As Roald Dahl did in his childhood memoir, Boy, Nayeri takes painful, embarrassing, and sometimes violent moments, and reframes them. Nayeri’s ultimate theme is the self-consciously Tolkien-ish idea that dark things are only apparent, are passing away, and are therefore, fundamentally untrue.
M.L. Forman’s 5-book series, Adventurers Wanted, is a wonderful and fantastical journey, in the true sense of those words. What at first seems like a simple, perhaps even naïve, tale of a boy discovering a new life surprises the reader as it gradually delves deeper into the nuances of honor and responsibility, courage and cowardice, and many other aspects of human nature. Slathbog’s Gold We enter the story, Slathbog’s Gold, as Alex Taylor, a fairly typical teenage boy, finds himself applying for a position as “adventurer” in a book shop…
My very first impression, from the first page of Annihilation, book one of The Southern Reach Trilogy by Jeff Vandermeer, was not far from my last thoughts on the series. What insanity have I just stumbled into? Every reveal seems to bring along numerous other mind-bending doubts or questions about the world Vandermeer has created. The story opens with a group of nameless female explorers beginning their expedition into “Area X”, a mysterious portion of the ordinary world that has somehow, inexplicably become subject to laws all its own. Its…
The Outsiders is a great opportunity for parents and teachers to begin discussions on a myriad of moral questions, from prejudice to friendship.
For regular sci-fi readers, and for readers able to “clinically distance” themselves from disordered elements in novels, this novel would be one of the best of many choices in its genre.
“The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” has a little bit of the good of contemporary young adult fiction, but way more of the bad and the flat out ugly.
I would seriously caution any parents to read through the book first before allowing their son or daughter to do so. Within are scenes involving graphic descriptions of sex.
What makes this book different is that it gets to the heart of who we are more thoughtfully than the movies and television programs that have paved this over-tread path.
The point is, there is no point, and we’ve all grown far too serious. There is nothing so sad about our modern culture as its sadness.
All Creatures Great and Small is the first book in a series of reminiscences by James Herriot, a veterinarian in the Yorkshire Dales region of England in the 1930s and 40s (James Herriot is his pen-name; his real name was James “Alf” Wight. Throughout the book, pseudonyms are used for various persons and localities). He is 23 and fresh out of vet school when he lands a job with Siegfried Farnon, a practicing vet in a small town in rural Yorkshire. The chapters take us episode by episode as he not…