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Category: 5 Stars

Gaudy Night, Dorothy Sayers

A few days ago, my friend tim mentioned Gaudy Night, and I realized that I wanted nothing in the world more than to read Gaudy Night.  I know I refused to read it or even think about it earlier this year when I was reading Strong Poison, but I have rarely enjoyed a reread as much as I did this one.  Reading Gaudy Night this time was like eating cilantro – you know what it’s going to be like, and you are thinking, man, this is going to be great, but no matter how high your expectations are, you find…

24 Comments

Gig, eds. John Bowe, Marisa Bowe, and Sabin Streeter

The Bible just got bumped off my five desert island books list.  Sorry, Bible!  It’s just that you have all that stuff about begatting and oysters, and none of my other desert island books take long breaks from being awesome to talk about stoning your disobedient sons!  And you know I can’t do without Shakespeare, and The Color Purple and Angels in America are JUST SO EPIC, and Greensleeves is my favorite book of all time.  You understand, don’t you?  And we can still be friends?  I mean when you think about it, way more people would take you to…

9 Comments

The Ask and the Answer, Patrick Ness

Y’all.  For serious.  Patrick Ness. The Ask and the Answer has caused me to lose the power to form sentences.  I am not even lying.  I was sat there in the Bongs & Noodles right after I finished reading the book (which isn’t officially out yet – I love it when the bookshop doesn’t care), and someone asked if the seat next to me was taken.  I believe my exact words were “Nnng blfff chair sit.  I mean, no,” and then I wanted to tell them all about The Ask and the Answer and how intense and terrifying it was. …

12 Comments

Bayou, Vol. 1, Jeremy Love & Patrick Morgan

Jeremy Love‘s Bayou, evidently the first physical book to be created from DC Comics’ webcomic imprint Zuda, is about a little girl named Lee who lives in 1930s Mississippi with her father.  When he is accused of raping and murdering Lee’s young white friend Lily (who actually got eaten by an enormous monster in the bayou), and carted off to jail, Lee sets out fearlessly to find Lily and thus save her father from death. Before I head off to bed*, I just wanted to say, Holy God, this book was scary.  I read about it (where else, for my…

10 Comments

The Time Traveler’s Wife, Audrey Niffenegger

I recently reread this book, and I was planning to wait on writing about it until I could see the movie, but the people I see movies with are either like “Are you nuts?  I saw it the first instant it came out!” or else “I can’t watch it!  The book is too precious to me!” or else (more rarely) “Looks mushy.  Let’s go see (500) Days of Summer instead.”  (And we did.  And it was excellent.  But I am still curious about The Time Traveler’s Wife film, because I loved the book so much.) The Time Traveler’s Wife I…

6 Comments

Saffy’s Angel and Indigo’s Star, Hilary McKay

Oh I just love Hilary McKay.  She has written these Casson books, which are among the most endearing books I have ever read.  I organize my bookshelves (more or less) by how much I couldn’t do without the books, with the books on the right being the absolutely most essential ones, and then getting less and less essential moving to the left.  And the Casson books, despite being a recent discovery, are on the far right of my children’s books section, along with the likes of The Ordinary Princess and Peter Pan and Indian Captive, which I read when I…

19 Comments

Fun Home, Alison Bechdel

I love a memoir, y’all, and you know what I love more than a memoir?  A graphic novel memoir.  Delicious.  My library has a new section on their ever-growing graphic novels shelf, which is Biography.  When I went in yesterday (collecting films for my poor sick little sister and lots of excellent books for me), I took three of the five books from the new wee little section.  Including Fun Home – which I remember the library not having last time I checked, and I was well cross about it. Fun Home is Alison Bechdel‘s memoir about her father, a…

11 Comments

We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Shirley Jackson

Creeeepy.  I read The Haunting of Hill House and liked it a lot, but when I read We Have Always Lived in the Castle, I thought, “Oh, yes, there’s the lady who wrote ‘The Lottery’.”  There are some of the same themes here, particularly towards the end, that mob mentality and the fear of things being different.  My review’s going to contain spoilers, because I don’t know how to talk about the book without any spoilers at all. We Have Always Lived in the Castle is about two sisters, Merricat and Constance, who live with their uncle Julian, the three…

17 Comments

An open letter to Patrick Ness, author of The Knife of Never Letting Go

Wow, Patrick Ness, color me super impressed.  Way to create a distinctive, consistent, memorable voice for your protagonist.  That isn’t easy.  I have not read a book where I enjoyed the narrator’s voice so much since, mm, The Book Thief, and before that The Ground Beneath Her Feet.  Which are two of my all-time favorite books. The Knife of Never Letting Go is based on a fantastic premise, that the aliens in this settled world have given the settlers the disease of Noise, which killed all the women and left the men able to hear each other’s thoughts; and then…

22 Comments

Ordinary Victories, Manu Larcenet

I got this at the library because I am always on the hunt for good graphic novels, and it said THE BEST GRAPHIC NOVEL OF ALL TIME EVER or something like that on the front.  I believed this because I’m easily taken in by the printed word.  Fortunately for me, this may actually be one of the best graphic novels of all time ever.  I loved it.  I really, really loved it.  It’s translated – I didn’t even care!  Hooray for Joe Johnson, the stalwart translator!  Mr. Johnson, you have done an excellent job in translating, and thanks for that,…

9 Comments