reading

[lunabee34]

Calypso by David Sedaris

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This is a return to form for Sedaris; Calypso is as funny and poignant as Me Talk Pretty and Naked.

In Calypso, Sedaris deals frankly with his sister's suicide, his mother's alcoholism, his father's advanced age and their fraught relationship, and his own approaching mortality. This is a really funny book, but Sedaris wrestles with guilt and anger and the difficulties of being a member of a family.

Highly recommended.



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Frost in May by Antonia White

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


This book is really well written, but I struggled to read it because it made me sad. The life the girls live at the boarding school run by the nuns is so claustrophobic and repressed; the girls are under constant scrutiny, and the nuns are so cruel to them for any perceived sinfulness. It's hard to tell whether the nuns genuinely believe that enjoying something makes it wrong or if they are using their religious authority to be sadistic; it's probably a mixture of both. This book makes me feel so badly for these girls. It's upsetting, and the end is very upsetting. I can't fault the writing, but I would never read this again.



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oracne recced this HP fic, and I loved it:

I could be wrong, I could be ready by Harryromper
Harry/Draco
Harry runs away to America after the war; when he returns, he's really surprised at the changes he finds, not least of all in Draco.