Written a decade ago, Geography Club (2004) spawned a book series and a recent TV movie. An engaging read, I can understand why this debut novel by Brent Hartinger is so successful. After all, it was written at a time when stories featuring gay characters were rare. Read the review, here.
Living in the Aftermath
A surprisingly quick read at 192 pages, Hush (2002) is a complex YA novel that lingers. It offers readers a glimpse into the effects of events outside of some people’s control, and the harsh, seemingly bleak but ultimately hopeful aspects of living. In the aftermath of Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, among countless others, Hush becomes an evocative, relevant, and poignant read. Read the full review, here.
Strong Start, Weak Finish
If not for the humor in the exposition of her epistolary novel, I’d have never read, much less bought Maria Semple’s bestseller, Where’d You Go, Bernadette (2012). A satire of the Seattle-based super rich and privileged, I found myself not liking many of the characters because they typified so many of my stereotypes of the super rich: delusional, entitled, competitive, paranoid, and money/power/status obsessed. Despite my less than positive review, the novel is well-written and stylistically inventive. For these reasons, it gets three rather than two stars. Read […]
When in Rome…
Rabid fandom is one reason I’ve yet to watch Titanic and never got into Friends, Lost, among many other highly successful films and TV shows. Instead, I tend to dedicate my viewing time to the underdogs, which is to say that a lot of the shows that I do like tend to get cancelled, i.e. Arrested Development, Life, Chicago Code, Human Target, Men of a Certain Age. To date, The Good Wife is the only one of my faves to have escaped that fate. With that said, you can imagine how resistant […]