Under the Cover

Reading, writing, musing Freelance PortfolioFiction Portfolio 

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My favorite Colson Whitehead is still John Henry Days, but they're all unique and amazing, if brutal at times. "Like when you see the shadow of a bird on the ground but look up and nothing’s there."

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"Maybe we all have darkness inside of us and some of us are better at dealing with it than others." http://jasminewarga.com/

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This page-turner definitely scratched the Gone Girl itch. "I don't know where that strength went, I don't remember losing it. I think that over time it got chipped away, bit by bit, by life, by the living of it." http://paulahawkinsbooks.com/

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Just finished this 900+ pager about a bunch of lives that intersect and slam into each other before, during, and after the New York City blackout in 1977. Loved living in this world for a while. Off to go see how much of it was based on actual events!

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A great YA about body issues. I spent most of the book feeling outraged. There should be more like it in the world. "Everything is always about to happen." "Home is hours away and the ocean is so close I could run my fingers through the waves and I am almost convinced that we will be all right." "They all look like shirts to me in sizes that might fit me, which is strange because I have never felt quite so small." http://jenlarsen.net/

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A really interesting book with characters I have never met in real life, but hope to. "pity is the opposite of love, or one of its opposites, since love has many." "Could straight people understand what it meant to be gay if they were too afraid of making mistakes to ask questions?" http://loriostlund.com/

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A beautiful YA with a bloody, beating heart at the center. Vivid characters, an inevitably heart-breaking ending. A completely satisfying and lovely read. http://www.jenniferniven.com/

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This book is amazing, terribly tragic, and beautiful. I’m so glad I didn’t know what I was getting into when I started it, because I would have been terrified. So many tears, so much pain, and that was just me READING about this vivid, tormented character and the people trying to convince him he is worthy of life. I’m so glad I read it, but the people around me are very glad I’m done.

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First draft read-through of my WIP was soul-crushing and full of 'meh's and 'nope's. Soothing myself with some brutal edits.

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I love Ali Smith. I think HOW TO BE BOTH will always be my favorite, but this was a unique, perceptive, beautiful examination of life that somehow managed to also be playful and funny. "She somehow made a sigh sound cavernous." "before she had died, she had been young, like him, and not yet been onced by life." "Think how quiet a book is on a shelf, he said, just sitting there, unopened. Then think what happens when you open it."

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Started crying on the first page and didn't stop. A beautiful memoir on life, death, and healing. "I am getting older and he is not." "Near him, is what I miss." "It was the two of us walking the road and now he has let my hand go." http://www.elizabethalexander.net/

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A great road trip coming-of-age YA from a local friend of friends. Wish I had a chance to meet him! "honestly, just then, that was the only me I could be." "I have to admit, I've got me there." "before I ever knew about sex, it knew about me." http://davidarnoldbooks.com/

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A weird and wonderfully detached story about... I'm not sure what. Chang-Rae Lee taught me so much about world-building. I procrastinated on this post so long that my library loan ended, so no quotes this time. Boo. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/05/books/review/on-such-a-full-sea-by-chang-rae-lee.html?_r=0

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http://www.beckyalbertalli.com/ Fun and exciting. A wonderfully flirty, fun, and romantic YA that addresses important issues in a fun way. A nice follow-up to George and Loving Day, rounding out a year that was very much about identity. "It's a weirdly subtle conversation. I almost don't notice I'm being blackmailed." "Remember the way people would look at you blankly and say, "Um, okaaay," after you finished talking? Everyone just had to make it so clear that, whatever you were thinking or feeling, you were toatlly alone." "He talked about the ocean between people. And how the whole point of everything is to find a shore worth swimming to." "The thing about my mom is she's a child psychologist. And it shows." "sometimes it seems like everyone knows who I am except me." "White shouldn't be the default any more than straight should be the default. There shouldn't even be a default."

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It's not amazing because it's a middle grade book about a transgender kid in fourth grade, it's amazing because it's a well-written, beautifully thoughtful book about a person discovering it's ok to be who they are. SO GOOD. "Dad made a better part-time father than a full-time one." "George thought for a moment about kissing a boy, and the idea made her tingle." "Living in Shakespeare's time didn't sound so bad, even if you had to poop outdoors." "Her cheeks grew so hot that she felt like metal. She wished she *were* made of metal, with laser eyes that could slice Jeff in two. But she wasn't made of metal, and her eyes were as helpless as the rest of her." "George smiled, and Melissa smiled too." http://www.alexgino.com/

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Finally decided to brave the bulls and check this one off the list. Obviously, Hemingway is an amazing writer, he just doesn't press the right buttons for me. (Bulls, random women, bulls, bad people wallowing in their badness, bulls) But again, as ten billion+ people have said before me, he's great writer: "I mistrust all frank and simple people, especially when their stories hold together..." "She was looking into my eyes with that way she had of looking that made you wonder whether she really saw out of her own eyes. They would look on and on after every one else's eyes in the world would have stopped looking. She looked as though there were nothing on earth she would not look at like that, and really she was afraid of so many things." "It is awfully easy to be hard-boiled about everything in the daytime, but at night it is another thing." "'How did you go bankrupt?' Bill asked. 'Two ways,' Mike said. 'Gradually and then suddenly.'"

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Finally read fellow Nashvillian Courtney C Stevens' Faking Normal. I embarrassed myself by telling her at the SCBWI conference that we should be friends. Now, I'm convinced. "Our laughter walks down the hallway with me." "School happens for the next three hours without my noticing." "I think it's left over from yesterday. In fact, he looks like he's left over from yesterday." "And the little ghosts of words I've said return to haunt me." "I'm fresh out of happy." http://quartland.blogspot.com/