Dead and the Gone, the
A companion to Life as We Knew It, The Dead and the Gone tells us what it was like in Manhattan after the moon got knocked out of place and messed up life on Earth.
reviewdate:
Feb 1 2013
isn:
978-0-15-206311-5
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Along for the Ride
A young adult novel about a smart loner girl's last summer before college, this book felt substantial while I was reading it, but ended up a teen romance. Not that a teen romance has to be a bad thing.
reviewdate:
Jan 17 2013
isn:
978-0-14-241556-6
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Marbles
Cartoonist Ellen Forney is completely forthcoming in her account of how she coped with getting diagnosed with bipolar disorder and accepting that she'd have to be on meds the rest of her life. Aside from her frustrations with her highs and lows and the drugs that often failed to smooth them out, the central thesis of Forney's graphic novel style memoir is her fear that medication will erase her artistic talent and identity.
reviewdate:
Jan 7 2013
isn:
978-1-59240-732-3
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Dead Witch Walking
The story begins with a witch, a pixy and a vampire in a bar...
reviewdate:
Dec 25 2012
isn:
978-0-06-156719-3
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Deadlocked
I'd somehow missed the latest Sookie installation when it came out. After reading lots of paranormal fiction books by lesser writers, it was nice to spend some time in Harris's skillfully constructed world with her multi-dimensional characters.
reviewdate:
Dec 19 2012
isn:
978-1-937007-44-7
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Suri's Burn Book
The book isn't as good as the microblog, but that would be nearly impossible. I appreciate that Hagan didn't merely reprint the celebrity children entries she posted online, but organized the book into logical, coherent and snarky sections.
reviewdate:
Dec 16 2012
isn:
978-0-7624-4735-0
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Life as We Knew It
My holds hadn't come in, so I grabbed this book from the YA shelf at the Tompkins Square branch of NYPL because I remembered the name Susan Beth Pfeffer from reading her YA books when I actually was a young adult. Weirdly the book didn't list all of her earlier works, just one recent publication, so I wasn't sure I had the person I remembered. I was shaky on her name and thought maybe Susan was the daughter of the Someone Beth Pfeffer I was thinking of. The Wikipedia page I viewed today didn't indicate any of the works I remembered either, but with a little digging, I found that she is indeed the author of classics like Marly the Kid, The Beauty Queen and Starring Peter and Leigh, none of which has a science fiction theme, btw.
reviewdate:
Nov 29 2012
isn:
978-0-15-206154-8
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Mary Ann in Autumn
When we first meet Mary Ann Singleton in Tales of the City, she's just moved to San Francisco from Ohio. She is naive and a bit of a ninny. There are eight TofC books, and although Mary Ann seems to be beloved by the author, truthfully, she's rather annoying. In book or two before Mary Ann in Autumn she's even worse--a self-centered, self-involved climber who abandons her friends and child. Still, Maupin gives her a chance at redemption.
reviewdate:
Nov 25 2012
isn:
978-0-062020147
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Blood Price
A Toronto ex-cop with night blindness and decreasing peripheral vision, turned private investigator, finds herself hunting a demon. It's a compellingy told first entry in a vampire series. My only complaint is that there were some weird typos and spelling mistakes, e.g., MacDonald's for McDonald's and I Dream of Genie instead of Jeannie. I'm pissy like that, though.
reviewdate:
Nov 23 2012
isn:
978-0-7564-0501-4
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Last of the Live Nude Girls: a Memoir, the
If a zine girl is going to write a memoir, I'm going to read it. Sheila does a better job than most at making the leap to the big spine. I don't have any complaints as far as that goes, like I often do. The editing and production are good. The only thing that bothered me at all is that I'm pretty sure I recognize one of the background characters, whose identity is concealed only by a very minor name change.
reviewdate:
Nov 13 2012
isn:
978-1-59376-400-5