Wants to read The Creative Act: A Way of Being
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Wants to read Loud in the House of Myself: Memoir of a Strange Girl
Rated The Last Repatriate 8/10
I told myself, “Just because this is a short novella does not mean you are going to stay up late and read the whole thing at once.”<br><br>… And then I read the entire book at once.<br><br>(My full review can be found at <a href="http://www.wordriot.org/archives/4480">Word Riot</a>.)
Rated Doctor Who: The Man Who Wasn't There 8/10
Rated Candida Royalle and the Sexual Revolution: A History from Below 6/10
<div>Candice Vadala/Candida Royalle definitely has an interesting story, but I don't quite agree with all the cultural analysis offered by Kamensky. For one thing, the book is a little too fond of Andrea Dworkin quotes. Though this <em>is</em> a look at several key moments in the "sexual revolution" and secondwave feminism, it is definitely with a heterosexual lens. And while one can't include everything and still have it also be a biography of one woman who lived through it, the book keeps a bit of distance from any queerness in Candice's life. Still, it was interesting enough to keep reading, even if the book was a bit overlong.</div>
Rated The Scarlet Letter & the House of the Seven Gables 8/10
(I only read the introductory chapters from the editor and The House of the Seven Gables, so that is what my rating is based on. I've read the Scarlet Letter, and I didn't like it, but that was over ten years ago and I was a teenager, so I'm not sure what my assessment would be today.)
Rated Dirtbag, Massachusetts: A Confessional 10/10
<div>I have followed Isaac Fitzgerald's literary career ever since he was an editor at The Rumpus back in the late 2000s, and it's been great to see where he's gone since then. A couple of these essays, I read wherever they were originally published, though long enough ago that I don't know whether or not they changed in any significant way. This is a great memoir, full of honest, insightful memories, and it's also interesting to see what was happening "behind the curtain," so to speak, during some of the times I was paying attention to his professional work. He's the same age as I am, so some of his childhood attitudes and memories felt very familiar, even though I did not grow up in the same area (and my childhood was considerably more stable). Like, of course you just get up to shit in the woods and are glad for only loose supervision! Of course every teen boy was obsessed with Fight Club and the Pixies after the movie came out! I definitely knew guys like the friends he describes.<br><br>Also, Zeitgeist sounds like an amazing bar.</div>
Rated Before You Knew My Name 7/10
<div>This is an interesting take on the "body of a young woman found murdered" mystery genre, and even though how it shakes out feels almost a <em>bit</em> coincidental, I was definitely invested enough before then. I also appreciated that our second protagonist has her reasons for pursuing an answer, and that pursuit does not focus much on teaming up with the NYPD, and it is more circumspect when it comes to "true crime" as a hobby. Her reasons aren't a hobby, but I also wish <spoiler>she had not pursued romance in the end. I get that it demonstrates she's pursuing something healthier, but I maybe would have preferred that, with the help of seeing her new friends, she was more committed to finding out who she was outside of men and the terrible things that they do.</spoiler></div>
Rated Pachinko 10/10
<div>This was absolutely as amazing as everyone said. Loved it. Glad I finally read it.</div>
Rated One Day 10/10
One Day is an excellent book — one filled with as many funny moments as there are heart-crushing. One of the best books I've read all year.<br><br>(Full review can be found on <a href="http://glorifiedloveletters.blogspot.com/2010/08/one-day-by-david-nicholls.html">Glorified Love Letters</a>)
Wants to read Beautiful and Pointless: A Guide to Modern Poetry
Rated Doctor Who: The Forgotten Army 6/10
This is definitely a Doctor Who novel that is more suited for younger readers, since it's a bit more simplistic in both plot and writing style. Tell a kid, "The Doctor is investigating a prehistoric mammoth and tiny soldiers in New York," and I'm guessing they'd be on board immediately. As an adult, I still enjoyed it well-enough. However, Minchin tried a bit TOO hard to play up the contrary parts of Amy's character, along with some of the Doctor's more common turns of phrase, and they didn't quite ring true. So, not essential reading, but not wasted time either.
Rated Letter from the Birmingham Jail 10/10
Rated Memory's Legion: The Complete Expanse Story Collection 10/10
<div>I'd already read some of these stories in their novella form, but it was great to finally get the full collection. The story centering on Amos' origins ("The Churn") and "Strange Dogs" were probably my favorite, but they're all good.</div>
Rated Doctor Who: The Monsters Inside 8/10
Rated Summerland 6/10
<div>I liked it well enough to keep reading all 500 pages, but how others may feel about it depends on one's feelings about baseball. If you know nothing about the literal rules of baseball, best of luck. If you love baseball, you will love or hate the magical elements here, depending on how much this story's rules grate against your own "magic of baseball" feelings. I am a person who will go to a minor league ball game every once in a while, and someone who badly played Little League, but I almost never watch it on TV, so I suppose it's not surprising that my feelings fall somewhere in the middle.<br><br>The attempts at having certain characters speak in dialect has... mixed results. The book is from 2002, so maybe different choices would be made today.</div>