I was floored by this book. I’m glad that I was able to sit and read it over the course of one day, to really sink into it and give it my full attention. Yesterday my region was hit by our fourth nor’easter of the month (seriously, I’m ready for second winter and March to find the exit) and since my job often makes us come into work in terrible weather conditions, and I live in a pretty inaccessible place, I spend most snow days […]
A Return Trip to the South of France and its Flower Fields
Last fall I picked up the first book in the La Vie en Roses series, Once Upon a Rose. Due to some ridiculous writing by the New York Times at about the same time, my review of that book is mostly subsumed by my rage about the way genre writing is discussed by major reviewers. However, I found much to be enjoyed in Laura Florand’s writing, and was excited to return to the South of France for a little refueling between One of Us is […]
“Now we have to somehow un-fuck everybody.”
Quick Review: This is a very good YA debut by Angie Thomas and it is important reading to be done in this cultural climate in the United States. Thomas clearly, and evocatively, brings the reader into the layered life of a black teen in today’s United States with its systemic racism. It reminded me of of my own history, and my lived experience, and grew it out. But it isn’t a primer in the way that Between the World and Me is, it is a […]
A Song, Its Creator, the Artists Who Interpret It, and More Than 30 Years of Impact
In much the same way that my brother’s visit inspired me to pick up Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Astrophysics for Peoplein a Hurry the Winter Olympics pushed me to move The Holy or the Broken up my to read pile. There were several figure skaters who performed to some version of “Hallelujah” and I’ve always had an interest in this iconoclast of a song, so the book was already on its way to me by happenstance (it was however delayed by over 20 days in arriving […]