Skip to content

Category: 2 Stars

A Casual Vacancy, J. K. Rowling

Y’all know what I hate? I hate it when reviewers say shit like this: Chances are none of these people will be deemed sufficiently “likable” by the pop-culture-coddled, uplift-craving audience that makes up a goodly portion of Rowling fandom. But hats off to her for not toning things down an iota in order to please them. It’s irritating when a reviewer implies that people who didn’t like a book she liked are somehow a less virtuous kind of reader than she is (in this case, the kind of reader who doesn’t want to think about Important Social Issues); or to…

32 Comments

The Secret to Lying, Todd Mitchell

I am writing this review from the wonderful coffee shop I frequent on weekend mornings, and there is a woman doing a crossword who just said “Who’s smart about children’s literature?” and then asked a question whose answer I did not know. Did not know! Even though I love children’s books! It was rather a blow to my self-esteem! If I don’t know the children’s books questions I don’t have any area of expertise. It made my heart sad. What I am finding is that — leaving out Diana Wynne Jones, who is sui generis — I am not any…

18 Comments

Review: A Long, Long Sleep, Anna Sheehan

In a way, I did this to myself. I should know by now that I do not like, and have never liked, science fictiony retellings of fairy tales. There’s just something about it that feels very deeply weird. Magic is magic and science is science, and — and — you know? It feels jarring. So I was setting myself up for disappointment in this, my first attempt to discern whether all Candlewick authors are as good as Patrick Ness and Melina Marchetta. (Also because Patrick Ness and Melina Marchetta are really awesome.) Rose Fitzroy wakes up after sixty years in…

13 Comments

Review: Wonder Boys, Michael Chabon

With sadness, I must at last admit to myself and the world that Michael Chabon’s fiction is not for me. I loved that one book of essays he wrote. I agree with the sensible, interesting things he says about genre fiction and fandom and family. I think it is cool the high regard in which he and his wife plainly hold each other. I am in like Flynn if that show they are writing for HBO where magicians fight Nazis or whatever comes to fruition. But with his fiction I’m afraid I have decided I shall have nothing further to…

27 Comments

Not a Review: Attachments, Rainbow Rowell

Y’all, look, I like to suspend disbelief as much as the next girl and probably more than some. I’m willing to roll with an awful lot of fictional punches, and the reason for this is that I know that if you don’t accept the premise of a book, you are refusing to engage with it on the most basic level. There is then no point in reading it, and if you insist on reading it (maybe because, as in this case, you hope that the book will somehow make its nonsense premise work), there is subsequently no point talking about…

25 Comments

The Defining Decade, Meg Jay, PhD

You know what I’m happy about? I’m happy that before reading The Defining Decade — which was judgmentally delivered to me at my office without any explanation I could discern as to why it was being delivered to me, so I could only conclude that the universe thinks I’m doing my twenties wrong (which I am not) and would like to help me out with it — I saw the second episode of the HBO show Girls, in which Lena Dunham’s character glances at a relationship-rules book and says that she hate-read it in the Detroit airport once. I’m glad…

21 Comments

Review: Before I Go to Sleep, S. J. Watson

Thanks, blogosphere, for having the exact opinion of Before I Go to Sleep that I had my own self. As usual y’all were right about everything. Before I Go to Sleep is about a woman called Christine who developed amnesia following some sort of accident (she can’t remember). Every morning when she wakes up, her memories of the previous day are gone. She doesn’t remember her husband Ben, or her doctor, or any of her friends or experiences from her old life. On a good day she can remember as recently as her college years. Every day, Ben patiently explains…

14 Comments

Review: Prep, Curtis Sittenfeld

I went to the library the other day and got all the available books classified under the heading “Boarding schools — Fiction”. Sometimes a girl gets a craving. Prep is about a Midwestern girl called Lee who goes to a fancy Massachusetts preparatory school, Ault, where she feels terribly out of place because she is from the Midwest and because she is not rich but is on a scholarship. Because it might actually be against the rules of literature to write about a girl at a fancy boarding school who comes from the same background as all her peers. Here…

28 Comments

Review: No Bone Unturned, Jeff Benedict

The problem with nonfiction is that I always want specialized stuff and the libraries don’t want me to have it. Or, the other problem with nonfiction might be, there’s just not enough of it out there. I wanted to read loads more books about looting and other cultural property issues, because I enjoyed Stealing History and was interested in the issues it raised. I don’t think I appreciated it enough for portraying the complexities of the issues, like the compromises archaeologists have to make with collectors if they want to have any opportunity whatsoever to study looted antiquities. Then I…

12 Comments

Review: The Judas Kiss, David Hare

You won’t believe me but it’s true: I didn’t know this play was about Oscar Wilde. HEAR ME OUT. I was at the library and I happened to stumble upon the drama section, and I decided I would give David Hare a try, and The Judas Kiss happened to be the title that appealed to me the most. I didn’t know until I opened it up and started reading that it was going to be about Oscar Wilde. It’s true. Contrary to what I may have led you to believe, there are things about Oscar Wilde that I do not…

1 Comment