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Category: 3 Stars

Review: Island of a Thousand Mirrors, Nayomi Munaweera

In my post last year about reading diversely, I forgot to mention another side effect of more diverse reading: gaining new areas of interest. Sri Lanka came onto my radar when I read the beautiful-covered On Sal Mal Lane last year, but it also left me uncertain about the particulars of the country’s civil wars. The difficulty is that when there are no hooks in your brain for new information to grab onto, you’re less willing to take in that information in the first place; and once you have taken it in, you’re less likely to retain it. (This is…

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What really woke up Snow White (hint: it was not a kiss)

I received an electronic copy of this book from the publisher, for review consideration. The venerable Jack Zipes, one of the shiniest scholars in fairy tale studies, has brought us a lovely treat, which is a new translation of the first edition of the Grimm Fairy Tales, decorated with wonderfully creepy illustrations by Andrea Dezsö. This edition includes stories that were later excised for reasons of provenance (Bluebeard was too French to keep in subsequent editions), incompleteness, repetitiveness, or family-unfriendly values. The Grimms make the following case for the inclusion of the sex-and-devils stories: Objections have been raised . .…

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Review: Freedom and Necessity, Steven Brust and Emma Bull

How Freedom and Necessity was described to me by Anastasia: An epistolary novel set in Victorian times, with magic! What I pictured: Sorcery and Cecelia The primary topic of the first forty pages of Freedom and Necessity: Hegel, I swear to God. You know, the philosopher. And his concepts of idealism. So, yeah. Me and Freedom and Necessity got off to a bumpy start. Luckily, I was on the bus and had nothing else of interest for my eyes to rest on for the duration of the bus ride, which meant that perforce I read past the first 40 pages…

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Review: Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, Benjamin Alire Sáenz

I love love love it when authors describe their complicated books in a very simple way. Helen Oyeyemi has said that White Is for Witching is about a xenophobic house. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie described Americanah as a romance. And Benjamin Alire Sáenz says this about Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe: “Some boys just know they’re gay. . . . And I think other boys don’t know, and they start discovering that. And that’s the book.” That’s parts of the book. There are other parts too. There are parts about what secrets do to a family, and…

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Not a dumb American: American edition

An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States is a read for Nonfiction November, hosted by the marvelous Kim (Sophisticated Dorkiness), Leslie (Regular Rumination), Katie (Doing Dewey), and Rebecca (I’m Lost in Books). Rebecca’s the host for this week, so head on over to her blog to see the nonfiction other bloggers have been reading and recommending! My American history memory is in a parlous state, mostly because I have never been terribly interested in it. But I am VERY VERY interested in colonial powers and the ways they do colonialism, so I was eager to pick up Roxane Dunbar-Ortiz’s…

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Reviewlets

Here it is the middle of November, and I have to accept that I am never going to get full posts written on some of these books before the end of the year. So I am doing a small batch edition. First up, Max Brooks and Canaan White’s comic The Harlem Hellfighters, which I received from the publisher for review consideration, and am (eek!) reviewing rather belatedly. The Harlem Hellfighters were an all-black infantry regiment in World War I; they never lost a man through capture or gave up a foot of ground to the enemy. Rather touchingly, Max Brooks…

6 Comments

Lives in Ruins, Marilyn Johnson

Note: I received an e-galley of this book from the publisher, via Edelweiss, for publicity purposes. Remember before when I said that academics had sometimes made my life difficult in the past? And that it prevented me from enjoying Dear Committtee Members, or even giving it its due? Well, the group of academics who never made my life difficult was archaeologists, and the opposite force was at work while I read Lives in Ruins, the newest book by the author who immersed us in the world of librarians in This Book Is Overdue! and obituarists in The Dead Beat. Archaeology,…

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Byrd, Kim Church

When I read non-speculative fiction, I like for there to be a Premise; for the book to be what they call high-concept. Like a girl was raised side by side with an ape, and here is what her life is like as an adult. Or a man’s personality completely changes following a traumatic brain injury. Or a British soldier assumes a secret identity to find his friend’s murderers. For me to pick up a book with a premise as quiet as Byrd‘s–a woman in her early thirties falls pregnant and gives the baby up for adoption–someone usually has to have…

11 Comments

Horrorstör, Grady Hendrix

Note: I received a copy of Horrorstör from the publisher, Quirk Books, for review consideration. I almost missed RIP once again this year! I always have the best of intentions about participating in R.I.P., but then I forget to read scary books, or I do read scary books but I forget to call them RIP reads or schedule them while RIP is running. Not this year! This year, I have squeaked one in under the wire! Horrorstör was acquired with the express intention of qualifying for Carl’s wondrous R.I.P. Challenge (now in its ninth year). Amy works at Orsk, an…

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Review: Blue and Gold, K. J. Parker

Some vicious alchemy of hormones, depression, and running backs hitting people smaller and weaker than they are played havoc with my mood in September. If I were a color in September I’d have been blue; if I were a Tarot card, six of swords; if I were an internet meme, Sad Keanu. As I write this post, I am back up to like, gold, eight of pentacles, and videos of animals who have formed unlikely cross-species friendships. And you know who (partly) cheered me up? My girl (maybe?) K. J. Parker! If you do not know, K. J. Parker is…

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