It took me a little while to get into this post-pandemic novel, but once I was in it, I was uncomfortably in the lonely world where only .6% of the population survives a flu outbreak. I'm still not getting a flu shot, btw.
My sweet friend debbie's NaNoWriMo project was to finish projects like this wonderful abecedary zine. She draws animals to illustrate some of her favorite things.
In the hospital, I find my mother, the only one I trust to care for them. It takes her a minute to place the three, given their current condition, but already she wears a look of consternation. And I know it's not a result of seeing abused bodies, because they were daily fair in District 12, but the realization that this sort of thing goes on in 13 as well.
I'm interested in the topic and would probably read a full-length work on most of the authors' lives in extreme religions, but the short essay doesn't work. The cover is pretty, and a lot of the writing is good. And there are some good quotes. I like how Naomi J. Williams characterizes her parents' disgust with "church-hoppers," as "ecclesiastically promiscuous."
Fannie Flagg novels always go down easy and are southern charming as all get-out. All-Girl centers on a 60-year-old woman who finds out she's not southern, at least not in the southern way of knowing who your people are a few generations back. It's also about Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs). Unless you're a real crankypants, you should be moved by protagonist Sookie Poole's evolution, the WASPs accomplishments, or both. I sniffled quite a bit reading about the titular event while riding a New Jersey transit train home from Jewish Christmas.
The publisher is Harlequin MIRA, but it didn't occur to me when I originally read a review of this book that it was a romance. I'm still not sure if that was the intent, because, finding the protagonist and her love interest annoying, I put the book down 200 or so pages in. The MIRA imprint is meant to encompass literary and genres aside from romance, for women.
I'm not much of a foodie, but I do love graphic memoirs, so I was happy to receive Knisley's book from my homie C-Dog as a solstice (or whatever) gift. I found myself envying how Knisley's love of food and cooking shored up her relationships with parents and friends. As you may know, I also have a soft spot for anything period related, so I loved this passage:
A woman's body craved protein and iron.
< copyrighted image I can't reproduce >
I grew into my mother's cravings - the demands of my inherited body chemistry.
< copyrighted image where Lucy says, "Once a month I need spinach." and "Like a were-rabbit." >
Danticat tells a story similar to her own, but set about twenty years later and with plenty of other elements to differentiate it from a fictionalized memoir, about a Haitian girl, Celiane, moving to the US and reuniting her family.
In an alternate history clairvoyance is unnatural and a crime. Clairvoyants have to hide their power or risk being consigned to The Tower. It turns out there's something even worse than The Tower, an alternate government in Oxford, run by Rephaim, which Wikipedia and other sources define as giant spirits from the netherworld.
She was already the daughter of a celebrity; an alumni connection could help only so much more. Why on earth hire an independent consultant, too? But then, there were Anne's clients: the parents who left nothing to chance. They refused to play with a deck that wasn't stacked. They'd raise a child unvaccinated before they'd consider letting him apply to college unaided.
Anne helps privileged (and one unprivileged) students get into college, mostly by working with them on their applications essays, but also a little bit by handling their families.