This was one of those books that I noticed on the shelf and pretty much decided to buy before I even picked it up. The cover is designed like a video rental jacket from the 80’s, front to back, right down to the “Be Kind, Rewind” sticker, and it’s like I had no choice. I still remember in fourth grade when the one liquor store in town started renting VCRs and movies on VHS, and just looking at this book brought back the sights and […]
I just need to focus on me right now
Over the last three months, I’ve been trying to get my life in order, throwing out the things I don’t want/like/need, part middle-aged decluttering and part long-term strategy to go on offense against depression. I’ve already given up alcohol, caffeine, and sweets. My next target: mindless phone use. So when Lollygagger mentioned How to Break Up with Your Phone in a Pajiba comment, I knew it was going to the top of my BUY IT NOW list. She reviewed it here on CBR the day […]
Charleth Dickenth thtarring Daffy Duck
I was really looking forward to reading Hard Times when I pulled it off the shelf. I’m a Dickens fan. A Tale of Two Cities is one of my all-time favorites, and Bleak House is right up there, too. And I have to say this was the most Dickensian novel that Dickens ever Dickensed. Unfortunately, that’s not a good thing. It lacked a lot of my favorite things about Dickens. There wasn’t much of a mystery. There weren’t many great lines. And there weren’t any […]
Confessions of a recovering literary fiction snob
I loved reading fantasy and horror and suspense as a kid, and I loved the literary fiction we read in school. As an adult, I started taking myself and my choice of reading materials far too seriously, staying away from anything too genre, making rare exceptions for Atwood’s Madd Addam series or Tolkien. [I know. Insert eye roll <<here>>] And then about six years ago, I read and loved Iain Banks’s The Wasp Factory, and I started looking into his other books and found that […]