Last year my seven year old got into a cute cooking manga called Kitchen Princess. I read and reviewed book one for Cannonball Read 10 but then only skimmed through the second through fourth books. After reading volumes five and six my daughter somberly told me that a character had died and requested that I read them too. This was an unexpected turn for a shojo manga. The first four volumes contained a beginning love triangle between female protagonist Najika Kazami and brothers Daichi and Sora […]
I wish for more
I picked up this 2017 collection of short stories because it featured contributions of several writers whose work I’ve reviewed before and liked, and the subject of djinn (or jinn or genies, whatever term you prefer) has been popping up on my radar quite a bit lately. The Djinn Falls in Love and Other Stories was a brilliant way for me to start CBR11 — immensely entertaining, sometimes provocative, and an entree to the works of writers new to me but whose work I will definitely be tracking down. The stories are a wonderful mix of styles and settings and shed light not only on the nature of the djinn but on human nature as well. The djinn, created by Allah from smokeless fire, are sometimes depicted as tricky and/or evil, but in some ways they are no different from humans.
Eleanor Oliphant is not at all what I expected.
Despite this book being raved about by so many, and making an appearance on tons of “My Favourite Books” lists, I had no idea what it was about. I picked it up on a whim during a long road trip when I just wasn’t feeling the books that I had packed (THIS is why you always overpack books, people!). From the description on the back cover, I was expecting an easy-breezy, chick lit style book about a quirky-but-loveable character – and initially that’s what it […]
Ringing in the New Year with Deadpool
The first of my Christmas swag up for review, Side Pieces is the second volume in the Spiderman/Deadpool series, the first of which I adored. Lacking the overall story that drove Isn’t It Bromantic and instead gathering together some of the additional material that’s bookended other stories, Side Pieces is more hit and miss than its predecessor, but not enough to make it completely unenjoyable in itself. Taking in the making of a Deadpool movie, a flashback to some election tampering, an encounter with Penn […]