So I was mysteriously untempted by the Buffy Season Eight comics for a really long time, and then Fyrefly (inventor of the book blog search, hooray!) started getting all reviewy of them, and that reminded me that I love Buffy like a fat kid loves cake (or a skinny kid – any kid really), and today I went to Bongs & Noodles and (don’t tell) read all four volumes that they had, which was The Long Way Home and No Future for You and Wolves at the Gate and Time of Your Life, but there’s apparently another one after that. …
2 CommentsCategory: 4 Stars
Ah, yes, it’s time for another twisted and disturbing retelling of the Pied Piper, courtesy of the animal-loving Jeane. I can’t decide whether this is more disturbing or What Happened in Hamelin – I feel like the latter, because of all the little children – but this is still fairly disturbing. In a good way! I liked it! The Coachman Rat is all about Cinderella’s rat. On the night of Cinderella’s ball (she’s called Amadea here), an ordinary rat is transformed into a coachman; and at midnight, as she runs away, he is turned back into a rat. Now, however,…
7 CommentsWoohoo! Between-the-wars-in-England stories are my favorite kind! Plus, this is a mystery (I sometimes like mysteries), and although I read the end, I didn’t need to read the end necessarily, because the killer’s identity is known to the reader for most of the book. Lovely. Only way to do it. See, the suspense then wasn’t about who done it, but whether he would do it again! (I will just tell you – he would.) In River of Darkness, Inspector John Madden, a copper scarred by his time in the trenches in the recently-over World War I, is called in on…
4 CommentsCensoring an Iranian Love Story is all about an Iranian writer who’s tired of writing books about oppression and misery in Iran, and he wants to write a love story, maybe not one with a Hollywood ending, but one that will be a true love story, and will not make its readers never want to love. However, because of the censorship in Iran, he keeps crossing out pieces of the story that would not get past the censors. The lovers, Sara and Dara, must act very chaste, never talk about political oppression, and not say or do anything that might…
11 CommentsI don’t know what I can really say about Persepolis that hasn’t been said already. What I love about the first volume of Persepolis is that it’s always about how Marjane interprets the events around her, much more than it is about the events themselves. As she and her family live through the Islamic Revolution, watching its agenda shift and their country change around them, little Marjane acts on what she thinks she understands. There’s a lovely bit where she insists on spending all her time with an uncle who’s a political dissident. Although she is initially interested in him…
3 CommentsSo I have been reading Iran Awakening on and off ever since the Iranian election took over the news. This has been quite a while. I wanted to read it because I felt like I didn’t know enough about Iran and the United States, and the revolution and everything. I thought it was fascinating, how she told about the changes in political power throughout her life. She talks about helping in the revolution, and how afterwards she was asked to wear a headscarf, how people told her Just wait! We want to deal with women’s rights but there are so…
5 Comments