Imagine how this opening sentence hits after Emma Cline’s boring mopes: “The morning before the school shooting passed like any other, all my neighbors out at dawn performing oblations to the angels on our roofs.” Pow! Brenda Peynado’s world-building is impressive considering the stories’ fantastic tendencies—her effortlessness is almost Philip K. Dickensian with how the […]
[This is the first of… many?… straight-up book reviews, rated one to five stars.] Emma Cline and/or her publishing company reduces ten stories down to the middle thirds of ten stories. The opening thirds (when unlikable characters might be justified) and the closing thirds (when it’s fair to expect any progress or resolution whatsoever) are […]
Updated: January 2, 2021 Continuing, for some reason, to chronicle every book and short story I’ve read since The Lord of the Rings in the spring of 2017. Part 1 (2017) | Part 2 (2018) | Part 3 (2019) | “Selected readings from the Old Lady Book Club” Critical remarks are avoided… Rereads coopt the register mark… “Library Book Club” selections […]
Updated: January 1, 2020 Continuing, for some reason, to chronicle every book and short story I’ve read since The Lord of the Rings in the spring of 2017. Part 1 (2017) | Part 2 (2018) | “Selected readings from the Old Lady Book Club” Critical remarks are avoided… Rereads coopt the register mark… “Library Book Club” selections are noted […]
Updated: January 1, 2019 Continuing, for some reason, to chronicle every book and short story I’ve read since The Lord of the Rings last spring. Part 1 (2017) | “Selected readings from the Old Lady Book Club” Critical remarks are avoided… Rereads coopt the register mark… “Library Book Club” selections are noted in red to represent the […]
Updated: January 1, 2018 Chronicling, for some reason, every book and short story I’ve read since The Lord of the Rings late in the spring. This is a companion to the rabble-rousing “Selected readings from the Old Lady Book Club,” protested openly by AARP, NOW and other pro-civility agencies. You cannot spell literati without ire, […]
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