Ken > Recent Status Updates

Reads like a rom-com without the com. Rom-rom, maybe?

And what separates this kind of writing with characters this age (high school-to-college) from YA, I'll never figure out. Like the bridge to nowhere between long short story and novella, a mystery of the universe.

The practice of embalming bodies took off during the Civil War, when an incredible number of bodies were subject to the Southern heat and entrepreneurs leaped into the fray to make money off families desperate to see their husbands and sons one more time.

Rather difficult to resist, the only question being, when I reach the end, will I change my mind about cremation or double down.

Not up to the standards set by the two Nunez novels I read, but I soldier on.

It took until p. 138 for The School of Night to be mentioned for the first time. The big star, which played such a huge mysterious role in Book One and has become practically inconsequential since, has been mentioned once. For the most part, as per usual with KOK, an entertaining span of nothing happens, only with the added disadvantage of a 20-year-old twit as the protagonist.

Uh-oh. Recommended to me as a novel written by a poet. The uh-oh part? It opens in a hospital filled with COVID patients. (I've written before about my trouble with COVID-era novels, which mysteriously leave me cold.) Will this break the curse?

Here I am, 65 pages into the second amoeba after saying the first was enough. For this I blame the many GR readers I respect. ;-)

For a setting that's an island in the sea, lots of unexpected description of train rides and the people in them.

Surprisingly good.

Although it doesn't dwell on college scenes as much as one would hope, the book IS part of the academia genre I often enjoy.