Today at the dog park, one of the topics discussed by us “8:30 regulars” included high school graduations. It is, after all, that time of year, for mortarboards and diplomas and college visits and looking forward. Some of the folks at the park have kids who are graduating in a […]
Signal to Noise Silvia Moreno-Garcia Solaris Release Date: February 10, 2015 ISBN 978-1-78108-299-7 Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s debut novel, Signal to Noise, had been on many “best of the year” fantasy/YA lists for 2015, but it took me a while before getting around to reading it. I’m glad that I persevered, though; […]
The Rest of Us Just Live Here Patrick Ness Harper Teen Release Date: October 6, 2015 ISBN 978-0-06-240316-2 Did you ever read a book, or a series of books where strange, supernatural things happened in what would otherwise be considered “normal” towns, and wonder what the other, more mundane folks […]
Biggie Derek E. Sullivan Albert Whitman & Company Release Date: March 1, 2015 ISBN 978-0-8075-0727-8 Henry Abbott is 16 years old, and a 10th grader at Finch High School in the little town of Finch, Iowa, where he gets straight As. He works four nights a week at Bob’s […]
Everything I Never Told You Celeste Ng The Penguin Press Release Date: June 26, 2014 ISBN 978-1-59420-571-2 It absolutely slays me when debut novels are this good. Everything I Never Told You is the story of a family dealing with a tragic loss. It’s 1977 in Middlewood, Ohio, and Lydia […]
I wanted to read Eleanor & Park to discover what all the fuss was about. I have to preface this with saying that I love living in Minnesota. It’s vibrant, progressive, practical… for the most part. That’s why it really surprises and disappoints me when something that seems just wrong […]
Truth or Dare Jacqueline Green Poppy/Little Brown and Company First Edition: May 14, 2013 ISBN 978-0-316-22036-1 Beautiful spitfire Tenley Reed has returned to Echo Bay, Massachusetts just in time for the start of her senior year. Her mother has remarried – this time to insanely rich Lanson Reed, who just […]
On this day, December 3, in 1857, Joseph Conrad was born in Berdichev, Imperial Russia (modern
Ukraine, then a part of Poland). While he settled in England and wrote in English, he always considered himself a Pole. Heart of Darkness, one of the most famous of his 20 novels (which explores colonialism and the attitudes regarding what constitutes a barbarian versus civilized society) is considered one of the best English novels of the 20th century, as is his novel Lord Jim, which chronicles a crew’s abandonment of its disabled ship. Conrad died in England in 1924 at age 66.