I’m much less curmudgeonly, and thought it was adorable. “We are not quite novels. We are not quite short stories. In the end, we are collected works.” A.J. Fikrey owns an independent bookstore on tiny Alice Island. Books have always been a major part of his life, but recently his life has been pretty bad: […]
“If you let people into your life a little bit, they can be pretty damn amazing.”
Well, I’m not surprised that this YA novel got a lot of press when it came out for it’s “controversial material” (a.k.a., sex and violence). But I don’t think that should keep it out of school libraries and kids’ hands. The sex and violence does not come from a place intending to titillate — instead, Alexie uses it to tell the truth about a society that a lot of people know little to nothing about. “Life is a constant struggle between being an individual and being a […]
Falling in the “3.5 stars, rounded up to 4” camp
Well, I tried to finish this in time for the book club discussion (which I plan to read through today if possible!), but life and m’fing Peacock Emporium got in the way. Nevertheless, I did enjoy it, and while I can see why some people dinged it for certain things, I still felt it was a pretty good read overall. “I wanted to come, and if I hadn’t, they would have been all alone, and nobody would have ever known how frightened and brave and irreplaceable they were.” […]
“If you think I’m going to apologize for being drugged and raped, you have another thing coming.”
This book was incredible. It was well-written, with an incredibly compelling story and characters that I felt I could reach out and touch. I devoured it, and it’s stuck with me for the last few days and probably will for years to come. “There’s a moment when I know that I should scream. But screaming would be hard. And blackness would be easy. Black picks me.” Hermione Winters is captain of her cheerleading team in a small town where cheerleading means more than the actual sports cheered […]