Category: 10/10 Reviews

10/10 Reviews, Book Reviews, Fantasy9 Comments

The Ten Thousand Doors of January

The Perspicacious Bookworm

Something in the world shifted. I know that’s a shit description, pardon my unladylike language, but I don’t know how else to say it. It was like an earthquake that didn’t disturb a single blade of grass, an eclipse that didn’t cast a single shadow, a vast but invisible change. A sudden breeze plucked the edge of the diary. It smelled of salt and warm stone and a dozen faraway scents that did not belong in a scrubby field beside the Mississippi.I tucked my diary back in my skirts and stood. My legs shivered beneath me like birch trees in … Continue reading The Ten Thousand Doors of January

10/10 Reviews, Book Reviews, Diversity, Drama, Literary Fiction, Mystery5 Comments

The Gone Dead

The Perspicacious Bookworm

Sometimes her mother homeschooled her, or sometimes she was enrolled in a school where new friends would say, “Is that your mom? She’s so young. She’s so pretty. She doesn’t look like you,” and new bullies would say “Is your dad black?” like black was a bad, dirty thing. And her mother would say, “They’re just jealous. You are beautiful” like moms do.Billie never knew that they were struggling because poor meant hungry, and she was never hungry. She didn’t know that her beloved bike or clothes came from the salvation army. She thought her erudite mother just didn’t believe … Continue reading The Gone Dead

10/10 Reviews, Book Reviews, Family Life, Memoir1 Comment

And Now We Have Everything: On Motherhood Before I Was Ready

The Perspicacious Bookworm

The macabre was everywhere, once I started looking. Breathability was advertised on all the baby products we bought, a word that used to mean fabric that didn’t cause a yeast infection but now referred to the lifesaving mesh in the sides of the bassinet or playpen. The baby’s crib came with a big warning about keeping it away from window blinds to avoid strangulation. I read it and froze where I was standing, visions of my baby, stiff and blue, flashing through my mind. Which I guess was the point. Thank God it was summer, so the omnipresent receiving blankets … Continue reading And Now We Have Everything: On Motherhood Before I Was Ready

10/10 Reviews, Book Reviews, Fantasy, Young Adult Fiction7 Comments

Tess of the Road

The Perspicacious Bookworm

Mama had the moral answers. And Tess was always wrong. The farther she walked, the more irrelevant that seemed. Walking was a good in itself, right and just and necessary. The road gave her no small measure of joy. Every day brought new vistas – the white conical roofs of oast-houses, a fox with her kits, an undiscovered color in the evening sky. Anything might be around the next bend; she could walk forever and never reach the end. The road was possibility, the kind she’d thought her life would never hold again, and Tess herself was motion. Motion had … Continue reading Tess of the Road

10/10 Reviews, Book Reviews, Drama2 Comments

My Valentine’s Day Read: The Queen of Hearts

The Perspicacious Bookworm

We think it’s the big actions that shape us – the choice to pursue medical school over business school, turning down a date with one guy in favor of another, the regrettable decision to have an affair. But in reality, all of those things come about from the unconscious and barely considered actions that shape a life: Blowing off studying one night to watch TV. Laughing at a lame joke to make someone feel better. Allowing more eye contact than necessary with a man you knew to be no good. It’s the innumerable smaller choices that snowball into larger vectors, … Continue reading My Valentine’s Day Read: The Queen of Hearts

10/10 Reviews, Book Reviews, Mystery, Science Fiction2 Comments

Kangaroo Too

The Perspicacious Bookworm

  Earth – Unites States – Washington, D.C. 12 hours after this red key started burning a hole in my pocket Paul doesn’t react visibly when I walk into his office and set the red key down on his desk. I watch his profile and reflect on how easily he could dress up like a British monarch. All he’d need would be the ceremonial sash. Maybe some white gloves. After a few seconds, he glances over at the device and says, “That’s from D.Int, I presume.” I grab the red key and put it back in the pocket. “You take … Continue reading Kangaroo Too

10/10 Reviews, Book Reviews, Drama, Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction12 Comments

The House at the Edge of Night

The Perspicacious Bookworm

Into this disorder, as into a warm sea, stepped Amedeo. He passed through the scents of jasmine and anchovies and liquor, through snatches of dialect and accented Italian and high lamenting songs whose language he did not recognize, through the light of fires and torches and the hundred red candles that illuminated the ghostly saint. At last, emerging from the crowd with his suitcase clutched to his chest, he found himself before an extraordinary house. – The House at the Edge of Night by Catherine Banner The House at the Edge of Night by Catherine Banner The House at the Edge … Continue reading The House at the Edge of Night