Blog

First, the name of this post is not a drill. These are not my favorite books, they’re the best ones ever written in the English language. Probably all the other ones, too. Except Italian, because everything you say in Italian sounds post-orgasmic. 1. The Sky is Everywhere by Jandy Nelson This book wraps you in another kind of air, like music, like dance, like the first touch from a boy you’ve had a crush on forever. I have no idea why Nelson isn’t 50 Shades of Grey famous. She should be signing books and tossing them down from her private plane, while getting footrubs from men with beautiful abdominal muscles and even more beautiful Ph.D’s. This is a debut novel from a seasoned literary agent, and I can only assume she’s been saving up all of her talent to spend... Read More

In case you’ve missed this cultural phenomenon entirely, The Fault in Our Stars by John Green is a book where two kids meet and fall in love in a cancer survivor support group. Trust me, I know. Just keep reading. Ahhhh! *gnashes teeth* This is a terribly hard one for me. The Fault in Our Stars has held firm (for years) to one of the hotly contested spots in my Top Five Favorite Books list.* And deservedly so. It’s tears-in-your-eyes funny, soggy-pile-of-tissues sad, and stare-in-jealousy-at-John-Green wise. This coming from a girl who refuses to read cancer books, and avoids sad books at all costs. Of course that means I expected the movie to be terrible. Even if it wasn’t terrible, I certainly wouldn’t notice, because I would be busy snootily insisting that the book was Better, Prettier, Smarter, Bigger Busted... Read More

Oooh… *rubs hands together* We might draw some blood on this one, because both book and movie were enjoyable, and both had significant drawbacks. For newbies, Insurgent is the second installment of the Divergent Trilogy, an action-filled dystopian trilogy that’s inspired a lot of love (and a lot of outraged shrieking) from its fans. It’s a post-apocalyptic world where the survivors are separated by values: honesty, bravery, etc. etc. Personally I thought “Ability to grow a potato” should have featured more prominently, alongside “Willingness to mate in a world without Clearasil” but hey! No one asked me. On the page, Insurgent suffers from a near-terminal case of Mopey Girl Doing Nothing. It’s a disease that runs rampant in the genre, much like pink eye through a daycare. It afflicted the later books of Hunger Games in a similar fashion, but... Read More