Ruby McMillan’s husband announces out of the blue that he’s leaving one morning. She has her initial meltdown, of course, but then she starts getting on with her life. Walter has left their finances in a shambles and Ruby has to scramble to hold everything together as he sails off into the sunset with his […]
Professor Gary Fuller sets out to fill in the gaps in your geography knowledge. I would guess that I know a little more geography than the average American but I’ll be the first to admit that I’m still woefully lacking. I downloaded this book on a nook Free Friday (I believe), thinking that I might […]
Ed Kennedy is an underage cab driver with no prospects. He’s the very picture of your average young man. But someone has chosen him to carry out some tasks that require him to be anything but average. I was incredibly nervous about reading this book after reading The Book Thief. That book immediately became my […]
As the “gay marriage debate” was heating up back in oh, 2005, Dan Savage and his boyfriend (they dislike the word partner) were in the middle of their own debate. Should they or shouldn’t they? They’d been together ten years, they’d adopted a son together, neither had any intention of leaving the relationship, they fully […]
Lieutenant Eve Dallas is assigned to lead a high-profile murder investigation into the death of a Senator’s granddaughter. But the granddaughter was a “licensed companion,” i.e. prostitute, and she was murdered in a pretty graphic way. Working mostly alone, Dallas must find the murderer before he kills again. I had such a love/hate relationship with […]
I hesitated over this book for a long time. I’d somewhere picked up the idea that it involves a lot of Philosophy, which I read as Big, Boring Thoughts That Have No Practical Application to Anyone’s Life. Is that bad? Probably. But I came across it in Will Schwalbe’s memoir, The End of Your Life Book Club and it piqued my…
Two young men, children of parents that the Communist government in China deems enemies of the state, are basically exiled to a remote mountain for “re-education.” Their parents’ “crimes” don’t even warrant the word; they’re basically just too educated for the government’s comfort. The teens find a harsh life waiting for them on the mountain. […]
In this very, very dark telling of Peter Pan, Peter is abused and unwelcome everywhere he wanders until he stumbles onto the island of Avalon. There, he finally carves out a home for himself, although not without a certain amount of danger. As conditions on the island deteriorate, Peter recruits children from the world of […]
4 Stars. I didn’t like this quite as much as Cinder but I definitely still enjoyed it. By introducing Scarlet, Marissa Meyer managed to avoid my common complaint that the second book in a series is just filler. Had she stayed exclusively with Cinder’s story, I’d probably be complaining. By shifting the focus, she fills in a lot […]
In the Five Hundred Kingdoms, a force called the Tradition tries to fit likely young men and women down the well-trod paths of fairy tale characters. Now it’s trying to work its magic on Princess Rosamund but Godmother Lily is doing her best to thwart it. The Queen has just died and Lily sees the […]
Life hasn’t been easy for Dan Torrance since the events of The Shining. Now that he’s an adult, his shining has faded a little but it’s still too much for him to handle. Following in his father’s footsteps, he’s turned to alcohol to escape from his problems. He eventually hits his bottom and tries to […]