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Tag: oscar wilde

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

Aw, this book was so sweet.  I feel like I’ve been hearing about it everywhere I turn, but I think initially I read about it on Caribousmom – apparently ages and ages ago, as she reviewed it in July.  My mother owns a copy, and I borrowed it from her and lost it, so I was in a panic about where it could be, and then the other night I was at home and I saw it on her bookshelf.  Apparently I brought it over to my parents’ house to read and then left it there.  I’m such a spaz.…

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City of Bones, Cassandra Clare; or, I apparently think Oscar Wilde had the werewolf gene

Recommended by: Darla at Books and other thoughts Many spoilers to follow, but you can probably guess them while you’re reading anyway. City of Bones is all about a girl called Clary who witnesses a most unpleasant murder and gets drawn into the wild and wacky world of demon-slaying.  Turns out her mother used to be a demon-slaying badass chick, but left that life to pursue normalcy as a single mum.  Clary has a steamy crush on one of the demon-hunters, Jace, and they have banter and sexual tension; there’s a wicked guy called Valentine (it was hardcore with the…

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Disturbances in the Field, Lynne Sharon Schwartz

I read about this on this blog here, and I’ve been reading it off and on for the last week and a half.  It’s very sad.  Very, very, very, very sad.  It’s a very woeful book.  It’s all about a woman called Lydia and her life in college and then her married life and her children.  I’ll just go ahead and spoil this for you: Two of them die, the younger two, the two she raised to tothood without massive travail and struggle.  And that’s part of the thing that threads through the entire book – you know from the…

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Rules for Saying Goodbye, Katherine Taylor

At last, a review for a book I finished last month.  I didn’t review it before because I had so many anger feelings at the hurricane.  However, we finally have power back.  A tree fell right on my aunts’ house and took it out completely, while they were inside, but they’re okay – probable PTSD aside – and their four dogs are okay.  Our fall holiday got cancelled and I lost thirty pages of a story I was writing under mysterious yet-to-be-explained circumstances.  Gustav was vile, and going to the grocery stores is like being in the Great Depression.  No…

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Emily Climbs

One of my favorite lines in all of literature happens in Emily Climbs: “Of course,” said Mrs. Ann Cyrilla, “I think a great many of Emily’s faults come from her intimacy with Ilse Burnley. She shouldn’t be allowed to run about with Ilse as she does. Why, they say Ilse is as much an infidel as her father….She swears like a trooper, I’m told. Mrs. Mark Burns was in [her father’s] office one day and heard Ilse in the parlor say distinctly ‘out, damned Spot!’ probably to the dog.” Oh God. That’s as good as anything Valancy says in that…

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