The Buddha In the Attic by Julie Otsuka. I’ve been putting off this review for a while now. I’m not really sure where to begin. I loved it, but… It sort of worked for the challenge, but… The 1st person plural voice was an interesting technique, but… It’s a difficult book for me to write […]
This was an unexpected addition to my list, and it was a great one! I read this snippet from an interview with the author and just had to add it: One journalist kindly alerted me to the fact that there was a hoax in my Wikipedia entry, a claim that I was writing about “the […]
While I was investigating young adult and young reader choices for California, I stumbled across Ana of California by Andi Teran (2015), which is meant to be a modern take on Anne of Green Gables, the much loved classic book by Lucy Maud Montgomery from 1908. While the original took place in Canada, Ana of […]
I really enjoyed Vikram Seth’s The Golden Gate (1986). I was, understandably, a bit apprehensive about the whole verse thing… The Golden Gate is written in Onegin sonnets (for those interested in rhyme scheme and history, eNotes has an interesting analysis of the sonnet style used, available to the browsing public), but the voice is […]
Robert Louis Stevenson, Jekyll & Hyde, Jack the Ripper, and modern day land management ranger Rafael Salazar; London, a health spa in the Swiss Alps, the Samoan Islands, and Topanga Canyon near Los Angeles. If this sounds like an episode of “One of these things is not like the other…” well, you might be right, […]
What a fantastic choice for my reading challenge! The Wild Birds by Emily Strelow really hit the spot for California… or Oregon… or maybe Jefferson… Although the book info and many reviews say it follows three storylines/timelines, I’d actually say it’s more like 2… or 4. There are two main stories, plus two which are closely […]
As I noted on the main California page, I was somewhat hesitant to add Island of the Blue Dolphins to my list for California, because I was concerned about the possibility of a very dated view of Native Americans (it was first published in 1960). So I actually read an expanded version: Island of the […]
Like a River Glorious by Rae Carson (2016) is the second in the Gold Seer series, which began with Walk On Earth a Stranger. The first book sees the heroine and her childhood friend travel from Georgia along the Oregon Trail to California gold country in 1849, and although it was quite good and historically […]
As mentioned on my main California page, Walk On Earth a Stranger is the first in Rae Carson’s Gold Seer trilogy, and it mainly covers Leah’s journey from Georgia to California in 1849–and the historical information is fantastic! Because not much of it actually takes place in California, however, it’s not the best book for […]
Devil In a Blue Dress by Walter Mosley (1990) was a fantastic example of the noir genre, and a gritty private eye story from a black perspective. It was fast-paced, the main character was well-drawn, though I felt the supporting characters were not as convincing. The twist was a surprise (although it probably shouldn’t have […]