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Category: 3 Stars

Ed Brubaker’s Captain America: Meh.

Whenever my family discusses which superheroes various NFL quarterbacks would be, everyone agrees that Drew Brees would be Captain America. I agree too, I guess, but it bums me out because Captain America is sort of (sorry! sorry! sorry! but he is) boring. And Drew Brees is not boring. In real life it is heartwarming, not dull, for someone to be all the time kind and good. Randon always says: “I think you should read some more Captain America comics. I think you’d like him if you read some of his comics.” And I say, “Mmmmmmmm, I don’t think so.”…

11 Comments

Review: I’ll Be Seeing You, Suzanne Hayes and Loretta Nyhan

The beginning: Two war wives in the midst of World war II, one pregnant, one with a husband and son both away at war, begin corresponding with each other. Through their letters, they become very dear friends, exchanging recipes, sympathy, and prayers for each other.    At first, I thought I’ll Be Seeing You (affiliate links: Amazon, B&N, Book Depository) was a very by-the-numbers homefront of World War II book. To some extent, it is. The women talk about missing their menfolk; Rita finds out that her son was sort of seeing a nondescript woman at the local bar, which…

4 Comments

Review: The Hidden, Tobias Hill

The beginning: A man called Ben, separated from his wife, has come to Greece for three months to get away from his life in Oxford. For a while he works at a meat grill in Athens, but a chance meeting with a colleague gets him a job on an excavation at Sparta, an excavation populated with a group of strange, unfriendly, exclusive people. The end (no spoilers): I had it in my head that this book was like a cross between a Carol Goodman novel and The Secret History. The eternity Ben spends in Athens as a waiter or whatever…

16 Comments

Review: Ruby and the Stone Age Diet, Martin Millar

  The beginning: An unnamed narrator and his flatmate Ruby come home one day to find that a girl has died outside of their squat. “What it needs now,” says Ruby, “is for the radio to start playing ‘You’re Sixteen, You’re Beautiful, and You’re Mine.’”   “Yes,” I agree. “If that was to happen it would be immensely poignant.”   But when I switch on the radio the only station we can find is broadcasting a report from the Tokyo stock market instead, and no matter how we try we cannot work this up into any really effective kind of…

18 Comments

Review: Talking from 9 to 5, Deborah Tannen

Because the cover image icons on my library ebook wish lists are rather wee, I was not able to see that there is a subtitle to this book, and it explains that the book is about gendered differences in conversational styles in the workplace and how it can affect people’s professional lives. Most of my notes for this review were about my sadness that the book focused so closely on gender to the exclusion of other interesting aspects of how people talk at work (when acronyms/jargon get used, what kind of conversational accommodations are made in various settings to visitors,…

11 Comments

Review: The Memory Effect, eds. Russell Kilbourn and Eleanor Ty

You know how sometimes when you’ve been drinking you hit that stage where you are ready for bed but you can’t actually go to bed yet, and you’re not really listening to people around you but you want to pretend you are to be polite? So you put on a really serious face to make it appear that you are listening and comprehending every word that’s being said, and periodically you nod enthusiastically? Have y’all had this? Because that was how I felt during some of the essays in The Memory Effect. I requested it on NetGalley and I was…

7 Comments

Leaving Atlanta, Tayari Jones

Between 1979 and 1981, at least 28 black children and adults were killed by a serial killer in Atlanta. Tayari Jones grew up in Atlanta in this time period, and two of the murdered children were from her elementary school. Leaving Atlanta is about those experiences–what it’s like to be a black child in a time and place where black children are being snatched and murdered. It is a little bit like being afraid for your life, but it’s much more like going to school and worrying about the distinction between being from near the projects rather than actually from…

14 Comments

Cuckoo in the Nest, Michelle Magorian

I have been burning through PaperbackSwap credits like they aren’t making them anymore, y’all. All of a sudden, everything on my wish list has been coming in at once. Lovely PaperbackSwap. If you are not familiar with them, please let me know and I will send you a referral. I have gotten such wonderful books from PaperbackSwap, including both of Joan Wyndham’s first two books (which are the two I wanted anyway). And earlier this month I got Cuckoo in the Nest, another Michelle Magorian book about British evacuees and their challenges on both ends of the evacuation process. (The…

11 Comments

Review: The House at Tyneford, Natasha Solomons

The original title to this book, for those interested, is The Novel in the Viola, and then they changed it to The House at Tyneford (affiliate links: Amazon, B&N, Book Depository) for US publication. At first I thought this was clearly a better title, and then as I read the book I thought that I could see why the publishers changed it for the US publication. In the end I could not decide which title was better. Your thoughts, dear readers? The beginning: In early 1938, Elise and her family are making plans to leave Vienna. Her parents and sister…

14 Comments