CBR10Bingo: This Is The End (BINGO!) Have you ever read a book that you hated to put down but also hated to keep reading because you couldn’t bear the thought of reaching the end? That’s how I felt reading Kate Atkinson’s A God in Ruins, the companion to her brilliant Life After Life. Unlike Ursula in Life After Life, her younger brother Teddy only gets one shot at life. He still becomes a bomber pilot during World War II, still gets shot down over Germany, […]
If you wonder what the Irish were doing in World War II this might answer it….
This is the Award Winner. The Dorothy Canfield Fisher award is a Vermont state award that the books are picked by adults (though I am not always sure why they were the pickers as one was a professor at my college who had no English or child background that I knew of) and then voted on by the kids. Of course, the year I did this award the “cool kids” pick won. But that is the perfect lead in to this book. It is 1943. […]
I’ve been waiting for this moment for Cannonball my life, oh Lord
CBR10Bingo: Backlog (Cannonball! and Bingo! Woohoo!) After reading a few Sherman Alexie books a few years ago, Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony started popping up in my suggestions, and for some reason, I thought it was poetry rather than a novel. Once I read the description, I put it on my wishlist, where it languished for several months until I finally bought a copy last summer at The Last Bookstore in downtown Los Angeles on a long lunch break from jury duty. I’ve pulled it off […]
The Hell of War on the Home Front
Read as part of CBR10Bingo: Almost award winner. Perfidia was nominated for the 2015 Folio Prize but did not win. It speaks to the times we live in that the depth of my cynicism has allowed me to appreciate James Ellroy novels in a way I never could before this summer. This is the second book of his I’ve read the last few months and it’s one of the best things I read in 2018. It could also be that this one is slightly better than the […]