You know what my favorite thing about this book was? And don’t think I’m saying this in an anti-Rebel-Angels way at all, because I’m not and I loved Parlabane even though his (spoilers, I guess?) farewell letter was silly. My favorite thing about this book is that the main character (I think I can call her that), Maria, has a mum that reads Tarot cards, and she reads the Five of Coins (our Pentacles) to mean a loss, but a far greater gain is coming. The very next day, I was doing a reading for my sister, and I realized…
4 CommentsTag: good dialogue
Sigh. I know she’s better than this. Ms. Picoult is an excellent writer. She does good dialogue, her characters are generally consistent, the little kids are really good little kids. In each case where I have begun reading a book of hers, I have stayed up way past my bedtime finishing it. (In the case of Vanishing Acts, I was already up thoroughly late because I was introducing my friend Teacher to Firefly and I didn’t want to let her leave until she totally liked it and had stopped saying snide things about Kaylee. Victory!) So I will not suggest…
3 CommentsRecommended by my mother. Of course. This is a book about a girl in 1920s New Orleans who dies prematurely, before anything about her life gets properly decided, particularly before she makes a decision about her boyfriend Andrew, a fact that proves troublesome to her after she dies. She is called Razi, and she haunts a Baton Rouge couple, Amy and Scott, who are dealing with the fallout from a loss of their own. The story flips back and forth between their story and Razi’s life as a – for lack of a better word – ghost, over the years,…
2 CommentsThe public librarian recommended Ender’s Game to my eighth-grade class, lo these many years ago, and from there I read just about all of Orson Scott Card’s books except the ones I thought looked lame. And including several I thought wouldn’t be lame but were, after all. Just reread these two. I also recently reread Xenocide and Speaker for the Dead and Children of the Mind, and I guess it’s because I most recently read Children of the Mind that I felt like I never wanted to read anything by Orson Scott Card ever again as long as I lived…
3 CommentsSuggested by: My darling Mum This was good. Ms. de los Santos writes most truthfully about relationships. The little girl was very interesting and intense. I’d write more but I’m too busy trying to get school things done so that I can watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer later.
Leave a CommentCarlos was a minor character in the story [I was writing], a juvenile delinquent with a terminal illness. Although I had given Carlos tattoos and a bald head, he failed to impress my editor. She thought he needed a personality. And “please please please,” she urged in one of her notes, “give him a different name.” Los Angeles is the youth gang capital of the world, so I figured Duane must have had to write about them at some point. I asked if he could recommend any good books about juvenile delinquents that I could use for research. He thought…
Leave a CommentWhich can be read here, as it is out of copyright, and also this website is brilliant and I am all in favor of celebrating women writers. Recommended by: Box of Books (whom I owe an apology) I am sorry for griping abut The Semi-Attached Couple and its unbitchy nature. Emily Eden is very amusing, and in many ways she is quite like Jane Austen but bitchier. So I shouldn’t have jumped to conclusions even though Helen in The Semi-Attached Couple was very annoying. Now I have just finished The Semi-Detached House, and it was completely charming. Everyone in it…
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