tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-279452102024-03-13T07:46:06.781-04:00Kirsten Feldman BooksThe home of NO ALLIGATORS IN SIGHT; ON THE WAY TO EVERYWHERE; MISERY, RANCOR, AND ANGST: OR, THE THREE GRACES and related book reviews and triviaAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13321048855572400884noreply@blogger.comBlogger85125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27945210.post-83865493912849463152017-03-21T20:37:00.000-04:002017-03-21T20:37:02.570-04:00As always, Shakespeare Lives! Again! Book Review: Vinegar Girl by Anne TylerYou may think you don't need a recasting of The Taming of the Shrew in modern-day Baltimore, but I am here to tell you that you do. Kate, a.k.a. the shrew, will set you on your ear, as she does everyone she encounters. I won't give away the ending, but let's just say that the usual person does not do the taming.
As well, you need all the other bits of the fantabulous Hogarth Shakespeare Project,Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13321048855572400884noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27945210.post-66572815336338778372017-01-22T20:29:00.000-05:002017-01-22T20:29:23.868-05:00MUST love dogs! (and no, I don't mean that fun Claire Cook book of the same name)I'm almost finished with Essential Maps for the Lost, and I have my fingers crossed for Mads and Billy, but really, meeting that way? Lying that way, so many times? Essentially not letting the person you claim to love really see you for who you are, because you are too afraid s/he won't love you then? Can that really be love, or just shades of that awful truth in Gone Girl?
But boy, does Deb Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13321048855572400884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27945210.post-73288727590730533822016-12-16T16:58:00.001-05:002016-12-16T16:58:52.479-05:00Like Summer in Winter! Book Review: The Winter Street seriesEveryone who knows me even a little knows how much I love summer. And the beach. And the sun and the water and the sand. But. Elin Hilderbrand has done the impossible: she has written a beach trilogy for the winter! On Nantucket! It was so much fun. I love the Quinns. I want the Quinns to adopt me. Of course they have way too much dysfunction to go through the paperwork, but still. Read it. Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13321048855572400884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27945210.post-29011843414956110472016-11-21T19:28:00.001-05:002016-11-21T19:28:54.898-05:00Misery, Rancor, and Angst: Or, The Three Graces
Now available in print in my e-store
and from Amazon in print or e-book
Origin Story
I know, I know, it's been two years, but it's out!
This dark contemporary fairy tale has been brewing in the back of my mind, developing on Pinterest, and sending its tendrils through my own reading. The Three Graces emerges as the story of three talented, determined girls searching for a way to bring Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13321048855572400884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27945210.post-75490180269110395302015-06-09T21:36:00.001-04:002015-06-09T21:36:15.865-04:00Three Books: The Vast Strength of Women When We Work TogetherThough I am fine-tuning my new young adult manuscript, a process alternately frustrating and satisfying, I continue to read voraciously, because--and thank everything that's holy--more fabulous books come to my attention everyday, and every discovery leads to a new cherished author. I've recently had the pleasure (and sadness) to finish two exceedingly different but equally well-done novels, The Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13321048855572400884noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27945210.post-82398646718103802842015-03-16T04:00:00.000-04:002015-03-16T19:52:49.204-04:00Whatcha reading? Rooms by Lauren OliverI'm not sure if I'm ever going to have the privilege of reading a better Lauren Oliver book than Before I Fall, but Rooms is a trip. The distance between reality and paranormal is whisper thin, as it should be but almost never is. There are ghosts around every corner of, in every pore of, in every breath taken in this family house where the family has departed (until they return with the father'sAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13321048855572400884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27945210.post-52174393654272574212015-03-09T04:00:00.000-04:002015-03-09T04:00:01.229-04:00Whatcha reading? Where'd you go, Bernadette by Maria SempleDoes it ever happen to you that the way someone sees something is so antithetical to the way that you see it that you literally can't understand how it is possible that the other person sees it that way? No, this is not going to become a political screed about abortion or guns or some other political hot topic. Rather, it is my attempt to understand why Bernadette's husband and child think that Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13321048855572400884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27945210.post-10429343711939254182015-03-02T04:00:00.000-05:002015-03-02T04:00:02.290-05:00Books Into Movies and why are some so terrible?I finally watched the second installment of The Hobbit: Or There and Back Again movies. First why, oh, why, did they make it into three movies? Duh, because it will make more money that way, but still, why turn a marvelous gem of a book into a sprawling war epic so vast it morphed, bloated, into CGI-generated video game territory and rarely returned to life-sized? This was doubly Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13321048855572400884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27945210.post-26673853796220829922015-02-23T04:00:00.000-05:002015-02-23T04:00:08.820-05:00Whatcha reading? All the Bright Places by Jennifer NivenTeen suicide is a hot topic in YA literature and in the news; this confluence practically guarantees an author of a new novel involving suicide a spot on the Banned Books lists, as happened to Jay Asher, author of the bestselling Thirteen Reasons Why. (Cynics might point out that this designation is more likely to sell books in our current social media-rabid society than not.) Why the immediate Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13321048855572400884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27945210.post-64294551474989993242015-02-16T04:00:00.000-05:002015-02-16T04:00:09.396-05:00Whatcha reading? The Program by Suzanne YoungI am tearing through this one as if someone might take it from me if I put it down. The premise shocks with it utter plausibility: teenage suicide has become epidemic, and those in charge have developed The Program to combat it, essentially erasing the negative, difficult, conflicted parts of teens' brains so that they can "reenter" society cleansed. They can't remember huge chunks of their livesAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13321048855572400884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27945210.post-24549745730364596962015-02-14T04:00:00.000-05:002015-02-14T04:00:04.897-05:00Indie Love the First and the Latest
Giveaways at the end!
