The marvelous Bina reviewed The Liminal People some time ago and mentioned that it’s frequently compared to X-Men, which naturally was all the inducement I needed to buy it and its two sequels a few AWPs ago. “X-Men meets [literally anything]” = a sales pitch that will win me over 10/10 times. Taggert, our hero (ish), is a healer with the power to magically repair any ailments of the body, from wounds to asthma to cancer. He has wandered the world for most of his life, desperate to meet more people with powers like him, and his wanderings have washed…
2 CommentsTag: racism
Happy Friday, friends! I am trying to get back into the regular swing of blogging now that it is the new year, but some of these links are slightly old. Oh well! Maybe you haven’t seen them yet! In which case, lucky you! What to do if you are white and straight and cis and male and not all the stories are about you anymore (Star Wars spoilers included herein). “More as heroines than damsels”: How Disney gave their Princess dolls business to Hasbro. Nichole Chung on microaggressions and the certainty that you are the only person who can make…
12 CommentsIf I may borrow a phrase from Renay, this book punched me in the soul. I have a thing where anything about slavery and civil rights struggles and that business immediately makes my heart hurt and then when the inevitable family member dies or gets sold or whatever, I cry and cry, and that’s why I don’t really read that many historical fiction books from those periods. But Jill said The Rock and the River was good, and I happened to see it at the library, so there you go. I had the hugest lump in my throat from page…
51 CommentsAh, Linda Newbery. I’ve been meaning to read one of her books for about a year and a half – I very vaguely remember wanting to buy it at the Foyle’s on the South Bank when I was there in January 2007 with the family. Something with clocks. Sisterland is about a girl called Hilly who has a problematic sister that’s got a crush on a racist kid (British kids are scary! I’m never raising my kids in England cause those British kids are way too frightening!), and her grandmother has got Alzheimer’s and is forever talking about someone called…
2 CommentsOkay, the truth comes out. You won’t believe it, but Anna Leonowens did not, in fact, have a hot but platonic romance with the King of Siam; or if she did, she kept remarkably quiet about it in her book. Although I’m not ruling out the possibility that all the late-night “translating” she was doing for the king was actually sexual favors. Because, you know, she acts like a proper Victorian lady but who knows? Seriously, though, I feel that this memoir (travelogue) lacked a certain something. Taking into account the prejudices of her time, she was still kind of…
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