So Shan said that she found it difficult to read Understanding Comics because it was lots of information coming at her all it once – and I thought that was ratcheted up a few notches in Reinventing Comics. It was still full of interesting things to consider. Scott McCloud talks about the directions comics are taking, the revolutions that have to take place for comics to Take Their Rightful Place, including limited representation by anyone who isn’t white and male. He handles these delicate subjects quite well, without being a jerk at all or failing to recognize his position of…
3 CommentsTag: Louisiana
Fifteen-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…
12 CommentsLook, I’m as fond of my home state as the next person – probably more than many – and this book is set in Louisiana. And although part of me was mad because I read a review that called Thursday’s Children “goopy treacle” and compared it unfavorably with The Dancers of Sycamore Street, and that part of me wanted The Dancers of Sycamore Street to be rubbish, I was mostly hoping that I was about to read an undiscovered gem, and not only would I enjoy it hugely, but I would also feel pleased and proud that it was set…
Leave a CommentSheesh, what is wrong with me? This is the second book in the past week I haven’t been able to finish. And honestly, not finishing books is pretty rare with me. I swear! If I make it past the first few pages, I tend to plow through to the end, because I want to know what happens, and because I am a completist. To give you a comparison, I read like four of Anne Rice’s vampire books, which I never liked in the first place, before realizing I’d rather gouge my eyes out than read any more of them. I…
5 CommentsMy God, this book was sad. It was so, so, so sad. It was just so unrelentingly sad. Even when she wasn’t particularly talking about anything sad, still it was incredibly sad. I cried a lot, especially at the end. And I’ve never even had a baby! Imagine if I had had a baby and I read this book, which is Elizabeth McCracken’s memoir about how her baby was stillborn. That would have been way much even sadder. However, it was well-written and interesting. And it had lots of good bits, and Elizabeth McCracken endeared herself to me forever and…
2 CommentsThe addiction continues. This one’s about a school shooting. Only one silly thing happens, and it’s not all that silly. Definitely not as silly as poisoning the Louisiana priest with antifreeze in his cocoa. …I can’t do this. I don’t have the heart to continue reviewing this. I’m too depressed. I’m about to go directly into a decline. I’m taking to my bed and I may never rise from it again. I have several seasons of Gilmore Girls out from the library, my computer is plugged in, I have my cross-stitching, and I can stay lying in this flip chair…
Leave a CommentSigh. 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 CommentsI have been reading books but not posting reviews of them. This is mainly due to three factors: school having started, me having a ‘sode, and the damn damn damn hurricane. I’m going to go ahead and blame it mostly on the hurricane, though that really isn’t fair. But who cares? HURRICANES ARE VILE. Today a really loud whooshing noise woke me up which may have been a great big enormous jet plane going over my head, and I suspect that this is ALL THE FAULT OF THE HURRICANE. I say no to hurricanes. No more hurricanes. Not one bit…
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