Isaiah Roby's Blog: MI Book Reviews, page 160

The Straight Road to Kylie

“Life is fabulous for Jonathan Parish. He’s seventeen, out and proud, and ready to party through senior year with his posse of best girlfriends. But the year starts off with the wrong kind of bang when Jonathan — in an inebriated lapse of judgment — sleeps with a friend of his…a girl friend! When word gets around that hot-but-previously-unavailable Jonathan might be on the market, the school’s It girl approaches him with a proposal: pretend to be her boyfriend, and achieve popularity like he’...

Alice in Sunderland

“Sunderland! Thirteen hundred years ago it was the greatest center of learning in the whole of Christendom and the very cradle of English consciousness. In the time of Lewis Carroll it was the greatest shipbuilding port in the world. To this city that gave the world the electric light bulb, the stars and stripes, the millennium, the Liberty Ships and the greatest British dragon legend came Carroll in the years preceding his most famous book, Alice in Wonderland, and here are buried the roots...

Run, Clarissa, Run

“Life in a small town can be tough when you’re a little different, but for a fifteen year old transgender kid it can truly be hell. Clark is harassed daily at school for his effeminate behavior and appearance. He has no friends and a brother that is as likely to be on the teasing as to prevent it.

When Clark is offered a job babysitting for the Pirella family, it seems like a godsend. The money is good. He bonds with the girls almost instantly. The father, Tony, works in computer security. Ton...

The Silver Linings Playbook

“An enchanting first novel about love, madness, and Kenny G. The Silver Linings Playbook is the riotous and poignant story of how one man regains his memory and comes to terms with the magnitude of his wife’s betrayal. During the years he spends in a neural health facility, Pat Peoples formulates a theory about silver linings: he believes his life is a movie produced by God, his mission is to become physically fit and emotionally supportive, and his happy ending will be the return of his estr...

Little Birds

“Evocative and superbly erotic, Little Birds is a powerful journey into the mysterious world of sex and sensuality. From the beach towns of Normandy to the streets of New Orleans, these thirteen vignettes introduce us to a covetous French painter, a sleepless wanderer of the night, a guitar-playing gypsy, and a host of others who yearn for and dive into the turbulent depths of romantic experience.”

I picked this book up just to start reading anything by Anais Nin. I figured the best place to s...

I Still Dream About You

“Meet Maggie Fortenberry, a still beautiful former Miss Alabama. To others, Maggie’s life seems practically perfect—she’s lovely, charming, and a successful agent at Red Mountain Realty. Still, Maggie can’t help but wonder how she wound up living a life so different from the one she dreamed of as a child. But just when things seem completely hopeless, and the secrets of Maggie’s past drive her to a radical plan to solve it all, Maggie discovers, quite by accident, that everybody, it seems, ha...

The Art and Etiquette of Polyamory: A Hands-on Guide to Open Sexual Relationships

“A guide for adventurous couples in an exploration of a more open relationship.

The idea of open relationships seduces more and more men and women who wish to foster a healthy partnership while maintaining multiple lovers. The Art and Etiquette of Polyamory helps couples who want to better understand, or to begin an exploration of, the emotional, sexual, and intellectual mores of polyamory.

Françoise Simpère, an expert in the area of romantic relationships, discusses polyamory and what it invol...

Can’t Wait to Get to Heaven

“Life is the strangest thing. One minute, Mrs. Elner Shimfissle is up in her tree, picking figs, and the next thing she knows, she is off on an adventure she never dreamed of, running into people she never in a million years expected to meet. Meanwhile, back home, Elner’s nervous, high-strung niece Norma faints and winds up in bed with a cold rag on her head; Elner’s neighbor Verbena rushes immediately to the Bible; her truck driver friend, Luther Griggs, runs his eighteen-wheeler into a ditc...

The Average American Male

“An offensive, in-your-face, brutally honest and completely hilarious look at male inner life and sexual fantasy—sure to be one of the most controversial books of the year.”

This book was given to me by someone who insisted I had to read it. It has been sitting in my book box forever, I had picked it up read a few pages a handful of times but could never get past the first couple of pages, till finally I did end up reading the whole thing. After I finished reading it I closed the book and sat...

The Basic Eight

“Flannery Culp wants you to know the whole story of her spectacularly awful senior year. Tyrants, perverts, tragic crushes, gossip, cruel jokes, and the hallucinatory effects of absinthe — Flannery and the seven other friends in the Basic Eight have suffered through it all. But now, on tabloid television, they’re calling Flannery a murderer, which is a total lie. It’s true that high school can be so stressful sometimes. And it’s true that sometimes a girl just has to kill someone. But Flanner...