Here is where it all began, for me and for many others interested in the "new" world of independent publishing, the one that doesn't involve paying your own printing costs and stockpiling inventory in your garage or the back of your car, Wool, the story of a tiny community living underground in a silo because all the rest of the world lies decimated by disaster. Or does Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13321048855572400884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27945210.post-55536417789569082322015-02-09T04:00:00.000-05:002015-02-09T04:00:07.002-05:00Whatcha reading? His Dark Materials by Philip PullmanThis is one of those that I have meant to read for so long that I almost thought that I had. I started it one winter's day when the library was closed and I had run out of books and there it was winking at me from the shelf. A book I haven't read on my shelves is rare indeed; another glance shows me that the only other immediate contender is Wiring 1-2-3, and that, my friends, is no contender at Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13321048855572400884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27945210.post-13645292831563172222015-02-02T04:00:00.000-05:002015-02-02T04:00:11.684-05:00How about that NA? One Tiny Lie by K.A. TuckerYou might remember my wee bit of discomfort reading Ten Tiny Breaths, which I had thought was YA when I added it to my TBR list. If you've looked at my reading lists, I read many different types of books, not just YA by any means, but I was startled by the level of sexiness even as I was quickly drawn to the characters, especially Storm, and their dilemmas. This discomfort didn't stop me from Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13321048855572400884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27945210.post-87470953595045983012015-01-26T04:00:00.000-05:002015-01-26T04:00:05.984-05:00Whatcha reading? [On the] Jellicoe Road by Melina MarchettaI started this one right after Miss Timmins' School for Girls, set in a boarding school in India, and here we are at a boarding school in Australia but co-ed, run by the state instead of by missionaries, and definitely a step down the dark scale, shades of Lord of the Flies. In classic YA fashion many orphans and abandoned children and teens live on their own here, flouting the school rules and Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13321048855572400884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27945210.post-46573054612226012712015-01-19T04:00:00.000-05:002015-01-19T04:00:05.405-05:00Whatcha reading? Ten Tiny Breaths by K.A. TuckerIf you had asked me before I started this book, I would have definitely said I don’t read erotica. Or maybe I am a total prude, and this doesn’t even qualify as erotica, but still! I thought this was straight-up YA, contemporary YA with two orphans on the run heading to Miami in search of a better life for themselves, and it is that, but it is also s-t-e-a-m-y (and not just because it’s Miami).
