Biblio Reviews

I generally try to avoid anything that is a "hit" or trending with the masses. In fact, the more something is a "hit," the less likely I am to consume it, for my tastes often seem to not be aligned with the crowd's. At CBR, Rainbow Rowell is a hit, so much so that, for many, anything she writes is an automatic "must buy." A couple of years back, I chose to find out if all the hype was warranted by reading  Attachments  (2011), her debut novel. I thoroughly enjoyed the story, though for seemingly different reasons: I loved the male protagonist whereas others loved the cleverness of the email exchanges between the two female characters. Fangirl  (2013) is another of Rowell's character-driven  YA novels that has been well-received by readers and well-reviewed by critics. As of this post, it has a slightly higher rating on Goodreads (4.12) than her very much revered  Eleanor & Park  (4.11), also published in 2013. A coming-of-age story,  Fangir...

Rabid fandom is one reason I've yet to watch  Titanic  and never got into  Friends,   Lost,  among many other highly successful films and TV shows. Instead, I tend to dedicate my viewing time to the underdogs, which is to say that a lot of the shows that I do like tend to get cancelled, i.e.  Arrested Development, Life, Chicago Code, Human Target, Men of a Certain Age.  To date,  The Good Wife  is the only one of my faves to have escaped that fate.  With that said, you can imagine how resistant I was to reading Rainbow Rowell, the darling of CBReaders. However, because my passion for reading is stronger than my passion for film/TV viewing, I broke down a couple of months ago and read her debut novel,  Attachments  (2011). In the end, the novel was a satisfying, nostalgic quick read. Much of my enjoyment came from the atypical male protagonist, Lincoln O'Neill, a diffident, non-alpha romantic lead. Set in 1999,...