Somebody’s Gotta Do It: Because Civilization Won’t Save Itself and Other Truths about Democracy I Learned by Winning a Lowly Local Office by Adrienne Martini I was honestly scared to read this because it talks so much about the dark times of 2016. That confident optimism (“oh, we’ll get our first woman president. No one …
The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart(unfinished) It’s probably pretty good, but I did not have the patience to see it through. I like stories about child geniuses (The Great Brain, Encyclopedia Brown), but it took so damn long to get to the arc of the story–the big goal. And when it did, I …
My Brother Sam is Dead by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier It’s much less “rah-rah-America” than I thought it would be. I was expecting something like “Johnny Tremain”, but no, this is a realistic look at the Revolutionary War before people knew how it would end. It’s like the Civil War. Neighbors are on …
Libriomancer by Jim C. Hines Jim C. Hines is good at set dressing, but less so with character + plot combos. I wish I could come up with overall ideas like him, but that’s about all I wish for. The story, like his other stories, are very linear and take all place in the immediate …
The Boy Who Couldn’t Sleep and Never Had To by D.C. Pierson You might remember this story from the famous “Yahoo! Answers” response to someone who asked for a summary, wanting to skip the summer reading. The D.C. Pierson himself responded, saying how disappointed he was trying to avoid it because it sounded like work, …
Heights of the Depths (The Hidden Earth Chronicles #2) by Peter David This book wasn’t as excellent as the first one, but still pretty good. Maybe because it’s the second of a trilogy, always a disadvantage since it loses the excitement of an introduction or resolution and there’s more moving characters to a destination. Also, …
The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle My mom was surprised I’d never read it. And I saw the movie, which I loved for its campy 80’s-ness and animation that wasn’t Disney. The book follows the movie pretty damn well. It’s almost word-for-word. So much that I’m afraid my experience with the movie colored my …