THE TAILOR OF GLOUCESTER I have tried to read and review a children’s picture book each Christmas along with a novel and a nonfiction book. This year I chose The Tailor of Gloucester by Beatrix Potter. I have never been a big Beatrix Potter fan (I can’t say I’m not a Potter fan because, well,…
I read this book because it is on “the” list of best Christmas books. Note: there are not that many books on this list. I have read one or two each holiday season since I started this list, and, quite frankly, it has not been full of winners. Yet. There is still hope. Which means,…
If you have not read this novel (and/or seen the movie), perhaps you are a little out of the loop or a little old? It is a modern manifesto of the teen life, since the late 90s but still extremely loved and adopted by each decade of teens since. The Perks of Being a Wallflower…
I have not finished this book yet. It is a daily reading, but I wanted to get the review on The Starving Artist now (December 5th) so that if you are interested in reading it, you won’t miss Advent this year, entirely. I will update the review after I read it all, but I don’t…
If you’ve been paying any attention at The Starving Artist, then you know I am up to my neck in Nanowrimo, the National Novel Writing Month when writers write about 1700 words per day until they have a “novel.” As part of my project this year—a YA fantasy adventure trilogy, book one—I have immersed myself…
I have accidentally established a writing residency tradition. Apparently (because this just happened twice and now it’s a thing), I go to a local bookshop when I am in whatever town (well, obviously I would hit up the local bookshops) and I purchase an easy (read: often pop-fiction-y or romantic), engrossing, possibly writer-related book. Then…
Goodness sakes. This is a tough book, of a sort. It is not just like Kimmel’s other books. It is highly academic, religiously explorative, and takes place in Indiana, yes, but it is pretty dark and trippy, falling down a sort of well into ancient Greece (think the dark side of mythology) while standing planted…
I really enjoyed reading The Used World, but I can’t say that I would recommend it across the board. Here’s the thing. Haven Kimmel also wrote two memoirs, A Girl Named Zippy and She Got Up Off the Couch, and they were pretty popular in the early 2000s, gaining a number of fans for Kimmel.…
I have now read six books by Haven Kimmel, this summer. I have two to go. I don’t know why, but I saved the novels till last, and I am in the middle of the “loose trilogy” of her first three (of four) novels. The (very) loose trilogy is The Solace of Leaving Early, Something…
A GIRL NAMED ZIPPY Haven Kimmel is one of my favorite authors. I had put off re-reading her books and reviewing them because I was waiting on the most recent, much-awaited novel, The Farm. However, it has been several years and that book is now available in England, I think, but I still can’t get…
I suppose one of the reasons Haven Kimmel isn’t a super-famous author is because she backed out of the limelight on purpose at the height of her authorial ascension. But maybe that’s not quite right. It seems that A Girl Named Zippy, her first published book and a memoir which I will review in a…
I am attempting to read like the wind from now till the end of the year. I have many titles that I set out to read in 2022 and even shoved up there into the Goodreads universe of book goals. But I am distractable; it is the nature of ADHD. But did you know, no…
The Pages and Co. series, specifically, The Bookwanderers by Anna James were not on my TBR. It is a pretty popular series right at this moment. I didn’t know that when I encountered it. You know how I keep saying that I wasn’t going to buy any more books this year? Well, there seems to…
When I first started reading this book, I was somewhat enamored. I just didn’t expect it to be so engaging and there was a competent playfulness that I was really enjoying. But as I read further and further, I got a tad bored. In a book that often feels more like vignettes than a novel…
When I was a fellow at a writing conference in the summer of 2021, I came home with a list of books to read. Some of them were craft-related, some of them obliquely craft-related, and some of them were written by authors who read out at the conference and who I wanted to both read…
I do not recall what I was doing that led me to this list (I’m sure it had something to do with the poetry unit I was teaching my ninth-ish graders), but the list of favorite poems by famed authors excited me. I thought, I want to read through that list. (I am a real…
I purposely went from Zadie Smith’s NW to A. A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh. I find Smith to be—while beautiful and noteworthy—depressing and challenging, so I took a brain-break with one of my very favorites, Pooh Bear. And while Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh series (Winnie-the-Pooh, The House at Pooh Corner, When We Were Very Young (poetry, actually written first),…
So, the title of this book is written “NW,” but it is said “Northwest.” That’s not that confusing, but just making it clear. And by “Northwest,” we mean an area of London, which is definitely what this book is about (and during a certain time period: it was published in 2012, and if you look…
A few months ago, I was looking to join a book club. I shouldn’t have been. It’s not really for me. If anything, I should host book clubs because I know exactly what I want to read for the year (all mapped out in my dot journal) not to mention the rest of my life,…
After reading In Cold Blood, I felt interested in reading Truman Capote’s other most-famous work, Breakfast at Tiffany’s. For one thing, I was intrigued by his strange career of seemingly never landing on the same genre twice. For another, this is my experience with Breakfast at Tiffany’s: In the nineties, the song “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”…
the starving artist 