The back of this book tells you this collection of short stories is “delightful and terrifying” which immediately drew me in, because I can’t think of two better words that together, conjure up adolescence. In his introduction, the editor Poirier states the stories stem “from nostalgia for the intense and sometimes confusing emotions that we all experienced at this time in our lives.” The cover of the book has a drawing of a frog, belly side up, ready for dissection. This gave me an overwhelming […]
A Little Death to Start the CBR7
First and possibly foremost… Now that we’ve accomplished that very important task, let’s talk my first read of the new year. The Blue Girl is a short story, story 2.5 of The Murder Squad series. The Murder Squad books include Alex Grecian’s other books, The Yard which I read for Cannonball Read 4, and The Black Country which I read for Cannonball Read 6. There is a third full length book, The Devil’s Workshop which I’m planning to read later this year. The series focuses […]
The Bombay in Mumbai
Thirty-seventh book reviewed as part of the 130 Challenge. When ‘Bombay’ was changed to ‘Mumbai’ many years back (it’s actually a decade or more, but seems like yesterday), I was a kid. It didn’t really affect me so much, but I used go around correcting people every time they called ‘Mumbai’, ‘Bombay’. I don’t know why I did that, maybe I asserted my sense of belonging to the city by claiming to know the correct name and declaring it to those who didn’t love it enough to care. […]
A gorgeous short story collection
It seems that most, if not all, of my favorite contemporary authors are putting out books in the next year. I feel grateful, and also a little nervous that it’s going to be a drought for the next two years. Oh, who am I kidding? I have so much to read anyway. My sister alerted me to the release of Stone Mattress, and I immediately put myself on the library waitlist, hoping to get it when it was first released. Sure enough, luck was with […]