My Christmas read was kind of a dud
Snow by John Banville
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This is a beautifully written but dull book. I didn’t care about any of the characters, and the snowy landscape wasn’t particularly evocative of any specific place (and I did so want it to feel really Irish), and did nothing to heighten tension. It’s really only about two and a half stars worth of the same old story of priests abusing children.
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In one of those tricks of time that feels like forever and also no time at all, Playing Army celebrated its first birthday this week. I’m supposed to say, “It’s been a wild ride!” But it hasn’t been, and I am weirdly grateful for that. So here, in no particular order, are some reflections on…
All of my journaling about staying in a bad situation or going to an unknown (but also guaranteed to be difficult) one led to two pro-con lists that cancelled each other out entirely. What was good about one element was negated by something pretty awful on the other side.
It’s Boxing Day* so my fancy has lightly turned to thoughts of violence: Chain Gang All Stars is a barely dystopian story of prisoners turned gladiators. It’s a book about our culture of violence, but even though the brutality is written beautifully (something I personally have a problem with) it doesn’t glorify it. Quite the…
Should I make this post like one of those aggravating internet recipes, where you have to wade through the history of each ingredient before it finally tells you how to make the freaking thing? No. Those drive me nuts, too. So without further blah-blah, here’s who won my extra copy of Doll Parts, the delightfully…
It’s been a bit more than a month since Playing Army was released and I’ve got some things to say about how things are going. But as is typical for me, what I have to say doesn’t necessarily match up with what people mean when they ask that question. Probably they want to know if…
A bit of a book review, more moodlin’ than maudlin: A conversation went deep at the Little Ripon Bookshop the other night, discussing how family stories are shaped and told (in reference to Kate Grenville’s Restless Dolly Maunder, a not very sympathetic fictionalization of her grandmother’s life that was shortlisted for the 2024 Women’s Prize)….