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…
8 CommentsReading the End Posts
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…
9 CommentsMagic. 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…
13 CommentsI 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…
23 CommentsFrederick Douglass is my hero. Him and Julian of Norwich – an unlikely pair, and I am not really sure what they would make of each other, but there you go. I have been saying for ages that we should put Frederick Douglass on our money. And bump Jackson. Jackson is the obvious choice to get bumped, but I also think we could get rid of Grant, in a pinch – it’s not that I hate him or anything, it’s just that, you know, he wasn’t that amazing a president, and we are already representin’ for the Civil War with…
6 CommentsMy sister has this magical ability to get people to do things for her. It is amazing. Everyone in my family does stuff for her even when we have just said, “No! Lazy! Do it yourself! My God you are so lazy!” Like, we’ll both be at my parents’ house, and I’ll be curled up comfortably on the couch reading something, and she’ll be all, “Why are you reading that? It looks stupid. What’s it about? Sounds stupid. You should be reading something with quality like Whatever Happened to Janie. Will you get me a bowl of ice cream? Please? …
13 CommentsCare of Care’s Online Book Club, who always makes me smile, has made a bold claim: She claims that she would brave a pack of raving zombie chickens in order to read my blog. This is a very nice thing to say because chickens are already really yucky and stupid, even without a craving for tasty brains. Consider that. I had to think about it very hard before passing it on, to Schatzi of the stacks my destination, and Jeane at Dog Ear Diary, and Jackie of Farm Lane Books. Inspired by Nymeth’s sterling example, and the fact that something…
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