ALL THE BIRDS IN THE SKY: by Charlie Jane Anders, A REVIEW

Posted on by Rae Longest

powerfulwomenreaders

This unusual/weird novel is set in the near future and goes forward from there. Patricia Delfine and Laurence (“without a ‘w’ “) Armstead, the two protagonists meet in junior high.  They both are misfits among their peers–he, because he is working on an AI computer assembled in his bedroom closet and has invented a time machine that can move one two seconds in time; and she,  because she can talk to birds and other animals and is branded as a witch by her classmates. These two unusual, unlikely “friends” unite against strange antagonists and typical middle school harassment.

This book is science fiction which explores the themes of magic vs technology, the fate of planet Earth, and the complexities of friendship. As the cover asks, “Will they find love? Will they save the world? or, Will they destroy it?” The book is further described as “…wacky, sexy, scary, weird, and…

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THE BEAT ON RUBY’S STREET: A story for teens, pre-teens and everyone, A Review

Posted on by Rae Longest

powerfulwomenreaders

Jenna Zark’s (author of A Body of Water) 2013 publication taught me more about the Beat Generation, Beatniks of the 1950s, and especially about “Beat Poetry” than I learned in an undergraduate class on Modern Poetry, which explored the subject. It is a fine book told from the point of Ruby, an eleven-going-on-twelve year old girl who lives in The Village in New York. She seems to be a “typical”pre-teen who has a “typical” cat, Solange.  Her mother, Nell, aka “Little Nell” is an artist, and her father, Gerard, aka “Gary-Daddy-O” is often on the road, playing bass. As Ruby tells us about The Beat Generation, “When it first  started, it was about people who were” beat up and fed up by the”System”, aka “The Man.”  Ruby had been making up poems by age four and writing them down by age seven. Her idol is Jack Kerouac, whom she describes…

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Senseless Sunday Sarcasm : B@th time

Posted on by Rae Longest

Two on a Rant

Yep.  The B word.

I gave 6 dogs a bath yesterday.  I should give yoga-while-dog-washing classes.  I sit on the edge of the tub with one leg outstretched so the poor over-loved dog can’t escape.  He tries to duck under my leg.  I wrap an arm around his back and start washing the legs on the other side of his body.  It looks something like this…

…except the arm isn’t up in the air, it’s over a dog, and the leg is stuck out straight.  Okay!  I couldn’t find the exact pose.  That’s why it’s called yoga-while-dog-washing.

This is what a put-upon 68 pound dog with 1st world problems looks like.

 

Oh the horror of it all! To be immersed in water and forced to watch half a yard worth of hard-earned dirt go down the drain.

To make matters worse, cats don’t get baths,  they do that to…

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THE LEAVERS by Lisa Ko: A Review of an exceptional immigrant story

Posted on by Rae Longest

powerfulwomenreaders

Lisa Ko’s 2017 novel, winner of the PEN/Bellwether Prize for fiction awarded by Barbara Kingsolver (for a novel that addresses issues of social justice) is an excellent novel. It is the story of Deming Guo, aka Daniel Wilkinson. The title indicates that everyone in his life leaves, or he leaves other people.  It is an intricate story of “love and loyalty.”

As the story begins, we find Deming with his immigrant mother, Polly, who works in a nail salon struggling to survive in The Bronx. One day Polly does not come home from work, and her boyfriend and his sister, Vivian, the mother’s roommates are not sure what  to do with the ten year old.  Deming, of course, wonders why his mother left him, then soon, why Vivian left him with social services who allowed the Wilkinsons, a middle-aged, white couple who are professors in upstate New York to adopt…

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