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Reading the End Posts

jPod, Douglas Coupland

So I didn’t really get into All Families Are Psychotic when I tried to read it ages ago – for whatever reason – and I tried jPod instead and had the same issue.  Then recently I was at Bongs & Noodles reading Girlfriend in a Coma and enjoying it mightily, and I wanted to get it out of the library but they didn’t have it; and I decided to do the same thing I am doing with Salman Rushdie, which is read his books in reverse order of how good I think they’re going to be.  This didn’t exactly work…

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Well Wished, Franny Billingsley

Don’t you love it when you re-encounter a book you’d completely forgotten about?  I found Well Wished at the book fair, and as soon as I opened it I felt like I had been flashed straight back to second grade.  I read Well Wished for the first time in the library of my elementary school, one afternoon when I was stuck there for what felt like forever.  I don’t remember why I felt stuck – I like the library – or why I was there at all after school hours, but I remember this book.  Well Wished is about a…

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Amazon’s wicked ways have profited me!

So today, after reading Nymeth’s glowing review of Fingersmith, and discovering that I wanted to reread Fingersmith more than I wanted anything, I reread Fingersmith and enjoyed it much more this time, now that I knew everything that was coming.  Actually I enjoyed it enormously and it was just what I was in the mood for; it was like being desperately thirsty and having a great big class of cool, clean, delicious Baton Rouge water.  Which was good because I am feeling sickly today, and actual cool, clean, delicious Baton Rouge water doesn’t taste as nice as it normally does.…

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The Meaning of Night, Michael Cox

I started reading this in Bongs & Noodles one time, a while ago, and I got bored.  I am more easily bored when I’m reading at Bongs & Noodles than I am in real life – maybe because Bongs & Noodles is all full of loads of brilliant books, and my time there is finite.  Anyway, then I read about it over at Superfastreader’s blog, and it sounded so good I decided to reconsider.  As often happens, I was very pleased that I did. The Meaning of Night is all about a Victorian gentleman called Edward Glyver who conceives a…

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The Illustrated Man, Ray Bradbury

My sister said to read this, so I bought it at the book fair last month.  Ray Bradbury can write some disturbing stories, I tell you what.  He writes beautifully – such good imagery and dialogue.  I like the frame mechanism, of the  man with illustrations on his body that begin to move, to tell the stories.  I’d read two of these stories before, the one with the nursery and the one with the falling star – hated the star, loved the nursery.  Which is about how I feel about them generally.  I like the ones that start out sort…

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Gifted, Nikita Lalwani

The library doesn’t know I have this book.  They should do – I didn’t sneak out with it or anything – but somehow it’s not on my list of checked-out books.  As such, I haven’t felt any sense of urgency about reading it, so it’s been sitting patiently on the floor of my bedroom for quite some time now, waiting for me to get to it.  And I thought today was a good day for it – I read it on the drive to and from my uncle and aunt’s house today for my first! crawfish boil! of the season!…

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Walking Through Walls, Philip Smith

I picked this up at the library a little while ago, and realized when I got it home that I had read about it here before checking it out and completely forgotten.  Weird. You wouldn’t think I’d be able to manage being uninterested in a memoir about someone whose father was a faith healer.  But I just never got interested in this.  For someone with such a colorful life, this guy has written a book that was surprisingly bland (yeah, I mixed that metaphor.  Got a problem?).  Even before I began to suspect that Mr. Smith genuinely believes in his…

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Jump at the Sun, Kim McLarin

I loved Jump at the Sun.  I feel like I’ve loved all the books I’ve read lately, but I just looked at my past few reviews, and no, it hasn’t been that way.  I just loved The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox so much it feels like it was a bunch of books; plus, I’ve been reading Jump at the Sun for several days and loving it.  I didn’t expect to love it, because I try to steer clear of books about people being miserable and bored with their suburban families and their suburban lives.  However, it is only April,…

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The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox, Maggie O’Farrell

Let us begin with two girls at a dance. They are at the edge of the room.  One sits on a chair, opening and shutting a dance-card with gloved fingers.  The other stands beside her, watching the dance unfold: the circling couples, the clasped hands, the drumming shoes, the whirling skirts, the bounce of the floor.  It is the last hour of the year and the windows behind them are blank with night.  The seated girl is dressed in something pale, Esme forgets what, the other in a dark red frock that doesn’t suit her.  She has lost her gloves. …

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The Elfish Gene, Mark Barrowcliffe

The whole title of this book is The Elfish Gene: Dungeons, Dragons, and Growing Up Strange, and it’s a memoir about – well, what the subtitle says (again).  Like Accidentally on Purpose, this book was snatched up at the spur of the moment from the library New Nonfiction shelf.  I think what I was thinking was, Stephen Colbert played Dungeons and Dragons, and I love Stephen Colbert.  Also I have always very vaguely wondered how the game works, and what the appeal was.  Hence the checking out of this book. Mark Barrowcliffe was raised in the Midlands town of Coventry…

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