Wants to read Loud in the House of Myself: Memoir of a Strange Girl
book
Rated Magic Lessons: The Prequel to Practical Magic 8/10
<div>I got this prequel to <em>Practical Magic</em> ages ago and only just now got around to reading it. But since I finished it on a day when no one knows quite what to say, I'll just give you a quote from the book:<br><br><em>"Some creatures do not care how polite a person might be, they will hurt you for no reason, and then all you can do is heal yourself with whatever ingredients are necessary."</em></div>
Rated The Morningside 10/10
<div>What a great book. I've never read a Téa Obreht novel before (somewhere in my memory, I've come across a short story), and I'm glad I finally got to her.<br><br>THE MORNINGSIDE concerns a mother and daughter who live in the last upscale apartment building on their island, where the mother works as the super. They live in a not so distant future, where the tides are ever-encroaching and natural disasters cause population displacement around the world. The daughter does not know much about her past, or her mother's, but the unusual people around their building mix in her head with half-known folk tales, which sets a series of too-real events in motion. Is magic involved? Or is it a girl's magical thinking? What does everyday environmental trauma do to a person? How might we feel in control? But what if...?<br><br>There's a lot to consider here, and I like that the book does not offer easy resolutions. Well worth the read.</div><div><br></div>
Rated The Great Believers 10/10
What an amazing, beautiful, sad, hopeful, and still-relevant-today story. Reading this during a time where we're dealing with a different virus/pandemic, political protests, healthcare struggles (and the indifference of professionals who might not care about your illness at first), and the weird, heady mix of trauma and hope that can grow in a person... it's a lot. Do read this, if you haven't already.
Rated Night of the Living Rez 10/10
<div>I really loved this collection of stories that revolve around one family and their surrounding community. It's grim at times, but also funny and always interesting. It was an excellent book to read after having recently finished an Alice Munro story collection.</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 Please Don't Be Upset and Other Stories
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
Wants to read Thoughts Without Cigarettes
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>
Rated Lawnboy 6/10
Is it fair to compare one writer to another? Is the comparison ever quite right? Blurbs for <i>Lawnboy</i> compared Paul Lisicky to [a:Michael Cunningham|1432|Michael Cunningham|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1198584594p2/1432.jpg] (<i>The Hours, A Home at The End of the World</i>, etc.), and the cover even boasted a blurb from Cunningham himself. While certainly flattering, how does Lawnboy compare?<br><br>Non-straight characters? Check.<br>Coming of age/awakening type plot? Check.<br>Complicated romance? Checkity-check-check.<br><br>But couldn’t one say this about plenty of other books? Francesca Lia Block also had these things, but <i>Wheetzie Bat</i> and <i>Lawnboy</i> and <i>The Hours</i> are three entirely different books. Then again, it’s been a little while since I’ve read Cunningham’s work. Still, there is one clear way that Lisicky and Cunningham reminded me of each other: It took me the first third of the book to really get into it. That’s not to say I spent the first third uninterested; I just questioned how much I would enjoy the whole thing. Lawnboy is divided into three parts, and by Part 2, I became much more engaged in how things turned out.<br><br>I enjoyed <i>Lawnboy</i> well enough that I will keep an eye out for Lisicky’s other work. The lingering, awestruck descriptions of physicality, and the unabashed searches for affection were enough to make me want more. It doesn’t matter whether Paul Lisicky writes anything like Michael Cunningham — Let the man stand on his own.<br><br>(Full review can be found at <a href="http://glorifiedloveletters.blogspot.com/2010/07/lawnboy-by-paul-lisicky.html">Glorified Love Letters</a>.)
