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Katherine Villyard

kvillyard@bookwyrm.social

Joined 1 year, 3 months ago

Katherine’s parents met singing opera and started taking her to choir practice when she was six weeks old. She attended four elementary schools and four high schools before getting master’s degrees in art and library science. So naturally she works in IT, abusing SQL Server for fun and profit. When she’s not working or writing, she’s probably playing the Sims or spoiling cats. Her greatest ambition is to rule the world.

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reviewed Hebrew Teacher by Jessica Cohen

No cover

Jessica Cohen, Maya Arad: Hebrew Teacher (2024, New Vessel Press)

I’m not really the target reader

This is contemporary, “literary” fiction and I’m more of a genre reader. I picked it up because it won a Jewish book award. Three novellas:

  1. A Hebrew teacher at a college with an insufferable new colleague, but it’s more about the changing public perception of Israel in academia.
  2. A grandmother travels from Israel to the US to meet her grandson, and stays with her insufferable son and daughter-in-law and never sees her grandson, who is in daycare all day and cries whenever he sees her. This is more about parents being too busy to talk to their kids, or something?
  3. The insufferable mother of a teenager, who agonizes about her daughter’s popularity in middle school while not only not doing the one thing that might help (give her a phone) but actively impersonates her daughter online to court the popular girl and bully her daughter’s former …

reviewed Empire of the Vampire by Jay Kristoff

Jay Kristoff, Bon Orthwick: Empire of the Vampire (EBook, 2021, St. Martin's Press)

It took me a while…

It took me a really long time to finish this one.

It’s an interesting book. A grimdark chosen one! With an interesting French Catholic feeling setting. I liked it but it took me a while to engage because I’m not big on grimdark. I got it from my library and couldn’t renew it, so I started ebook and finished audiobook. I… it took a while for the female characters to really come into their own, too, but this is remedied if you wait long enough. (Avoiding spoilers.)

So… yeah.

finished reading Empire of the Vampire by Jay Kristoff

Jay Kristoff, Bon Orthwick: Empire of the Vampire (EBook, 2021, St. Martin's Press)

It took me a really long time to finish this one.

It’s an interesting book. A grimdark chosen one! With an interesting French Catholic feeling setting. I liked it but it took me a while to engage because I’m not big on grimdark. I got it from my library and couldn’t renew it, so I started ebook and finished audiobook. I… it took a while for the female characters to really come into their own, too, but this is remedied if you wait long enough. (Avoiding spoilers.)

So… yeah.