Parenthetical.net

Emi was always kind of a geek by default, but this summer her geeky friends have headed off to a “young executives retreat.” Emi decides that’s not her scene, so she’s stuck at home in the Toronto ‘burbs, baby-sitting for her American neighbors, the Cutheberts. (The dad is big and blond; his grin [...]

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On a walk through the English Downs, the author discovers the ruins of a house, and in it, an old chest. When he breaks the lock, he finds that it contains the effects of a fellow photographer named Isaac Wilde — including phonograph recordings, on which Wilde told the story of a very strange [...]

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Rue’s mother has disappeared, her distraught father stands accused of murdering one of his students, and now Rue is seeing strange things. Her normal town is now full of demons, humanoid creatures made of twigs, and faeries.

I’ll give the next bit away, because it’s obvious early on: Rue’s mother is a faerie, [...]

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Dave’s life was going along just fine, until he applied for a job at a convenience store and ended up hired to work nights… forever. Turns out that Radu, the store owner, is a vampire, and it’s so much more efficient to sire yourself a night manager than hire one the regular way — [...]

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I have a love-hate relationship with the New York Times Style section. Their articles seem to come in two forms: “Hey, two of my friends tip cows ironically / wear elaborately carved and shellacked pumpkins on their heads / eat nothing but mangos! It must be a trend!” or “People have been doing [...]

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The title implied D&D to me, but what I got was just as nerdily delicious. We open with Arthur King’s first day at Camelot Middle School. Yes, really — and the King Arthur puns don’t stop here! For a kid who’s newly familiar with King Arthur and/or the idea of literary allusion, [...]

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Johnny Boo, “the best little ghost in the world,” and his pet ghost Squiggle, run into an ice cream monster, who turns out to be a nice ice cream monster, but accidentally eats Squiggle anyway. Squiggle and Johnny Boo have to use their “Squiggle Power” and “Boo Power” (respectively) to save the day.

I have [...]

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Oh, Little Vampire, you had me at, “Poop is always sure to please.” (Actually, you had me at the premise: as we’ve already established, I’m a huge sucker (ha! vampire puns!) for monsters who are a little scary but nice at heart.)

I loved everything about this book, from the cute-but-not-cutesy stories, to Little Vampire’s [...]

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Things that are awesome about North World:

The world-building: it takes place in modern-day Canada, except that oh, btw, there’s demons and talking bears, and heroes whose job it is to protect everyone from them.
The hilarious dialogue. (When Conrad, the everyguy hero, attacks a shlubby guy in his house for supposedly being a demon-summoner, he [...]

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Ok, people, true fact: I read four of these nominated buggers today. That’s the kind of volume we’re talking about here. I committed to reviewing everything I read, and I intend to keep up with that — mostly because it’s good for me, as a writer and as a person who remembers stuff [...]

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