Bingo Square: Dream Vacation I honestly am not sure what I was expecting from this one but between Reese Witherspoon and positive Cannonball reviews, I knew I wanted to read it. It had a darker underside than I realized while also focusing on all the themes I was expecting from the story, such as relationships, gender, cultural and generational divides, and different approaches to life as an immigrant. Nikki is the youngest daughter in an English Punjabi family. Already being English speakers when they emigrated, […]
Dead Man Upright: An Elegy for Derek Raymond
I read this one for the Cannonball Run Bingo, category: “This is the End.” It is the last book in the Factory Series. I first came across Derek Raymond’s work on a list of unheralded dystopias. He had written his A State of Denmark in the late-60s in response to British politics of that time. I liked his voice as a write but couldn’t connect with the main character and so I set the book aside. A few months later, I discovered the “Backlisted” podcast, where a […]
Though I Look Right at Home I Still Feel Like an Exile
Years before he took on the role of Jaime Lannister on Game of Thrones, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau was in a short-lived FOX show called New Amsterdam. It wasn’t great, but it wasn’t terrible either; Coster-Waldau was easy on the eye and the show raised some interesting questions about the burdens of outliving those around you again and again. I had almost forgotten about that series until I started to read Matt Haig’s novel, How To Stop Time. The main character, Tom Hazard, is not immortal, but […]
Happiness is reading a good romance months before the actual release date
Disclaimer! This was an ARC granted to me through NetGalley. It has in no way influenced my review. Beatrix “Trix” Lane may be tiny, but she also used to be fierce and confident and very ambitious. Until her former boyfriend pretty much broke her down entirely and left her a pale shadow of herself. Now that the star of the fancy acrobatic West End show she’s in has been possibly permanently damaged after a fall, Trix has a chance at the lead role, but she’s […]