Carmen is Bubbly Bibbly’s official book reviewer. She will offer summaries of books of note.
Carmen’s recommendations are awesome and insightful.
Carmen’s reviews are less like prose and more like having a conversation with her. She always has a brilliant take on story lines and characters. Her reviews are consistently on point. Carmen’s reviews will make you smile, especially when she has a bone to pick.
Carmen’s Rating System
1 Look – I wish I hadn’t looked.
2 Looks – I looked and didn’t like what I saw
3 Looks – I looked and I liked it. As a matter of fact, I probably looked again.
4 Looks – An ogle. I looked and turned my head to see it from the back.
5 Looks – What’s your name and number, baby?
The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks
Summary: Meet Frank Cauldhame. Just sixteen, and unconventional to say the least: Two years after I killed Blyth I murdered my young brother Paul, for quite different and more fundamental reasons than I'd disposed of Blyth, and then a year after that I did for my...
The Widower’s Tale by Julia Glass
Summary: In a historic farmhouse outside Boston, seventy-year-old Percy Darling is settling happily into retirement: reading novels, watching old movies, and swimming naked in his pond. His routines are disrupted, however, when he is persuaded to let a locally beloved...
The Worldly Adventures of a Teen-age Tycoon by Roger Eddy
Summary: (abridged from The Bulls and the Bees)Twelve stories humorously recounted by a precocious child of the 1930's who take a slightly skewed and often comedic view of the doings of those enigmatic adults around him. My take: 5 looks Originally reviewed October...
There There by Tommy Orange
Summary: Tommy Orange's wondrous and shattering novel follows twelve characters from Native communities: all traveling to the Big Oakland Powwow, all connected to one another in ways they may not yet realize. Among them is Jacquie Red Feather, newly sober and trying...
Time and Again by Jack Finney
Summary: "Sleep. And when you awake everything you know of the twentieth century will be gone from your mind. Tonight is January 21, 1882. There are no such things as automobiles, no planes, computers, television. 'Nuclear' appears in no dictionary. You have never...
Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom
Summary: This true story about the love between a spiritual mentor and his pupil has soared to the bestseller list for many reasons. For starters: it reminds us of the affection and gratitude that many of us still feel for the significant mentors of our past. It also...
Tuscaloosa by W. Glasgow Phillips
Summary: They have one summer to find what was lost long ago. "Never settle for less than the truth," she told him. But when you don't even know your real name, the truth gets a little complicated. It can nestle so close to home it's hard to see. It can even flourish...
Vinegar Girl by Anne Tyler
Summary: Kate Battista feels stuck. How did she end up running house and home for her eccentric scientist father and her uppity, pretty younger sister, Bunny? Plus, she’s always in trouble at work—her preschool charges adore her, but their parents don’t always...
Waking Gods by Sylvain Neuvel
Summary: As a child, Rose Franklin made an astonishing discovery: a giant metallic hand, buried deep within the earth. As an adult, she’s dedicated her brilliant scientific career to solving the mystery that began that fateful day: Why was a titanic robot of unknown...
What it Means When a Man Falls From the Sky by Lesley Nneka Arimah
Summary: A dazzlingly accomplished debut collection explores the ties that bind parents and children, husbands and wives, lovers and friends to one another and to the places they call home. In “Who Will Greet You at Home,” a National Magazine Award finalist for The...