I thought it would be fun to do a D&D type book review rubric. At first I thought of assigning new characteristics (plot, character development, surprise and unpredictability, prose, world-building, and narrative), but then I thought why not just try the D& attributes and see what that looked like. Pride and Prejudice was an obvious choice …
Sorrow Capsule review: Sorrow (Braddock Avenue Books, 2013) is literary fiction which I probably wouldn’t have read if I didn’t know Catherine. That would have been my loss. It is a tragedy, told without shying away from its own darkness, in simple, powerful prose. It takes courage to read but is well worth it. Buy …
The Vorrh by B[rian] Catling is an odd book. Not the strangest one I’ve ever read – that distinction still belongs to Moby Dick. (The Vorrh, probably not coincidentally, also includes a character named Ishmael.) It is very worth reading; its imagination, language, and storylines are all compelling. It’s smart, sophisticated, and nakedly elegant; there …
I started rereading The Stand a couple nights ago – it’s probably the fifth time I’ve read it. The last reread was quite a while ago, maybe even 10 years, so there are a lot of specific details and characters I’ve forgotten, and I’m not bogged down with remembering too well what’s going to happen …
So I really really liked this book. I’m writing about it not as a review but as way to articulate what I enjoyed so much. I’ve read a lot of books over the last year that were much acclaimed as mind-bending or fantastic or important or whatever, none of which have really bent my mind. …
Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard …
I have fallen way behind on blogging (holidays, family around, writing to do, cat emergency, perhaps a natural disinclination) so I’m going to try to resuscitate this with a List of Lists: Most Anticipated SFF for 2014. The Sleeps with Monsters and Bibliosanctum lists are women writers only; The Qwillery is specifically debut authors. Most …
There’s a Facebook meme going around that is, roughly, “List 10 books that have been influential on you or your views of literature.” I did my list this morning and decided it would be useful to write a little further about them. Caveat: they would not all be on my list of Favorite Books or …
So this past week there have been a lot of “Tell us what [insert category] of books you are thankful for” tweets going around. I responded to one of the YA ones with the following tweet: “Today, Suzanne Collins because she has made boys totally interested in a strong girl POV character.” Then, yesterday, the …