Review: Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

Ernest Cline's Ready Player One has been wildly popular as crossover science fiction--that is, science fiction that is enjoyed by both adults and young adults alike. Gamers and "nerds" who lived through the 1980s will appreciate the many (many) '80s pop culture and gaming references, and young adults will love the tech-savvy teenage protagonists and the novel's kids-against-the-establishment mentality.…

Review: Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? by Jeanette Winterson

For graduation, my creative nonfiction professor gave me a book as a parting gift: Jeanette Winterson's memoir Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? It was really good. I read it in about 3 days. Jeanette has had quite the tumultuous life. Her adoptive mother, whom she calls Mrs. Winterson, was an extreme depressive who insisted…

Matilda Reviews: Zombie by Joyce Carol Oates

Toward the end of October, a friend of mine lent me three books that he read for a class on horror literature, so I just had to add them to my horror lineup. Joyce Carol Oates's Zombie is the first of these. Zombie reads like the journal of a sexual psychopath. Quentin, or Q__ P__ as he refers…

Review: grl2grl by Julie Anne Peters

Julie Anne Peters's books hold a very special place in my heart. When I was a young teenager, I read them over and over again, hungry for a book about girls who liked other girls, like me. Every time I was in a bookstore, I checked the Young Adult section to see if she had…

Top Ten Books I Was Forced to Read

Happy Tuesday, everyone! This week's topic over at The Broke and the Bookish is a fantastic one: top ten books we were forced to read. To my delight, some of my favorite books have been ones I cracked open as required reading for a class. By the time I was in 5th grade, I realized…

Review: Orange Is the New Black by Piper Kerman

In case you haven't heard yet, everyone's talking about the new Netflix show, Orange Is the New Black. My girlfriend and I watched all thirteen hour-long episodes in two sittings. Basically, it's about a white, middle-class woman who finds herself doing thirteen months in a prison in Danbury, Connecticut for carrying a case of drug money across…

Top Ten Most Intimidating Books

This prompt comes via The Broke and the Bookish! I've chosen these books based on a combination of length and content. The most intimidating of all books, in my opinion, are those that are both long and difficult to comprehend. I plan to attempt these in the future! 10. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. Having read The Fountainhead and…

Review: Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison

Genre: Fiction Published: 2005 Blurb Greenville County, South Carolina, a wild, lush place, is home to the Boatwright family—rough-hewn men who drink hard and shoot up each other's trucks, and indomitable women who marry young and age all too quickly. At the heart of this astonishing novel is Ruth Anne Boatwright, known simply as Bone, a South…

Review: The Miseducation of Cameron Post by Emily M. Danforth

Emily Danforth’s novel The Miseducation of Cameron Post puts a fresh face on the classic queer-kid-coming-of-age-in-a-rural-conservative-area plot.  It’s destined to become a classic in Young Adult queer fiction. When I was thirteen, fourteen years old, I sought out queer YA books and read them in secret, locked in my bedroom, never daring to take them…

Review: Are You My Mother? by Alison Bechdel

Genre: Graphic Memoir Published: 2012 Summary Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home was a pop culture and literary phenomenon. Now, a second thrilling tale of filial sleuthery, this time about her mother: voracious reader, music lover, passionate amateur actor. Also a woman, unhappily married to a closeted gay man, whose artistic aspirations simmered under the surface of Bechdel's childhood .…