I’m so odd, even to myself. I wonder about others like me, who seem totally fine on the outside but are rotting on the inside, where the rot is this vague state of being not-fine and not-devastated at the same time. The world tends to focus too much on the very bright or the very…
Trigger warning: this post will discuss two different books. Terminal disease and assisted suicide are discussed in one and childhood sexual abuse is discussed in the other. There are some books that are a pure delight to read. Their topics are enchanting; you can’t put the book down and before you know it, it’s over.…
Move over Yenta and Dolly Levi - make room for Sara Glikman the lovable shadchan in The Matchmaker’s Gift by Lynda Cohen Loigman. This novel of magical romance and familial love is a perfect fit for the holiday season. A mix of historical and contemporary fiction, it is also an opportunity to learn some of…
Imagine learning that you inherited a house from your great-grandmother. However, this isn’t just any home. It has a mind of its own and walks on giant chicken legs. That is the premise of GennaRose Nethercott’s weird, wacky debut novel, Thistlefoot. It pays homage to Baba Yaga, a supernatural being who appears in many Russian…
Sure, you could spend Black Friday battling other shoppers in the stores, or planning your Cyber-Monday purchases. But there’s another alternative for this long weekend: curling up in your favorite reading spot with some leftover pie, a hot beverage, and a great book. And if you need recommendations for a seasonally-appropriate read, we’ve got you…
Barbara Kingsolver is one of my favorite authors. Charles Dickens, however, is not. So when I saw that Kingsolver had written a modern-day version of David Copperfield, I knew I would read it, but I wasn't sure if I would like it. I was wrong. Like Dickens's work, Demon Copperhead is a social novel that…
On September 12, 2015, wildlife filmmaker Tom Mustill was paddling in a two-person kayak with a friend just off the coast of California. They didn’t have to paddle far before they were surrounded by humpback whales, which were all over the harbor. They could even smell the whale’s fishy, broccoli breath. After marveling at the…
Reading The House in the Orchard by Elizabeth Brooks took me back to two of my favorite classics. Maude, a character you will both love and hate, is a flawed heroine reminiscent of both Estella Havisham from Dickens’ Great Expectations and Bronte’s Jane Eyre. This Gothic tale of tragedy and transformation has intense emotion, terror, pleasure, death, romance, and eerie ghostly…
Jamie Ford movingly explores the fascinating premise that trauma can be passed down from generation to generation in his fourth novel, The Many Daughters of Afong Moy. Afong Moy was the first Chinese woman known to set foot on American soil in 1836. She was forced to entertain on the stage as "The Chinese Lady.''…
Mysteries with elderly protagonists are all the rage lately, whether the seniors in question are solving crimes or committing them. So you’d be forgiven for assuming that Deanna Raybourn’s latest, Killers of a Certain Age, was merely chasing a trend, but you’d be wrong – and that’s the whole point. Killers of a Certain Age…
