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Reading the End Posts

River of Smoke, Amitav Ghosh

At last, at last! I absolutely loved Sea of Poppies when I read it last summer, and I have been babbling about it a lot since then, especially when in company with Teresa, who loved it first and put me on to it. I have been longing and longing for the second book in the Ibis trilogy to come out for, like, ever. Sea of Poppies ended right when all the characters had finally started hanging out together, and I was so excited to read the new book where they would start out together and interact with each other all…

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Like crack cocaine to my dorky self

Y’all may not know this about me, but I love the Supreme Court of the United States. I love it. I have only ever really talked about John Paul Stevens on this blog, and God knows I adore John Paul Stevens, but more generally, I am a massive, massive fan of the Supreme Court. When fall comes and Dahlia Lithwick starts posting her Supreme Court recaps, my heart is filled with the kind of joy that I normally only feel when someone writes a complimentary post about Oscar Wilde and his continued relevance to modern life. The Supreme Court is…

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The Crash of Hennington, Patrick Ness

Today is Ada Leverson‘s birthday. Happy birthday, wonderful Sphinx! We will be friends in heaven! Last week I commented on someone’s blog (I forget whose!) that I thought Patrick Ness should be made the king of something. And I still think that, but I also think that when he’s submitting materials for the consideration of the Academy (the King Deciding Academy, this would be), he shouldn’t necessarily send them The Crash of Hennington unless they expressly ask for it. There’s nothing inside of it that would make them change their minds about him — I was rather surprised to find…

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Review: The Silent Woman, Janet Malcolm

Before I commence the promised raving about The Silent Woman, Janet Malcolm’s book about (sort of) Sylvia Plath, I will state my position on Sylvia Plath. I like some of her poems a crazy lot and some of her (extremely famous) poems (like “Daddy”) not that much at all. I have read very few Ted Hughes poems but have always disliked the ones I did read. One time when I saw the two of them referred to as “the Hugheses” in a modern college syllabus, I became massively enraged on Sylvia Plath’s behalf. I think Ted Hughes was a cad…

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Review: Becoming Shakespeare, Jack Lynch

What I wanted: A corrective emotional experience to How Shakespeare Changed Everything, which I hated. Why I didn’t read Will in the World, which I own and still haven’t read, rather than going to the library to get this: Y’all, I don’t know. I felt like a how their reputation happened sort of a book. My satisfaction level: Moderate. To be fair I don’t think I’d have felt any different if I’d read Will in the World, and perhaps less satisfied because it wouldn’t have been the sort of book I was in the mood for, which, again, was a…

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Ugh, I suck.

I posted a post too soon instead of scheduling it. Ignore my last post, if you have Google Reader! Ignore it! It’s not Ada Leverson’s birthday yet! (When I do this, I feel disproportionately embarrassed like it is a major social gaffe for which you will all (well, all the Google Reader users) judge me. Even though I know that you won’t.)

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Review: The Best of Everything, Rona Jaffe

Not to be confused with The End of Everything! But read roughly around the same time. I know. I was really slow in reviewing this. I am just bad at reviews this years, you guys. I need to institute a system to make myself be more systematic. Rachel (come visit soon, Rachel!) told me that she had to give me a book and for me to tell her what I thought about it, because she had loved it but it also made her really angry, and she wanted to know if my reaction would be the same. It was, except…

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A question about the Bechdel Test

So the Bechdel Test – invented by Alison Bechdel – critiques the dearth of primary female characters with any degree of interiority in teh moviez, and it consists of three criteria: The show/book/film whatever 1) has two female characters who 2) have a conversation about 3) something other than a man. Fewer films/shows than you’d think pass this test, including many that I love. Like, Firefly? Almost none (if any?) of the episodes pass the test. Kaylee and Inara are friends, but they almost always are talking about Simon or Inara’s clients. Zoe is terse and spends all her time…

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Review: The Dead Beat, Marilyn Johnson

I am late to the Marilyn Johnson party, y’all. I am not fashionably late. I am so late the servers are washing glasses and the other guests have long since departed for the after-party at the library books bar. By which I mean, y’all have probably all already read this and gone on to read This Book Is Overdue, and by now y’all are probably Marilyn Johnson’s agent for her next book about, I don’t know, the lives of book scouts or something. So, sorry. As my mother says, sometimes it be’s that way. The Dead Beat is about obituaries:…

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Review: The Sherlockian, Graham Moore

Harold is the youngest ever member of the Baker Street Irregulars, a secretive group of Sherlock Holmes devotees. At his first ever meeting, the preeminent Sherlockian in the world has come to present the lost diary of Conan Doyle, the holy grail of, you know, of Sherlock Holmes dudes. But when the body of the scholar is found strangled in his hotel room, Harold becomes obsessed with finding out the Truth. Meanwhile, a hundred years ago, Arthur Conan Doyle receives a letter bomb, apparently related to his decision to chuck his hero, Sherlock Holmes, off a waterfall. Trying to trace…

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