Parenthetical.net

Hey, everybody, it’s post-apocalyptic YA from the ’80s! Home, sweet home. It even has a watercolory cover and a fresh-faced, all-American heroine named “Janie Johnson”! This book was brought to my attention recently [and by "recently," I mean about six months ago, when I actually read it -- Ed.] by an old [...]

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Miriam at The Oyster’s Garter tagged me on the “5 Things” meme, so I guess I better comply! She can beat me up.
5 Things I Was Doing 10 Years Ago:

Attending a rockin’ New Year’s party at the home of jcn, Latemodel, and some other people whose URLs I don’t know.
Turning twenty. (Eeep!)
Teaching myself [...]

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(The full title, for the record, is Salt Water Taffy: the Seaside Adventures of Jack and Benny, v. 1: The Legend of Old Salty.)
Ok, get a load of this plot summary: Jack, Benny, and their parents go to a small coastal Maine town to spend the summer. Upon arrival, they meet a crusty old [...]

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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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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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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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Lonely Portia looks out her window one night and sees a giant purple monster shuffling into the woods near her house. So of course she goes out to investigate — and discovers the adorable, silent, hungry creature she eventually names Jellaby. She brings him home and feeds him tuna fish, and he becomes [...]

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Babymouse loves Halloween. (I can relate. My front porch still looks like Halloween threw up on it.) She wants to dress up as something scary and have a party with her friends, most of whom seem to be boys. But her nemesis, Felicia Furrypaws, informs her that, “Everyone knows that girls [...]

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It’s about time for a Cybils review of something I love unreservedly… and fortunately, here it is! Rapunzel’s Revenge has the somewhat unlikely premise of Rapunzel set in an alternate magical Wild West, but it totally works.

The wicked witch is a greedy landowner whose growth magic allows her to run a slave [...]

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* If by “exclusive,” you mean “me, a couple of other librarians, some bookstore folks, a publicist, and 500 students.” And if by “interview,” you mean “hanging out while madly selling books at lunch, and then listening to him speak to a few English classes.”
Summary first: John is awesome. He is intelligent, [...]

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