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Category: 3 Stars

Em and the Big Hoom, Jerry Pinto

Oh how I love a book that can speak unhysterically about the hysterical awfulness of living with a severe mental illness. Em and the Big Hoom (affiliate links: Amazon, B&N, Book Depository) is a son’s story of his manic depressive mother and his family’s life with her. Through conversations with his mother, Em, about how she met his father and the course of her mental illness, we see the toll that Em’s illness has taken on her and on her family. Hat tip to Shannon for the recommendation! Though the book is occasionally disorganized, as Pinto jumps around in time…

10 Comments

Review: Long Division, Kiese Laymon

Now this would have been a good read for A More Diverse Universe, if I had but read it in time. I’m going to cunningly add a link to this post to the More Diverse Universe links page, and by the time Aarti notices it will be too late to do anything about my illicit post-linking. Mwahahahaha, I am the most cunning blogger in all the land. Long DivisionĀ is about a boy named City (short for Citoyen) in 2013 who checks out a book called Long Division about a boy named City in 1985 who time-travels forward to 2013 to…

18 Comments

Review: Everything I Never Told You, Celeste Ng

Here comes my second read for the A More Diverse Universe blogging event, hosted by the wonderful Aarti! Visit the event’s links page to find out what other folks are reading, and keep an eye on the hashtag #diversiverse. With the caveat that I stupid-loved my first read for A More Diverse Universe, I have to say that this, my second, was a bit of a disappointment. In a way it’s my own fault: Everything I Never Told You is about a family struggling to deal with the unexpected and mysterious death of the eldest daughter, a teenager called Lydia;…

7 Comments

Review: The Girls at the Kingfisher Club, Genevieve Valentine

Personal life update: I cut my hair this past summer! I cut it all off, shorter than it has ever been. My hair resembles (less now than when first cut, but still!) the hair of the girl on the cover of The Girls at the Kingfisher Club. This is the first time I have ever walked into a hair salon and asked them to cut off this much hair. Usually I am begging them to cut off less. Anyway, now I have a super cute flapper haircut, and when I put on my cloche hat I look hella jaunty. The…

22 Comments

Review: Snow in Summer, Jane Yolen

Jane Yolen is one of those authors I feel I should love more than I do. I have enjoyed her books, some of them quite a bit, and she wrote me and my sister a terribly nice email when we were kids. But I always go into her books feeling that they will be the perfect fit for me, and then instead they are like that one dress you buy because you think it’s going to be the perfect work dress, and it looks pretty but the pockets are slightly uneven and the way the neckline is prevents you from…

31 Comments

Review: The Descendants, Kaui Hart Hemmings

I’d like to think I am pretty good at sorting out strategies to feel less sad on days when I am feeling sad. But sometimes my strategies bomb, and you are now reading a review of one of those times. I was feeling glum this one day, and I decided that to cheer myself up I was going to read a new book, and I picked The Descendants. Jeanne had said it was really good, and I knew vaguely from two-thirds-forgotten movie trailers that it was about a not-super-close family going on like — a road trip? Maybe? And it…

12 Comments

The story of the time I met Neil Gaiman and he said something extremely lovely to me

I have been reading to Social Sister for more than eighteen years now — off more than on, since we went to college, just as a function of our never being in the same place for very long, but still: Eighteen years. A whole person who can vote. She got brainwashed early into thinking this was a good form of entertainment, and I enjoy it because there is nothing quite like seeing someone else experience a book you love in real time. Anyway, we just finished reading The Ocean at the End of the Lane, which I was reading for…

39 Comments

Landline, Rainbow Rowell

Note: I received a copy of Landline from the publisher for review consideration. Two days before Christmas, Georgie tells her husband Neal that she can’t go with him and their two daughters to spend Christmas with his family in Omaha. A tremendous opportunity has come up for her and her writing partner, Seth, and they have to stay in L.A. and write six episodes of their new television show. After Neal leaves, Georgie begins to fear that she’s damaged her marriage beyond repair. But at her mother’s house, she finds that if she calls using her mother’s rotary phone, she…

24 Comments

A read for Women in Translation Month that I can’t tell you about

Bibliobio is hosting a Women in Translation Month right now, to call attention to the gender disparity in books translated into English, and to celebrate the works of female international authors whose books are being translated into English. It’s a wonderful initiative, even if you are like me and you have a hard time with books in translation, and you should definitely check out the hashtags for the month (#WITMonth or #WomeninTranslation) to see what folks are reading! I have struggled long and hard to write a post about the first book I read for Women in Translation Month, and…

35 Comments