I read Nikita Lalwani's
Gifted a few weeks ago and was a bit at a loss right away for the right description of it. The main character is a gifted girl in Wales, the daughter of Indian immigrants. It reminded me a bit of Jhumpa Lahiri's
The Namesake (given the whole Indian-immigrants-trying-to-adjust-to-a-new-society thing) though I didn't like it as well. Not bad, just not as compelling a read.
Labels: books, fiction, immigrants, review
posted by kristin at 1:56 PM
Hooray for
ILL I'd been wanting to read
Paul Di Filippo's novel
Spondulix ever since reading the short story (of the same name) that it was based on in his collection
Strange Trades but could never bring myself to pay $50 for it. I got it from the library a few days ago and finished it last night. Good stuff. Set in Hoboken, NJ, the book features an ex-Olympic diver, ex-circus performer who creates an alternate form of money called Spondulix in a moment of desperation. You probably can't imagine where it goes from there.
Labels: fiction, review, sf
posted by kristin at 12:34 PM
Jayne Ann Krentz's
Falling Awake was the romance I read for my Book Lust class. It's romantic suspense featuring lucid dreaming. Not bad actually. She's not the absolute most beautiful writer ever, but the writing didn't get in the way and the plot was interesting enough to keep me up reading.
Labels: booklust, books, review, romance
posted by kristin at 9:33 PM
After reading about the controversy surrounding Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie's
Lost Girls I needed to see it for myself. I got part 1 from the library last week and read it. It's nicely done and is indeed rather explicit. For anyone who hasn't heard of it, it's basically a pornographic graphic novel starring Alice (of Wonderland), Wendy (from Peter Pan) and Dorothy (Oz). I say pornographic only in that there's a lot of explicit sex and since it's a comic book the reader can't really skim over those sections without missing most of the story.
Labels: books, graphicnovels, novels, review
posted by kristin at 4:19 PM
Getting Stoned with Savages is J. Maarten Troost's follow up to
The Sex Lives of Cannibals. After returning to D.C. and getting normal jobs, Maarten and his girlfriend realized they want to be back in the South Pacific. This time they head to Vanuata and Fiji. Not quite as good as the first, but fun.
Labels: books, non-fiction, review, travel
posted by kristin at 4:17 PM 
