Smackdown Books 2021

Ordinary Hazards
We Dream of Space
If These Wings Could Fly
We Are Not Free
The King of Jam Sandwiches
All Thirteen: The Incredible Cave Rescue of the Thai Boys' Soccer Team
The Companion
Punching the Air
Show Me a Sign
Land of the Cranes
Furia
Dragon Hoops
When Stars Are Scattered
Snapdragon
The Radium Girls: The Scary But True Story of the Poison That Made People Glow in the Dark
American as Paneer Pie
Tune It Out
The Gilded Ones
The Left-Handed Booksellers of London
Switch

Thursday, April 5, 2018

Girl Holding Up the Blue….Holding Up the Girl…Holding Coats?...forget it.



Both were fine.  Maybe even more than fine.

I’m sort of with a few of the others who have weighed in.  I think Girl in the Blue Coat is likely the better book, but Holding Up the Universe knows its audience in a HUGE way; it is far more likely to be devoured by our students.

Both are guilty of abandoning ideas/characters/motifs that are initially so intentionally carefully crafted at the expense of the machinations of plot in a way I didn’t mind until I was finished because both are twisty enough to keep you reading.  But...neither really passes a lot of scrutiny.

I think Hesse’s book wins out, however.  Mainly on the strengths of those last few pages, which, in context, are really something special. (Please note:  whenever I have waxed poetically about the last few remarkable pages of a flawed novel, that novel has been eliminated.  See:  Grasshopper Jungle.  The Bunker Diary.  More Than This. Others.  I shall refrain from writing more.)

I’m not sure that I LOVE either one of them.  I’m sort of surprised that both of them have found their way into the semi-finals.

Is this Zombie Pick time?  Because, whatever it is, it’s going to drive straight up the centre for the win this year.

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