Category Archives: Prose

Zel, by Donna Jo Napoli

Posted on June 25, 2009 by Thistle

This book is a retelling of Rapunzel. I’ll keep this short. I didn’t particularly like it. It wasn’t badly written or anything, but I think I’ve just decided I don’t really like fairy tale retellings. I recently tried to start … Continue reading →

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Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret, by Judy Blume

Posted on June 24, 2009 by Thistle

Margaret (age 11) has just moved from NYC to New Jersey, and is trying to cope with the change and to fit in at her new school. Already she’s different: Her parents do not have any religion and so Margaret … Continue reading →

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Death Comes for the Archbishop, by Willa Cather

Posted on June 23, 2009 by Thistle

It’s been awhile since I read a slow classic, over several days, and Death Comes for the Archbishop was just perfect for me: nicely paced, quiet and calm, evocative, and something that transported me to a different time. This was … Continue reading →

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Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson

Posted on June 21, 2009 by Thistle

Pretty much everyone knows the story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and if you don’t know, it’d be better if I don’t give any details at all, so I’m not going to talk about the plot at all. I … Continue reading →

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A Crooked Kind of Perfect, by Linda Urban

Posted on June 19, 2009 by Thistle

Ten-year-old Zoe wants to play the piano, but instead, her dad gets her a Perfectone D60 organ. This is not the only problem in Zoe’s life. Her mom almost never comes home from work. Her dad has some sort of … Continue reading →

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Protected: Tithe, by Holly Black

Posted on June 18, 2009 by Thistle

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The Death of Ivan Ilych, by Leo Tolstoy

Posted on June 17, 2009 by Thistle

What if my entire nature, my entire conscious life, simply was not the real thing? …Not the real thing. Everything you lived by and still live by is a lie, a deception that blinds you from the reality of life … Continue reading →

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Protected: Atonement, by Ian McEwan

Posted on June 16, 2009 by Thistle

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.

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A Great and Terrible Beauty, by Libba Bray

Posted on June 16, 2009 by Thistle

When Gemma Doyle’s mother dies, she’s sent from India to an all-girl boarding school in England. There, she has to cope not only with being the strange new girl in a very catty society, but with terrible prophetic visions and … Continue reading →

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Speak, by Laurie Halse Anderson

Posted on June 14, 2009 by Thistle

Melinda has become selectively mute. Because she called the cops on the end-of-summer party right before her freshman year, no one wants anything to do with her. Her old friends abandon her, and it becomes impossible to make new friends. … Continue reading →

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