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Dark, soulful tales that haunt long after the last page.
Life of Pi by Yann Martel My rating: 4 of 5 stars It’s billed as a book to make you believe in God. That sounded intriguing, and I enjoyed the film adaptation, so I decided to give it a try. I think this is one that is going to have to sit on my mind…
On Tuesday my first grandchild was born. On Thursday I held a departing senior while we cried on each other. On Friday I printed a contract for a three-book deal with a top small press publisher. Today I watched a man I’d just met cry as he read a speech at his daughter’s wedding, where…
I started a long blog post about one of my students and her father who came to Oklahoma from Mexico and the only English word he knew was “wetback.” He heard that word a lot at first, but overcame the odds and now owns his own business in Oklahoma City. But the more I wrote,…
Watership Down by Richard Adams My rating: 5 of 5 stars Watership Down is one of those books that helped shape my entire worldview. It came to me, like so many of my favorites, during the horrible years we call junior high, when I would escape into books and was lucky enough to be in…
The Giver by Lois Lowry My rating: 4 of 5 stars The Giver is one of those rare books that my students, both AP and regular, were always shocked to learn I hadn’t read. Well, it wasn’t published when I was in the targeted age range, so I missed it. Until now. The story is…
The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty My rating: 5 of 5 stars Simply put, this is still the best horror novel ever written. Blatty’s use of language — particularly simile — is beautiful and touching or sickening and depraved, but always right there, pushing the reader to see what he wants you to see. The…
My first novella without any supernatural elements is now available from MoonHowler Press. It’s called Inheritance. It is the story about a mother who comes home from the grocery store to find her daughter’s boyfriend and two other guys raping the girl. The mother spent almost her whole life as a victim and her one…
UnStrung by Neal Shusterman My rating: 4 of 5 stars I enjoyed this VERY short book quite a lot, but rather than answer questions about Lev it really just created more questions about the People of Chance, particularly Wil. I’d say more, but that would give away the ending and that just wouldn’t be fair.…
Unwind by Neal Shusterman My rating: 4 of 5 stars It took me a little while to get into this one. In the first third of the book Shusterman really overused the word “bolt.” Everyone was on the verge of bolting here or bolting there. It’s a small thing, maybe, but it annoyed me. Also,…
Steven E. Wedel 