This Land Is Your Land: House of Earth Review

I don't really know why I picked this up beyond a sense of curiosity and being in the mood for a bit of folksy literature. I knew of Woody Guthrie as a singer-songwriter... but I had no idea he was also a writer of prose and somewhat of an artist.

8 YA Trilogies That Deserve More Hype

Good things come in threes--young adult book trilogies are evidence of the fact. Bad things, alas, also come in threes--as demonstrated by the love triangles plaguing this particular age bracket's fiction like a particularly unpleasant swarm of wormy insects. Despite this and other common tropes, young adult fiction has been a large part of my… Continue reading 8 YA Trilogies That Deserve More Hype

Classics Club Book List

So, after years of seeing the lists, the spins, the challenges, and the memes, I am finally joining the Classics Club! This is pretty big for me as I've had some bad experiences with booklists/challenges and vowed never to get myself into one again, but never say never, I guess. I actually feel good about… Continue reading Classics Club Book List

Reluctant Roommates: Living Rent Free In My Head ARC Review

We live in exciting times. This is my second ever ARC review, and it is on a collection of non-fiction essays on pop culture: Living Rent Free in My Head by Dominique Davis. I stumbled on Dominique's blog, Fairly Professional... so when I got the opportunity to receive an ARC of [her] book for review, I was pretty stoked.

Zodiac Killer: Ninth House Review

Apropos of nothing, I discovered this week that the Sagittarius' ruling house is the ninth, whatever that means. I happen to be a Sagittarius, through no fault of my own, so I thought that piece of trivia fit nicely with me finally getting to reviewing Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo.

‘A feminist: (masculinely)…’

I did, once upon a time, read Ulysses by James Joyce. And I did, once upon a Mediterranean cruise, enjoy parts of it along with some quotes I saved. Seeings it is Bloomsday, June 16, the singular day on which all 265,000 words and 18 episodes of the novel canonically take place, I can hardly… Continue reading ‘A feminist: (masculinely)…’

Memento: Relics and Memorabilia in A Canticle for Leibowitz*

The Albertian monks’ preservation of Memorabilia from before the Fallout (worldwide nuclear destruction) is a constant theme in Walter M. Miller Jr.’s post-apocalyptic science fiction novel A Canticle for Leibowitz. The monks attempt to maintain a history exclusively with Memorabilia, “meaning… only… books and papers, not… interesting hardware,” because their experiences with an intercontinental launching… Continue reading Memento: Relics and Memorabilia in A Canticle for Leibowitz*

Burning Ring of Fire: The Fatal Flame Review

Blurb for The Fatal Flame by Lyndsay Faye No one in 1840s New York likes fires, copper star Timothy Wilde least of all. After a blaze killed his parents and another left him with a terrible scar, he has avoided flames of all kinds. So when a seamstress turned arsonist threatens Robert Symmes, a corrupt… Continue reading Burning Ring of Fire: The Fatal Flame Review