I would say that my reading of Hunger Games started on a high. I was forehead-deep in a number of nonfiction and bleak reading (mostly about social issues), and I was just going to tape the corners of book one (that’s a thing I always do) when I just peeked at the first chapter… and…
During the stay-at-home and safer-at-home orders, I have been adding one Home Wishlist item to the grocery haul, every two weeks. I have also been using all of my otherwise pretty useless “allowance” on things from my own Wishlist. In this way, I have acquired a number of cool things (a fountain pen, a crepe…
I have been looking for an agent, which is a blog post for another day. As part of this process, I have had to cozy up to agents with a remark or two in each query, indicating that I understood who they were and why I have picked them out of the thousands of agents,…
This is like the world’s longest blog entry, and it’s just one enormous list. Also, it’s not something that I am particularly qualified to address you about, but it is, after all, just a list of suggestions. Except not really suggestions, because the list here–of best movies and shows–is culled from various lists online, which…
I fully expected to enjoy this book. Among my favorites are so many of the classics: Wuthering Heights, Emma, Anna Karenina… you know, all that old stuff. And while I understand how this book made quite a sensation—because of subject matter, narrator choice, and even story set-up—I don’t see how it’s still clinging on to…
I am almost a hundred per cent certain that I have read this book before. Not only is the information and even the layout familiar to me, but there are so few books like it, out there. Which is a shame. See, the story goes like this: It was the beginning of the pandemic stay-at-home…
If you are an American Christian, it is likely that you have encountered Beth Moore. Maybe I have, but this book, Chasing Vines, is the first time I can say for sure I have read her. Now it seems that everywhere I look I see Beth Moore and everywhere I turn I hear a reference…
Disclaimer: The Dragonbreath series has nothing to do with Dragon’s Breath ice cream. It’s not that easy to find a local author to support, but my son did it for me. Ursula Vernon is an author out of Pittsboro, which is a town not that far from here (Durham, NC) and a place I will…
This review has been a long time in coming. Todd Parr didn’t fall onto my list of TBRs in any conventional way (though I just looked it up and one of his books is on the Best Picture Books list). It was more of a way for me to volunteer at my kids’ school. It…
I’ve been in the writing biz for a long time. There is a caveat to that, which is that I have been only part-time in the biz for most of those years, sometimes very part time. In fact, there have been years when I got almost nothing done. And there have been others where I…
There have been many times during my twelve-year-old son’s life that we have tried to force science fiction, and especially Star Wars on him. While he has grinned and born many of these objects (sheets, clocks) and experiences (movie marathons), he has never really clicked with any of it. I should not have been surprised,…
You might think, anymore, that I’m pulling your leg when I say a book was my favorite in fourth grade. It does seem like I say that a lot, but fourth grade was a golden year for me, so by “fourth grade” I mean around fourth grade. And in reality, I’ve only made this claim…
I started off on reading Robert McCloskey way back when my son and I read Homer Price, like a few years ago. Shortly after, I reviewed the classic, Make Way for Ducklings, and then got Lentil from the library. All this time later, I have read all of his picture books (which aren’t many), and…
Well, I will have my first writing group Zoom on Wednesday. (Perhaps we were all enjoying being cut off from civilization for a while, but now we know we must connect in order to keep the group alive.) I have so much to report, though there are things I wish I could be saying. Here’s…
Since the next paragraph sounds derogatory, I’m going to give it to you straight here: I loved reading this book. Now… I did not LOL. (I might have smirked.) This book was not a mystery. It was only half-satire. And it cheated with the epistolary form (as many epistolary novels do). It might have been…
I really believe, this time, that this is the last reading list I am going to give you. It’s just that I recently read a short story collection (The Martian Chronicles, which snuck in there as a “novel,” just like Olive Kitteridge), and it got me thinking that I didn’t have any short stories on…
It is interesting, beginning any book. You don’t quite feel like you belong, you’re not sure if you’re speaking the right language. And where are you, anyways? What’s going on? Some books invite you in pretty quickly. Other books take a long time to acclimate to, sometimes so long that you give up on them…
I wasn’t going to make a best books list for philosophy or for classics, but then I received a comment on my last best books list (religion and Christianity) that got me thinking. Philosophy books and classics—genres that I have read a lot of—were included in the very first best books list that I did,…
I am aware that it is not the time of year to be reviewing a Christmas book. It’s not even Christmas in July! But I was looking over something on The Starving Artist and it reminded me of how I took my own recommendation and read A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens, this past holiday…
There are some books below that are on the wrong list, but I think I got most of them in the right spot. As always, I haven’t read these books and am not recommending them, per se (though if it has a link attached to it, I have read it and you can follow that…
the starving artist 