Book #230 of 2018: The Castle of Llyr by Lloyd Alexander (The Chronicles of Prydain #3) This third novel in author Lloyd Alexander’s fantasy version of mythical Wales is a bit of a step down from the first two volumes, reducing the sole female hero from a fellow adventurer to a passive macguffin for the …
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Book #229 of 2018: Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston Another classic that I’m only now reading, this novel has a great use of language (in 1930s black vernacular) and well-drawn characters, but a rather aimless plot. I would have liked a little bit more narrative structure to this tale of a …
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Book #227 of 2018: Commonwealth by Ann Patchett This is a very well-written family drama that unfortunately doesn’t have a single character that I like. It doesn’t help that the story is told in snapshots that dart back and forth in time over the course of a half-century, or that in the end a lot …
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Book #228 of 2018: The Man Who Killed His Brother by Stephen R. Donaldson (The Man Who #1) Author Stephen R. Donaldson is best known for his fantasy sagas like The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, but his character work and intense internal struggles resonate more than the epic quests and magical worldbuilding, and …
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Book #226 of 2018: War for the Planet of the Apes: Revelations by Greg Keyes There’s a major off-screen status quo shift in the Planet of the Apes film series between the end of Dawn (2014) and the start of War (2017), and although this tie-in novel is intended to bridge that gap, it never …
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Book #225 of 2018: Someday by David Levithan (Every Day #3) This novel has a messier plot than the first book in its loose trilogy — as well as the second one, which retells that same story from a different character’s perspective — but it further fleshes out the world and provides some more fascinating …
Book #224 of 2018: Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett I loved this book back in middle school, and it’s even better now that I get more of the jokes (thanks to being both older and more familiar with British culture). The story is a terrifically funny take on the Christian apocalypse, an …
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Book #223 of 2018: White Sand, Volume 2 by Brandon Sanderson, Rik Hoskin, and Julius Gopez (White Sand #2) As with the first volume, this continuing comic adaptation of an unpublished Brandon Sanderson manuscript utterly fails to bring his usual vivid imagination to life. There are glimmers of an interesting story here, but character motivations …
Book #222 of 2018: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J. K. Rowling (Harry Potter #5) The Harry Potter books are well-known for getting darker and deeper as they go along, aging up in target audience along with their main characters, but the hero’s surly teenage angst in this novel actually bothered …
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Book #221 of 2018: The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith (The Ripliad #1) The plot to this mid-century crime thriller is admittedly thin, but it’s an outstanding character study of the insecure and sociopathic Tom Ripley. His author Patricia Highsmith paints Ripley as almost pedestrian in his casual amorality and petty jealousies, and while …
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