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Monthly Archives: January 2017

Pull Me Under by Kelly Luce

A bad cold is forcing me to copy, paste, and edit an Amazon description of this book: Chizuru Akitani is the twelve-year-old daughter of the famous violinist and Japanese “Living National Treasure” Hiro Akitani. Overweight and hafu (her mother is white), she is tormented by her classmates and targeted by the most relentless bully of […]

The Life We Bury

I don’t suppose mysteries require that the title mean much.  Look at Dick Francis books or Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum novels.  So I’ll forgive Allen Eskens or his publishers for this dumb title especially since Eskens delivers a swiftly paced story with a main character I want to root for.  College student Joe Talbert should […]

The Opposite Of Everyone

Novel about hard-driving divorce attorney Paula Vauss, or Kali, as her Southern born, free-spirited mother Kai named her.  At 13, Kali turns her mother in to the police precipitating a lifelong estrangement.  Years later, Paula discovers the things she didn’t know about that time her life, including a brother and a sister.  I really liked […]

Codex by Lev Grossman

Gave this to Karl for Christmas but had to steal it when I ran out of things to read in Cancun.  Like St. John Mandel’s The Singer’s Gun, Codex is a earlier work for this author, Lev Grossman, who wrote the amazing Magicians series.  And you can see the stepping stones to the longing, brilliant […]

Get Out Of My Life…..

… But First Could You Drive Me And Cheryl To The Mall?  by Anthony E. Wolf, Ph.D.  Linda passed this on to me and I slogged through in on our Cancun vacation.  Wolf’s writing is haphazard, mostly full of made-up conversations between parents and teenagers that, while they may resonate with parents, aren’t followed up […]

The Singer’s Gun by Emily St. John Mandel

Thought I’d try this earlier novel by Mandel after devouring her hit, Station Eleven.  Anton Waker grows up in a family dealing in stolen goods and falls into an illegal passport operation with his cousin Aria.  He wants to get out and makes dramatic choices to do so.  Part novel, part thriller.  I could see […]