Here is a book I checked out on the recommendation of a few-years-old Best Books of the Year list, the others on the list having appealed to me very little (or else I already read them). It is about a bunch of scientists working at a lab in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to discover cures for cancer by trying different things on rats. One researcher, Cliff, begins to have dramatic results with his experiments, and the lab explodes with excitement and papers and research grants. Gradually his colleague and ex-girlfriend, Robin, begins to believe that his results are fraudulent; and her accusation…
9 CommentsReading the End Posts
Two-thirds of the way through this book I wanted to buy it for everyone on my Christmas list. At the end of it, I no longer did. I felt sort of depressed and unfinished. That right there is my untrammeled reaction. I am writing this post (responsibly far in advance!) on the evening of the second day of the hurricane. Very very unusually I am writing it only a few hours after finishing the book, so please forgive me if my thoughts on it seem a trifle unorganized. Ana has sung the praises of Elizabeth Hand extensively, and although I…
35 CommentsSo there are two books I’ve been trying to get at the library for a very long time without acknowledging to the world how much I wanted them because I feel guilty checking out kids’ books from my library because I always think of all the actual kids in the world who are being deprived of their books by my greed: Bunheads (this one here) and The Miseducation of Cameron Post, for which I am still waiting and which may never, ever, ever get in at the library ever. I read a glowing review of the latter on NPR, and the…
24 CommentsSo! Kate Morton! In the past I’ve had some feelings about the way Kate Morton does her plots and sentences. This has bothered me in different degrees for different books — The House at Riverton was close to pure joy (I was reading it on vacation) but did not stand up to rereads, and The Forgotten Garden bugged me with some heavy-handed plot devices. But The Secret Keeper is her fourth book, and some of the tics I didn’t love in the first two I’ve read are gone now, and overall it was a fun, engaging, non-annoying read. As a…
20 CommentsHappy All Saints’ Day! More to the point, happy anniversary, Saints! I will always love you no matter what. I am writing this post in mid-October, but I am predicting that I ended up doing nothing for Halloween. I am not a big fan of Halloween ever since I stopped trick-or-treating. I’m not good at designing costumes. Now Halloween is just one more obstacle between me and Christmas. Ah changelings. I was griping the other day about the difficulty of creating a fairy world that has enough specificity to satisfy me, and although The Replacement doesn’t completely nail this, it…
16 CommentsI don’t have as much to say about these two books so I’m putting them in one post. BOOM. Is Everyone Hanging out without Me?, and Other Concerns, Mindy Kaling This is such a good title for a book like this. Which is to say, a collection of short essays about Mindy Kaling’s life and thoughts she has thought on various topics. Mindy Kaling is a charming human person and I think she would be a fun friend. Her book is charming and fun, and slight. She says some charming things about gender performance (but she doesn’t call it gender…
8 CommentsBeacon Press, publisher of Fanpire, says: Why have the Twilight saga’s representations of romance and relationships enchanted millions of fans and generated millions in revenue, selling everything from Barbie-type dolls to blockbuster films? Tanya Erzen-herself no stranger to the allure of the series-explores the phenomenon of Twilight, books and films influenced by conservative Mormon religious ideas, by immersing herself in the vibrant and diverse subculture of “Twi-hards” to understand why so many love the series (sometimes in spite of themselves). She attends Edward-addiction groups, Twi-rock concerts, and fan conventions, and looks at the vast world of online fandom that Twilight has…
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