Recommended by my mother. Of course. This is a book about a girl in 1920s New Orleans who dies prematurely, before anything about her life gets properly decided, particularly before she makes a decision about her boyfriend Andrew, a fact that proves troublesome to her after she dies. She is called Razi, and she haunts a Baton Rouge couple, Amy and Scott, who are dealing with the fallout from a loss of their own. The story flips back and forth between their story and Razi’s life as a – for lack of a better word – ghost, over the years,…
2 CommentsCategory: 4 Stars
On reflection, I believe I am glad I didn’t buy this in my recent spate of bookbuying, because I have still not decided whether I want to own it forever. It’s very good – a graphic novel memoir about first love and losing faith – and I enjoyed it both times I read it, and I am looking forward to Craig Thompson’s next, whenever that may be. I don’t have anything bad to say about it, actually. The drawings are black and white, line drawings, and Mr. Thompson makes excellent use of the whole graphic novel form to do things…
2 CommentsRecommended by actually a number of book blogs – A Reader’s Journal and the other Jenny Claire from my lovely home state both reviewed it well. I’ve been putting off reading this because I didn’t like Chocolat at all – I thought the film was better. A terrifying and rare thing for me to say, and I generally only say it about The Princess Bride and Cold Comfort Farm; my opinion swayed in the latter case by how adorable I think Kate Beckinsale is, and how all the jokes surprised me in the film but not in the book, which…
1 CommentFor some reason I had it in my head that this was going to be the last of the Temeraire series. Not really sure why I thought that – evidently Ms. Novik plans to have probably nine of them before she’s done. She must have many, many facts in her brain to want to write so many books (even though she’s now ditched history entirely). Yes, at this point she has abandoned real history in favor of stuff that’s more fun, which, hey, I’m completely fine with. It would be silly to accept dragons and then complain that Napoleon had…
1 CommentThere has never been a more picked-up-at-random than this book. Basically I was at Bongs & Noodles before the storm, trying to pick out a good hurricane book. And I kind of wanted to get Special Topics in Calamity Physics, but I had already read it. And I kind of wanted to get The Unconsoled, by Kazuo Ishiguro, because of how haunting I remember Never Let Me Go was, but I felt doubtful about it. So I sat on a chair gazing at my options, and then I realized that what I really wanted was to read The Far Pavilions…
3 CommentsRecommended by: GeraniumCat’s great big list of children’s books you should have read as a kid Nothing as appealing as people mentioning things that you might have missed but they hope you haven’t. Unfortunately most of the books on the list weren’t at the library on account of, I assume, being wildly out of print and based in the United Kingdom, but I got Carrie’s War. It’s about two little Blitz evacuee kids (I love books about evacuee kids) who get evacuated to Wales and live with a family and the older girl, Carrie, does a terrible thing. I like…
Leave a CommentRecommended by some book blog somewhere, though damned if I remember where. I’ve been meaning to get this out of the library for ages, and it was very fortunately not checked out last time I went. Oh, it was such fun to read! I was so pleased by it! It’s all about the Brits during the Napoleonic Wars, only they’ve put in dragons also. Laurence, the main guy, is a captain in the Royal Navy and he’s all got his duty and good manners and his ship captures a dragon’s egg from a French ship, and the egg hatches and…
1 CommentThe public librarian recommended Ender’s Game to my eighth-grade class, lo these many years ago, and from there I read just about all of Orson Scott Card’s books except the ones I thought looked lame. And including several I thought wouldn’t be lame but were, after all. Just reread these two. I also recently reread Xenocide and Speaker for the Dead and Children of the Mind, and I guess it’s because I most recently read Children of the Mind that I felt like I never wanted to read anything by Orson Scott Card ever again as long as I lived…
3 Comments