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Reading the End Posts

Tell the Wolves I’m Home, Carol Rifka Brunt

OMG y’all. THIS BOOK. READ IT NOW. It’s taken me a little while to spit this review out, because I feel like this is or will be one of those books that gets a lot of hype. I don’t want my review to become one of an avalanche of reviews that raves about a book, and then you are like, “Hey the people really love this book, Imma read it too,” and then you read it with your expectations sky high and when it doesn’t turn out to be the second coming of The Color Purple you’re like, “Why is…

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Review: A Long, Long Sleep, Anna Sheehan

In a way, I did this to myself. I should know by now that I do not like, and have never liked, science fictiony retellings of fairy tales. There’s just something about it that feels very deeply weird. Magic is magic and science is science, and — and — you know? It feels jarring. So I was setting myself up for disappointment in this, my first attempt to discern whether all Candlewick authors are as good as Patrick Ness and Melina Marchetta. (Also because Patrick Ness and Melina Marchetta are really awesome.) Rose Fitzroy wakes up after sixty years in…

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Review: Uncle Montague’s Tales of Terror, Chris Priestley

Though short stories — which is what Uncle Montague’s Tales of Terror is, short stories with a frame device — are not generally my thing, the genre of short story most likely to please me is horror. (Ghost horror, not serial killer horror. Ghosts are imaginary, but serial killers are very real, and terrifying.) I ordinarily discount short story books unless they are pressed on me by friends who are sure they can change my mind about short stories (they can’t), but the horror thing and the thin, weird, slightly Goreyish illustrations made me decide to give Uncle Montague’s Tales…

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Review: Wonder Boys, Michael Chabon

With sadness, I must at last admit to myself and the world that Michael Chabon’s fiction is not for me. I loved that one book of essays he wrote. I agree with the sensible, interesting things he says about genre fiction and fandom and family. I think it is cool the high regard in which he and his wife plainly hold each other. I am in like Flynn if that show they are writing for HBO where magicians fight Nazis or whatever comes to fruition. But with his fiction I’m afraid I have decided I shall have nothing further to…

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Not a Review: Attachments, Rainbow Rowell

Y’all, look, I like to suspend disbelief as much as the next girl and probably more than some. I’m willing to roll with an awful lot of fictional punches, and the reason for this is that I know that if you don’t accept the premise of a book, you are refusing to engage with it on the most basic level. There is then no point in reading it, and if you insist on reading it (maybe because, as in this case, you hope that the book will somehow make its nonsense premise work), there is subsequently no point talking about…

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Review: Psychic Blues, Mark Edward

There are two main threads of subtext (well, not always so sub-, as examples below will prove) that run throughout Mark Edward’s memoir of being a psychic, and they are these: All psychics, including Mark Edward, are frauds, and some of them do harm by being deceitful and wicked. Mark Edward does no harm but always tries to do good. That sounds okay, except that Mark Edward fails to distinguish between the deceitful and wicked psychics and himself. Whether this is because there is no difference between them, or because Mark Edward is incapable of articulating the difference that exists,…

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You know what? Candlewick Press!

Hi, everyone! I am back from my hiatus and have missed you awfully. For the first few weeks I was like, Yeah! Freedom! No blog posts to write!, but then pretty soon I felt forlorn at not hearing from you, and I have this new Nook where you can highlight passages, which means I don’t have to constantly be at war with myself about whether this one passage is entirely awesome enough to be worth dogearing a poor little book what never did me any harm. I can just press highlight. Er, but anyway, so, I have missed you, and…

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It’s too hard to say au revoir, so let’s just say hors d’oeuvres

Lovely people, I am bowing at last to the inevitable and going on an Official Blogging Hiatus. I have not been a reliable blogger for ages, pretty much since I moved to New York, and I’ve realized that — for the time being at least — the idea of blogging makes me tired and stressed, instead of excited and energized as in days of yore. I feel guilty when I skive off blogging to do fun New York things, and I feel guilty when I skive off social outings to do blogging. So I’m taking a break for the summer,…

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Review: Delusions of Gender, Cordelia Fine

Before we get to the excellent Delusions of Gender, which I can’t believe it took me so long to read, a word about my blogging habits. I have been (sing it with me if you know the words) the worst blogger ever. My commute, while not bad for New York, is a time-killer, I’m trying very hard to be as social a butterfly as my introverty brain and publishing job budget will permit me, and recently I’ve been spending a lot of time trying to learn to pronounce Russian personal pronouns. They are harder to pronounce than you’d think. All…

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The Defining Decade, Meg Jay, PhD

You know what I’m happy about? I’m happy that before reading The Defining Decade — which was judgmentally delivered to me at my office without any explanation I could discern as to why it was being delivered to me, so I could only conclude that the universe thinks I’m doing my twenties wrong (which I am not) and would like to help me out with it — I saw the second episode of the HBO show Girls, in which Lena Dunham’s character glances at a relationship-rules book and says that she hate-read it in the Detroit airport once. I’m glad…

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