Note: I don’t know why I was holding this review, exactly, but here it is. Probably I was too busy writing the great American novel (or an awesome, best-selling YA fantasy trilogy). I knew that for this year’s National Novel Writing Month (November), I wanted to write a novel I had in my head which…
I have been handed books by my (now-eighteen-year-old) daughter a couple times (right after she read them), and she has handed me a couple that I loved (like We Were Liars). When I walked in her room several days ago she was balking at the final pages of The Silent Patient. When I said, “What?”,…
I was so busy Nanowrimo-ing and having holidays, that I never read the Thanksgiving book that I had slotted for this year. Yes, there are some Thanksgiving books, though so far (the past two years) I have found them to be a stretch. This year, however, the book is clearly a Thanksgiving book while also…
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),…
the starving artist 