I am not able to steer myself away from books that deal with the dying aristocracy in Britain before and during and after the World Wars. Or just books set in Britain before and during and after the World Wars (recently before and recently after, obviously; otherwise that would comprehend the whole of British history). I love them. I love books set in Britain in this time period even more than I love books set in the Victorian times. At least more reliably – there are some books with Victorian settings that are shocking tedious crap. The House at Riverton…
6 CommentsReading the End Posts
I actually wrote this review at the end of May – May 19th, if I recall correctly (as of course I unfailingly do) – but I couldn’t post it because I was planning to send a copy of the book to my good friend tim for her birthday (which was May 15th – yes, I’m a bad friend), and I couldn’t remember whether she read this blog or not, but I didn’t want to take any chances. I wanted her to be joyously surprised by the arrival of her book. Um, yeah, Ella Minnow Pea is awesome. I will just…
6 CommentsI know, I know. I know I said I was done with Jodi Picoult. But I was at my aunt and uncle’s last night, and I had The Charioteer but I am in London, I don’t have loads of books with me, and I didn’t want to use up The Charioteer because I love it so much. So I read The Tenth Circle, which my aunt and uncle had on their bookshelf. The issue: date rape. The court scenes: none – shocking, I know. However, there is a murder. As Jodi Picoult’s books go, this is not one of her…
5 CommentsI have to say, this was the perfect airplane book. I know because I spent eighteen hours traveling to London last week (I know, right? Long flight with several layovers), and Thames was my primary reading material. My grandmother sent it to me for my birthday, and originally I wasn’t going to bring it along on the trip. It’s a big fat hardback with heavy pages and four sets of plates (two color, two black-and-white) – very beautiful, but not practical on a plane trip where luggage has weight considerations. But I couldn’t resist. Thames wasn’t what I expected –…
1 CommentFifteen-year-old Miranda has a pretty normal life, until a meteor hits the moon. It shoves the moon closer to the earth (eek!), which as you might expect does not do good things for the earth. Tsunamis take out New York and Florida and California; volcanoes begin erupting all over the place, filling the air with ash for miles around. And Miranda’s family copes. I first heard about this book shortly after I read Meg Rosoff’s How I Live Now, and I didn’t want to do another girl-copes-with-end-of-world-scenario book straight away, because of how grim How I Live Now was. But…
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