I wanted to like this book more than I actually did; I’m a sucker for pop culture writing. That said, it falls prey to two pitfalls I thoroughly dislike – nostalgia bias and the sense that the writer was looking for an excuse to write about her favorite movies rather than that she had anything novel to say about them. I knew what I was getting into to a certain extent with the first point; you don’t write a book on what 80s movies can […]
Wonder No More, This Book is Good!
The wonder mentioned in the title is a young girl named Anna who lives in a small village in Ireland and has reportedly not eaten any food for four months. The protagonist is a widowed English nurse, trained by Florence Nightingale, who comes to the village as an impartial judge to examine the claims of the village. The nurse is judgmental of the poverty of the Irish village and skeptical of the community’s claim that this girl is somehow getting nourishment from God. Lib the […]
The Nest? More like the Mess!
Don’t be fooled by the wonderful description of this book! It’s supposedly an amazing debut novel about a dysfunctional family and the front cover has a blurb by Amy Poehler. It was even voted as the best book of 2016 and made it to the Goodreads finalist lists. The book takes place in New York city and it’s about the Plumb family, four children who grew up in a fairly dysfunctional house and then made their way in the world. The Nest in the title […]
Jodi Picoult Does Racism
Jodi Picoult is one of those authors I think of as “easy reading.” Her books are written in a way where thing are pretty well laid out for the reader. She does tackle topics that can be controversial or morally ambiguous but does it in a gentle way where she’s not alienating most readers. I found out that my mom’s book club was reading this book and purchased a copy for her, and figured I would read it myself. The book is the story of […]