Are You in the House Alone? by Richard Peck Are You in the House Alone? came out in 1976 and though I totally could've read it when I was a teen—and thus still a member of its target audience—I never did. Gail Osburne is a sixteen-year-old high school junior and native New Yorker who's not at home in the quaint Connecticut village her family relocated to several years … [Read more...] about Random Reads 2/18/21
General Fiction
My Man Jeeves by P. G. Wodehouse: B-
Book description: My Man Jeeves, first published in 1919, introduced the world to affable, indolent Bertie Wooster and his precise, capable valet, Jeeves. Some of the finest examples of humorous writing found in English literature are woven around the relationship between these two men of very different classes and temperaments. Where Bertie is impetuous and feeble, Jeeves is … [Read more...] about My Man Jeeves by P. G. Wodehouse: B-
Cakes and Ale by W. Somerset Maugham: A
From the back cover: Lionized by literary society, Edward Driffield is married to his second wife, a woman of iron will, indisputable rectitude and great charm. Her request to Alroy Kear, lightweight novelist, to write a biography of her husband seems both flattering and agreeable. But on delving into Driffield's past Kear revives the spectre of his first wife, Rosie, … [Read more...] about Cakes and Ale by W. Somerset Maugham: A
A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines: A
From the back cover: A Lesson Before Dying is set in a small Cajun community in the late 1940s. Jefferson, a young black man, is an unwitting party to a liquor store shootout in which three men are killed; the only survivor, he is convicted of murder and sentenced to death. Grant Wiggins, who left his hometown for the university, has returned to the plantation school to … [Read more...] about A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines: A
The Pact by Jodi Picoult: C-
From the back cover: The Hartes and the Golds have been neighbors for 18 years and are very close. So when Chris and Emily's friendship reaches the next level, nobody is surprised. Then one night, the hospital calls. Seventeen-year-old Emily is dead—shot in the head by a gun Chris took from his father's cabinet. One bullet remains in the chamber, and Chris tells of his … [Read more...] about The Pact by Jodi Picoult: C-