Three Rapid Book Reviews

I’m almost fin­ished with all of the books I received for Christ­mas. I cur­rent­ly have around 75 pages left to read in Alis­dair Gray’s Poor Things and then I have to read Auto­bi­og­ra­phy of Red by Anne Car­son and I will be with­out read­ing mate­r­i­al once again. Here is what I read while my site was wigged out:

In the Forests of Serre is anoth­er excel­lent work by Patri­cia McKil­lip. She seems to take her usu­al style and present it a bit more prim­i­tive­ly. I mean, it seems clos­er to a Rus­so-Finnish fairy tale [com­plete with a witch who car­ries her house on her back] than oth­er things she has writ­ten. On the Oth­er Hand, The Tow­er at Stony Wood has a Celtic triple-god­dess in it, so maybe this is a lay­er I have missed in the past. This book does­n’t real­ly have a vil­lain as a main char­ac­ter. There is an ogr­ish king, but he is a minor char­ac­ter.

Alpha­bet of Thorn is anoth­er Patri­cia McKil­lip work, just as good as all her oth­ers. She is noth­ing if not con­sis­tent. Any­way, this one incor­po­rates myth and sto­ry and time into a tale about an orphan. I can’t say much more about this one with­out giv­ing away impor­tant infor­ma­tion. Any­thing she writes is worth a read.

Eats, Shoots and Leaves is as inter­est­ing as a book on punc­tu­a­tion is like­ly to get. It was a mild­ly enjoy­able read that end­ed up giv­ing me some easy rules to remem­ber for the punc­tu­a­tion con­fu­sions that I give myself. She freely admits that many of her rec­om­men­da­tions are debat­able and she does ram­ble on at times. I skipped the last chap­ter because the only parts that were real­ly inter­est­ing were the dis­cus­sions of the punc­tu­a­tion marks them­selves.