#CBR10 Bingo: Birthday (Ms Stiefvater’s birthday is November 11th) From Goodreads, because it sums it up nicely: Here is a thing everyone wants: A miracle. Here is a thing everyone fears: What it takes to get one. Any visitor to Bicho Raro, Colorado is likely to find a landscape of dark saints, forbidden love, scientific dreams, miracle-mad owls, estranged affections, one or two orphans, and a sky full of watchful desert stars. At the heart of this place you will find the Soria family, who all […]
In the words of Poehler, “Good for her, not for me.” Another laborious tale that I slogged through.
Siiiiiigh. I know you aren’t supposed to judge a book by its cover, but I mean, it’s there, just asking for an appraisal. And when this came through as I checked it out in audio format, with the picture of what looks like a christening gown, I was like, “Eesh. Here we go.” This is one of the picks for the Schaumburg library book club, not a thing I would gravitate toward and I did my best to give it a fair shake but this […]
They don’t give that Pulitzer out for just anything.
American Pastoral won the pulitzer and boy oh boy it is deserved. This novel is a masterpiece of storytelling. Swede Luvov is a small town hero: star athlete, considerate son, professional Jewish American businessman, and married to a former Miss Jersey. By all accounts, he is living the American Dream, until his daughter tears the fabric of his family and life apart as an anti-war terrorist. It takes us a little while to get there though, as the novel is framed as the musings of […]
In which my sweet Granny comes up once again.
I guess I should’ve expected how close to home this would hit: the subtitle sums it up. It revolves around the oral histories of women who were sent to homes for unwed mothers in the 1940s-1960s, their nearly-always coerced adoptions, their lives after surrendering, their reunions if they ever occurred. I am part of a birth family: my mother relinquished my two younger siblings for adoption, and it defined my childhood. Adoption is such a sore nerve, I almost never read about it. Besides which, […]