Y’all, I’m applying for graduate school. It is stressful as hell. I’m telling you because the more people I tell, the more shaming it would be for me not to go through with it. And yes! I am using shame as a motivator! If it can beat the crap out of me every time I do something wrong, then by God I can make it work for me to do something constructive AND AWESOME. Since launching on this project of telling everyone, I have outlined my personal statement, asked for two recommendations, started an online application, and found the hard…
31 CommentsTag: for young people
Imagine my surprise when I discovered this at the bookshop! The American bookshop because the book is here in America now! Who knew? It’s thrilling! Odd and the Frost Giants is about a boy called Odd who has bad luck. His father has drowned, and his stepfather doesn’t much care for him, and an accident with a tree has left him with serious and lasting injuries to one of his legs. He runs away from home, into the forest, where he meets a bear, a fox, and an eagle, who actually are Thor, Loki, and Odin, cast out of Asgard…
12 CommentsAck, I am so behind on reviews. I am working on a project that requires a lot of attention (fortunately I can work on it while still watching classic Doctor Who), which is the excuse I’m using for my negligence. Feel free to be distracted from this by a picture of my beautiful hat: Gerald Morris’s The Squire’s Tale and The Quest of the Fair Unknown Essentially, Gerald Morris writes very sweet retellings of King Arthur legends from various sources, making fun of impractical chivalry rules and having Gawain be the coolest knight of all the knights. Instead of Lancelot,…
10 CommentsMm, I hated the troll sidekick. I hated him. The evil sorceress lady Lamorna (only she’s not that evil – good for her to get the robe at the end despite her wicked ways!) is totally justified in smacking his head off. I would smack his stupid head off too. He spoiled every scene he was in. The Robe of Skulls is all about Lady Lamorna trying to raise enough money to make a robe all out of skulls. With spiders. She’s thrilled about the whole idea, but she doesn’t have enough money, and so concocts a scheme to raise…
Leave a CommentCecilia Galante is a lovely name. The Patron Saint of Butterflies is quite good too. It’s all about two girls in a religious commune, Honey and Agnes. As children they were the best ever of friends, always racing and playing and having a jolly time together, but now that they are a bit older, Honey has begun to rebel against their religious leader, while Agnes is getting ever more scrupulous about her religious observances. When Agnes’s grandmother comes to visit and discovers that the commune people (communists?) are being abused by their religious leader, she becomes determined to take Honey,…
6 CommentsWow, Patrick Ness, color me super impressed. Way to create a distinctive, consistent, memorable voice for your protagonist. That isn’t easy. I have not read a book where I enjoyed the narrator’s voice so much since, mm, The Book Thief, and before that The Ground Beneath Her Feet. Which are two of my all-time favorite books. The Knife of Never Letting Go is based on a fantastic premise, that the aliens in this settled world have given the settlers the disease of Noise, which killed all the women and left the men able to hear each other’s thoughts; and then…
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