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13321048855572400884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27945210.post-91319904642425640892015-01-12T04:00:00.000-05:002015-01-12T04:00:02.545-05:00Whatcha Reading? Miss Timmins’ School for Girls by Nayana CurrimbhoyThe appeal here seems almost endless for my tastes: a coming of age tale, a school setting with a gaggle of impudent school girls in uniforms, a culture exotic to me but with a stiff-upper-lip British overlay, 70s counterculture experimentation, and for good measure a midnight murder mystery. The book takes place almost entirely in the rain, the monsoon season actually, and that sets the Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13321048855572400884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27945210.post-42190499389844303982015-01-05T04:00:00.000-05:002015-01-05T04:00:05.137-05:00What Will Take You There?Where? Anywhere. That's the beauty of reading: you can do it anywhere, and if given the chance, it can and will take you anywhere you want to go. It doesn't discriminate by sex or income or race or education (beyond being able to read, that is). I came across this article recently, and though it's from 2012, it could be from today or twenty years ago, because it is timeless and combines my Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13321048855572400884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27945210.post-29430744108368759282014-12-29T04:00:00.000-05:002015-01-11T13:42:24.325-05:00Whatcha reading? Returning to Shore by Corinne DemasDemas's previous book, Everything I Was, featured a nearly lone main character, Irene, who finds an alternate, voluminous, all-encompassing new family up the road when her own family doesn’t seem to have much interest in her. I felt deeply for her. Here, too, the main character, Clare, finds herself shunted off so that her thrice-married mother can go on her honeymoon for three weeks. That her Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13321048855572400884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27945210.post-20446066301486529952014-12-22T04:00:00.000-05:002014-12-22T04:00:07.509-05:00Whatcha Reading? The Impossible Knife of Memory by Laurie Halse AndersonIt's so easy to judge other people, isn't it? We assess all day, every day, what people say and wear and do and are, and they are doing the same to us. The culture encourages it, nudges us to rate everyone and everything, from thumbs up to thumbs down, one to ten, white to black, choose your spectrum. In The Impossible Knife of Memory, the main character and point of view, Hayley Kincain, judges Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13321048855572400884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27945210.post-39479269654583429292014-12-15T04:00:00.000-05:002015-01-17T20:34:14.881-05:00Whatcha reading? The Star Dwellers by David EstesThe second installment of a trilogy can be tricky. The author can’t assume too much about what readers remember from the first one, but there may be readers who pick up the second one, not realizing (or remembering) that it is a sequel. That balancing act must teeter between boring old or confusing new readers. At the other end of the novel, a “middle child” can’t have a true ending either, Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13321048855572400884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27945210.post-25870549606612650402014-12-08T04:00:00.000-05:002014-12-08T04:00:04.651-05:00Whatcha reading? All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony DoerrYou know how I like the adolescent point of view. In All the Light We Cannot See Anthony Doerr juxtaposes the stories of blind, inquisitive, French Marie-Laure and orphaned, analytical, German Werner at the time of the second world war; you know that they will intersect. This should feel forced and predetermined, but somehow it doesn't. Part of it is the beauty of Doerr's language, poetic yet Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13321048855572400884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27945210.post-44496213819776307262014-12-01T04:00:00.000-05:002014-12-07T15:42:20.707-05:00What Comes Next?There is a game I like to play (no, nothing dirty—usually), and I call it What Comes Next. I'll read something, say a headline, or I'll observe something, say an interaction, and I'll spin it out for myself. My mind will create a mini-story or sometimes a full-blown one, based on what I "know" so far.
Here's an example:
I saw this headline, "Search for boy, missing for 38 years, resumes in Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13321048855572400884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27945210.post-76895064871271420042014-11-24T04:00:00.000-05:002014-12-07T15:42:50.118-05:00Whatcha reading? Between, Georgia by Joshilyn Jackson
The nature/nurture debate fascinates me: are we more our genes or our environment? Some people even believe we are exclusively one or the other, that we are born as is, without possibility of true change, or born a blank slate, everything ahead. Though I fall somewhere in between, I do feel that we skew more toward genes, that we come out an entire person who can be encouraged or pointed in Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13321048855572400884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27945210.post-47036181129152594232014-11-17T04:00:00.000-05:002014-12-07T15:43:13.777-05:00Whatcha reading? The Rosie Project by Graeme SimsionBoy meets girl, and it's love, except that the boy doesn't know it. His dating experience has been negligible and unsuccessful, perhaps owing to his difficulties with social and emotional cues. The "boy" in question is almost forty-year-old Don Tillman, a genetics researcher who appears to be well along on the autism spectrum, buy he may or may not know that either. Don is also not good at Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13321048855572400884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27945210.post-40726608628104516112014-11-10T04:00:00.000-05:002014-12-07T15:43:34.953-05:00Whatcha reading? Is This Tomorrow by Caroline LeavittA train friend asks me this with no preliminary every time she sees me. What is a train friend? Someone that you see only in the context of your daily commute to work or school or wherever, but at that intersection of your lives you have a certain habitual banter. Ours is books. This is not a surprise since I am always reading, and so is she. Honestly the only surprise is that either of us ever Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13321048855572400884noreply@blogger.com0