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Reading the End Posts

The Girl in a Swing, Richard Adams

Do you ever read a book where you finish it and you’re like, Hm, I think I may be deeply stupid?  I sort of felt that way when I finished reading A Pale View of Hills, but with that one, at least, I thought about it for a while and came to a conclusion.  I have been thinking furiously about The Girl in a Swing, ever since I finished it yesterday morning, and I am still trying to figure out what the hell happened. I was excited to read this book.  I love Watership Down like crazy, and The Girl…

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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. …

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I’m Looking Through You, Jennifer Finney Boylan

Heeheehee, this RIP Challenge is jolly good fun.  At this rate I will have read way too many spooky books before Halloween.  I should pace myself, except I can’t because The Girl in a Swing just came in at the library and I went and picked it up today and I really really really want to read it. Jennifer Finney Boylan‘s I’m Looking Through You is all about how Jenny Boylan (Jenny! hooray! More people should be called Jenny!) grew up as a boy in a spooky old house, haunted by ghosts and writing under the wallpaper.  She writes with…

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Fool on the Hill, Matt Ruff

I have said before that I love both Martin Millar and Douglas Coupland quite a lot.  Well, Matt Ruff’s Fool on the Hill is like if Martin Millar and Douglas Coupland had a love child, and Douglas Coupland  raised the kid because Martin Millar lived too far away, but the kid  grew up reading Martin Millar’s books obsessively, and then the kid  went to Cornell for college.  I feel like that sequence of events  could have produced Fool on the Hill. Fool on the Hill is a story about Cornell University (ever heard of it?), if Cornell University had fairies…

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DogEar Reading Challenge

My own personal game for the DogEar Reading Challenge is to read only books recommended to me by Jeane.  Ya heard.  Thus: 1. Adult fantasy/sci-fi 2. A book featuring an animal 3. A YA or juvenile fiction book 4. A nonfiction book on an obscure topic/a topic you don’t usually read about 5. A book about gardening, plants, or food So these are mine: 1. Chalice, Robin McKinley 2. The Coachman Rat, David Henry Wilson 3. Daughters of the Sunstone, Sydney Van Scyoc 4. West with the Night, Beryl Markham 5. In Defense of Food, Michael Pollan I totally meant…

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Her Fearful Symmetry, Audrey Niffenegger

Well, fittingly enough, I read this on the first official day of the RIP IV Challenge.  I got an ARC from the lovely and obliging people at the Regal Literary Agency (thanks, y’all!  I was so, so pleased to have it!) on Monday, and read it all in one go yesterday evening. In Her Fearful Symmetry, due for proper release at the end of this month, Elspeth Noblin dies and leaves her London flat to her twin nieces, daughters of her own estranged twin Edie.  They can have it on their twenty-first birthday, and must live in it for one…

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Yeah, so this is magic

Magic.  I should have done this, like, much sooner.  Except that I didn’t believe (despite ample evidence all through my blogroll to the contrary) that it was possibly possible that you could really truly genuinely say, “Excuse me, may I have a copy of that book, which I desperately desperately want, before it is released?” and then receive an actual copy of the book in the post.  BEFORE IT IS OUT. And yet: Good, eh?  I like this cover best – the American cover is a little too bluey and generic for me (generic but not spare like my copy…

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Irish Peacock and Scarlet Marquess: The Real Trial of Oscar Wilde, Merlin Holland

Ah, the book that Started It All, The Real Trial of Oscar Wilde, the transcripts of his libel trial against the Marquess of Queensberry.  Yes, if it weren’t for my having seen this book in a Bongs & Noodles in Atlanta, I would never have had this wild (ha, ha, ha) fascination with Oscar Wilde.  At that time I was very interested in the Scopes trial (I still am!  It was interesting!) & spending lots of time trying to find excerpts from Scopes trial transcripts.  I expect that is partly to blame for the fact that I saw this book…

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Okay okay okay okay

I cannot hold out any longer!  I know I was going to do the rereading thing, and not get any new books out of the library, but I cannot maintain in the face of everyone on my blogroll going on and on about the thousands of amazing spooky books they are thinking of reading, and having the pretty picture of the girl, and putting up covers of beautiful books all the time.  I AM ONLY HUMAN. Eee, I’m excited.  I can totally read four spooky books by the end of October!  (she said optimistically) Definitely I am going to read…

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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…

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