This book. Oh, this lovely, quiet, little book that wormed its way in to my heart and left me weeping. Peggy Cort is the librarian of a small Cape Cod tourist town in the 1950s. She’s the very definition of a spinster in her brown tweed and sensible shoes. She’s lonely, weary with it, resigned to it, defined by it. “Socks mate for life,” she says sadly, and in those words, the reader understands perfectly how desperately Peggy wants to be loved. And then one […]
Girls. Jesus Christ. They can drive you crazy.
Half Cannonball! Somehow, I escaped high school without ever having read The Catcher in the Rye. I’m not sure how, since it feels like we read every other book in the world. Maybe the nuns weren’t crazy about old Holden Caulfield. And strangely, while I have always been aware of Holden, I never really knew his story. So I embarked on what is arguably Salinger’s best known, and most divisive, work without having any idea what to expect. The novel opens just before Christmas, with […]
No One Is Safe
I don’t think I can reach the 250 word quota for this review. Just go read this book. It’s hilarious. No book is safe, no character left unscathed. Ortberg’s ability to hone in on the character’s personality and then twist it into the 21st century is ridiculously brilliant and packs a punch that shades between laughing out loud and the irresistible urge to shout “BURN!” to the character on the page. My two all-time favorite sections are her rip on the American Girl series and […]
The Sins of the Father…
Set in rural 1960s Mississippi, Father and Son spans a week in a small town after one of their own, Glen Davis, returns from three years in the state penitentiary for running over and killing a young boy while driving drunk. Glen is angry, furious, and the reader senses immediately that this is not a man who has learned his lesson. He’s hard-edged, cold and disconnected, and there is no redeeming quality in him. Glen returns to an elderly father intent on drinking himself to […]