I began this season of my Social Passion reading (which would be civil rights/BLM) with some history. I began this way for a few reasons. I enjoy reading history. This book was already on my shelves. And I wanted to begin somewhere in a less disputed territory, on a less of-the-moment and less inflamed book.…
Continuing with the Social Passion Series, I reached for another book on human trafficking. Last time it was a standard about trafficking around the world, this time it was a book about trafficking in the US. In Our Backyard by Nita Belles was published in 2015, so it is still up-to-date, though specific facts may…
Sometimes a book just haunts me, before I even know what it is, let alone read it. Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens was one such book. I believe I first heard of it at writing group, where we share what we have recently read. I think I remember the share being favorable. Then…
I came across Julia Rothman being stuck at home for months on end with a tween and a teen. While relatives have sent me books and punch needle supplies, my husband puzzles, and my daughter paints and canvases, my son has been harder to figure out. I mean, he could just play video games straight…
I already like Beverly Cleary, but I wasn’t sure about this book because it seems so outside of what Cleary usually writes (Ramona, Henry Huggins, cute stories about animals). Published in and taking place about in 1983, it’s a more modern book than her typical fifties neighborhood kids. It features a more “modern” family and…
Let me tell you what this blog post is not: a critique on subject or a political statement. Let me tell you what it is: a review of a book. While I had such high hopes for this book—and there were many voices from Oprah Winfrey to The New York Times on the cover calling…
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,…
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…
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…
Not everyone reads plays, or at least after the required reading in high school and college. I do. (And more than Shakespeare, though I do love Shakespeare.) I enjoy them the same way I enjoy novels. Not that I read them like crazy, because I just don’t encounter them as much. Well, with this list…
the starving artist 