I’m a big fan of re-reading. I don’t do it often, but each time I do it, I remember the self that was and realize some pretty cool things about the self that is. Like, when I first read Doomsday Book by Connie Willis? I had just started high school, and the travails of Kivrin, the grad student mistakenly transported to the eve of the [...]
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books:Drama
Okay, Valdes has really come into her own! In this second installment in the Dirty Girls series, the six sucias are entering their thirties with a panicked, maverick energy. Five years after the close of the first book, Dirty Girls’ Social Club, Lauren and Amoury have hit a rocky moment in their relationship. She constantly battles deep feelings of insecurity, her burgeoning alcoholism, and her [...]
Based on the book by Meera Syal, Anita and Me is a beautiful coming of age story narrated by Meena, a British Asian girl growing up in the West Midlands. She’s the only brown girl she knows (besides family). This, plus her burgeoning creativity, make it really hard to make friends. So, she’s thrilled when local bad girl Anita (who’s white and blonde, the way [...]
This uneven half-memoir is interesting and quirky when not caught up in the actual plot. Its exploration of modern Cuban identity is surprisingly nuanced, especially when compared with The Dirty Havana Trilogy. However, unlike Dirty Havana, Dirty Blonde leaves uncomplicated the issues surrounding race and ethnicity when they’re treated as stable, essentialized concepts. PLOT! Alysia is the daughter of an American diplomat — OR SO [...]
At the heart of the Alina is the titular character, a Romanian teenager who does webcam porn in order to pay off her father’s debts. He’s been hospitalized, and Alina’s instituted The Policy, where she cuts costs whenever possible while working as much as possible in order to try and break even. The novel begins with this poignant scene: Alina took the tube of lipstick [...]
Wowzers. Slammerkin is an amazingly well told tale based on the court case of Mary Saunders, an 18th century Londoner hung and burned for the murder of her mistress. Donoghue takes as her starting point an excerpt from Saunders’ so-called confession, where Mary claims she committed her crime because of her love for fine cloth. The author takes this idea and runs with it… what [...]
So I bought one of Dan Brown’s regular thrillers, figuring that he can pace a scene well, and that I might like one of his books better if it’s not peddling daft conspiracy theories. This one promised a lead, NSA cryptographer Susan Fletcher, fighting for her country, her life, and the life of the man she loves. That promise was not honoured. First, her life. [...]
