I have just started reading Don Delillo’s White Noise for a literary classics book club. On chapter six, at page 22, I came across this scene. I knew it would never make it whole into my quotes from the book, but I also knew that–despite this book maybe not being what I am totally into–this…
It is the month for St. Patty’s Day and it is the month for the Oscars. It’s also just another month, the third month of 2024, and a time when we’ll still be book-clubbing and TBR reading and noticing a few of the new books. As for Irish literature in honor of St. Patty’s Day…
“Yeah, I am the least athletic person in the universe, but I compare writing to training for a sport. You have to do it every single day and nobody cares about your effort or how much time you spent or how much was wasted time. It doesn’t matter. It’s the end of the performance that…
A truly strange book, The Seep by Chana Porter is extremely short (for long-form) science fiction. In fact, it’s really a novella and has small pages, large margins, and space between the lines. And really, I suppose, the book itself isn’t that strange, but the feeling while reading it is of being among strangeness. It…
I really enjoyed Little Thieves by Margaret Owen. I enjoyed it so much that I didn’t even notice it was first person, present tense until I was practically done reading it, which is a testament to when that very thing works for YA. First-person is the most popular POV these days for YA and present…
You already know that I am obsessed with books. You might not already know that I am obsessed with food. Before this blog, I had two different food blogs, and only stopped maintaining them because I couldn’t keep all those plates spinning along with everything else. But I kept cooking and baking. It goes without…
*NOTE: The following review might make it sound like I hated this book. I didn’t. I enjoyed the first half or third, but by the end I was bored and exhausted, an experience I find is not uncommon. If I had rated this book and written about it halfway through, I would have had much…
A book club read, Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell is another great read of 2024, for me. I’m even going to call it a favorite. It has little things (and one big thing) wrong with it, but overall, it is an amazing book that deserves book club reads and awards and whatnot. It helps that I…
Valentines Day is a couple weeks away. Some of you will choose to ignore this holiday, and that’s one way to do it. Others of you will take the opportunity to put a wreath of hearts on your door, make a reservation at a fancy restaurant, and curl up with some chocolates and a good…
What can I say? I smelled my hand the other day and came up with this first line and thought I would give it to the world as a writing prompt. You can write it down word for word and write from there. You can rephrase it (change the POV or tone or something) and…
Normally I would post this as a “First Line” and make it pretty, like a meme. But it wasn’t the first line, exactly, that I wanted to feature, here, as it is the first paragraph that is notable, as a whole. And it would not fit in a neat, little, pretty box (literally, digitally). To…
I may have written this post in 2014, but I haven’t done much in a decade to learn from it. Honestly, I’m personally glad I came across this bit of wisdom, right now. Because that’s what it is: a bit of wisdom I gleaned from a simple interaction with my fourth-grade daughter (who is now…
I felt like I was doing cartwheels while reading Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus, and I mean that in a good way. Or like I was watching Garmus do cartwheels. Her writing style, characters, and plot are so free-wheeling. The subject matter is often sad, serious, and even brutal, but somehow this book is…
Mothman’s Curse by Christine Hayes is a fun, little, middle grades read and I would definitely recommend it for MG readers (maybe even late elementary school) who like mysteries and spooky stuff. It is somewhere in the neighborhood of Scooby Doo but with tween and younger protagonists, but when reading that level of creepy in…
Holy crap, this is an amazing book. I kinda feel like it’s been done—family at the outbreak of society’s collapse/civil war, or stream of consciousness, or modern family in dystopian times—but it also has not been done. For one, the maternal perspective in Prophet Song by Paul Lynch is pitch perfect, intimate, and novel (hard…
I am trying out some book clubs (which I will blog about shortly). The very first one that I went to had just read Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, which was convenient because I read it a few years ago and just read my own review before checking the group out with pretty…
I like Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. It’s a great classic and in many ways, it is right up my alley: gentle, warm, deep, encouraging, historical, full of three-dimensional characters and relationships, and challenging ideas. It is a little vignette-y for me, but I forgive it because it feels right for the time and…
Oh boy. I might catch it for even reviewing (or reading) this series. And I might catch it for what I have to say about it, by a completely different readership. I probably shouldn’t have even bothered and avoided both forms of angry customers, but I have read and I have judged accordingly and there’s…
This book is fine. It’s one of those promotional-feeling things, like that you might be given to you at church during a sermon series or as a holiday gift, or at something where you might be encouraged to “give it away,” some pastor envisioning that someone might off-handedly read it and find some truth where…
I kinda wish The Truth About Horses by Christy Cashman wasn’t titled The Truth About Horses. And I also wish the cover were different. Though it almost looks self-pubbed and the title is lackluster and maybe even cheesy, the book is pretty solid. Despite some rather specific things I will find to complain about, overall…
the starving artist 