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 CommentsCategory: 3 Stars
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 CommentsThe 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 CommentsThe 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 CommentsYou 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 CommentsI 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
Divergent, Veronica Roth
The beginning: There are five factions in Beatrice’s world, each of which values a particular quality above all other qualities; once you choose your faction as a teenager, it’s where you belong all the rest of your life. When Beatrice (Tris) takes the aptitude test that will indicate whether she best suits Abnegation (the faction in which she was raised), Dauntless, Amity, Erudite, and Candor, the results she receives are frightening. She’s Divergent, not controlled by the quality of any one factor, and this (her tester tells her) is a very unsafe thing for her to be. The end (spoilers…
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