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More Like a Summer Slurpee
NPR critic Maureen Corrigan suggests that El Dorado Drive by Megan Abbott (2025) is one of the better summer suspense novels, but I think it barely qualifies as a beach read. Harper, the youngest of three Bishop sisters, is invited by her older sisters Pam and Deb to join a female financial club that seems…
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Sorry Yet Not
Sorry, Baby takes its title from a comment at its end by Agnes, its protagonist and a full-time college English instructor who had been sexually assaulted when she was a graduate student at the same institution. This movie is organized by chapters as a series of flashbacks interspersed with Agnes’s struggle to overcome the effects…
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Sensibility and Sense
She Rides Shotgun was better than expected but ultimately unsatisfying. Polly is approached after school by a seeming stranger, who is her biological father, and recently released inmate, Nate. Nate wants to protect her from the gang that has already killed Polly’s mother and step-father, and that is searching for them, by taking her to…
“There is always something to do. There are hungry people to feed, naked people to clothe, sick people to comfort and make well. And while I don’t expect you to save the world I do think it’s not asking too much for you to love those with whom you sleep, share the happiness of those whom you call friend, engage those among you who are visionary and remove from your life those who offer you depression, despair and disrespect.”
–Nikki Giovanni
