Pretty much every night, Conor wakes up screaming from the same nightmare. So when the monster shows up in his garden, just after midnight, he’s not as scared as you may have thought that he’d be. After all, he deals with some pretty unpleasant things on a daily basis. The bullies who pick on him in school. The fact that he seems to be falling out with his only friend. The teachers either ignoring him or being overly understanding and solicitous. His father, who seems […]
Dying Is Just A Verb
Best for: Someone who wants to provoke (a bit of) deeper thinking on the ways we live our lives. In a nutshell: A hospice chaplain uses stories from families and individuals she has assisted to make sense of life. Line that sticks with me: “The things you lose do shape who you become. But the losses don’t obliterate what came before.” Why I Chose It: This was an impulse buy only in that it was on my list and I didn’t yet own it. I […]
Trouble in paradise
I fell head over heels for the movie adaptation of The Descendants a few years back. This family dealing with their grief struck me as true to life. The loss of a loved one can be overwhelming but life still goes forward, even when you’re dying inside. The Descendants captured that dichotomy and I’ve been meaning to read the book ever since. The novel centers on Matt King and his family. Matt’s great grandmother was a Hawaiian princess and he and his cousins are the […]
The Hidden Chamber
I got on the library queue for this book because I knew that it contains “The Monarch of the Glen,” which is the novella follow-up to American Gods. I am committed to my American Gods love, and wanted to complete my library of knowledge of all things Shadow. But this book, oh, this wonderful book. It’s a collection of some of the most beautiful poetry and short stories, in perfect Gaiman-ian language, set in dark landscapes that are undeniably his. I could pick these works […]