Currently reading
McGlue
Knife Fight and Other Struggles
Far from the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity
The Good Lord Bird
Ancillary Justice
Our Underachieving Colleges: A Candid Look at How Much Students Learn and Why They Should Be Learning More (New Edition)
Dissident Gardens
Nightmare Movies: Horror on Screen Since the 1960s
The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood
Complete Novels
Yup. That good. Review to come.There are so many things I love about this book. Here is one:
Because school was not making me feel the things everyone thought I needed to be feeling--valued and indispensable--I was transferred in the first grade to the hippie school on Second Street. The kids there didn't like me any better, but name-calling was not tolerated among the hippies.... I had a wonderful first-grade teacher, Ms. Radford, who genuinely loved me. I was given the part of the hen in _The Little Red Hen_--inarguably, the lead, the star turn. This was all it took to convince Mom that I was flourishing. Her catatonia had been replaced by an implausible buoyancy. [My brother] Lowell and I were fine. We were such good kids, basically. Smart kids. At least we all had our health! Every gangplank a seesaw.
Is there any character in all of fiction more isolated than the little red hen?