The plan was always to update the Best Books list every ten years. That way, we can keep up to date on what we’re reading and not miss anything really exciting. Well, it’s been somewhere around ten years, and I thought I would make sure that the list goes all the way back to 2000.…
Well, this is embarrassing. I guess if I’m going to do the crime, I’ll have to do the time. Just kidding, sort of. The truth is this: one of those little library boxes appeared in my neighborhood last year, which made me very happy. I wander by it frequently, depositing and taking books, although mostly…
I have dreaded writing this review. I have dreaded writing it so much that I actually refused to finish the book for months, therefore delaying the review. Perhaps this wasn’t done consciously, but it was done nonetheless. I like Anthony Bourdain, after all. I have praised him highly for many things, including most of his…
This is one of the longest waits I have had before reviewing a book, in my—what? eight?—years doing reviews on The Starving Artist. It might even be the longest, but it’s not like I have that info handy to check. I mean, the point of these reviews is to share, sure, but also to remember,…
My son is in a home school co-op this year. I am the fifth and sixth grade writing teacher. I was given my curriculum, which came complete with a list of reading for the year. So I read the novels along with the kids, and there were some mixed results. As you should be able…
Okay, okay, so I know there’s another memoir in this series. Written in 2005, Teacher Man picks up the story where ‘Tis leaves off in Frank McCourt’s life, and tells the story of the teacher who would become a writer. I don’t feel compelled to read this book, largely because it focuses in on teaching high school…
This is a loooooong book. For me, it was life-changing and made it onto my list of Books That Changed My Life. But Dr. Mark Hyman could have written it with a lot less words, and this comes largely from repetition (and also from technical details, but that might be necessary). Not everyone is going…
One of the reasons I hadn’t ever read this book before (besides the thousands of other books I want to read) is the title. Another reason was the cover. It just didn’t make me want to pick it up (and it turns out, the copy I have is also not very representative). As for the…
This was a tough read. I’m not the first to say that, and maybe not even the first person to begin their review with that exact sentence. And looking at the other reviews, The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls is fairly polarizing, even to people who like it (and they are minion). “It was well…
I have been out of commission since October, which is a little extreme. I attended that wonderful writing residency and finished a novel, but within weeks of returning I came down with something like the flu and destroyed my Thanksgiving season. I struggled with recovery until I decided that I had a secondary sinus infection.…
I’m not averse to a story in which animals are personified. I’m not averse to a story in which animals are personified but being sneaky about it right under the nose of unsuspecting humans. But there was something about The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate that somehow defied both these categorizations and got…
Well, The Five People You Meet in Heaven is a quick read. And if you like morals with your stories–if you want to walk away introspective in a Halmark-movie sort of way–then this could be the book for you. What did I think about it? It’s certainly easy to read. It’s interesting and moving. You’re always…
I have this feeling that my review of J.R.R. Tolkein’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy has to be super long, like in accordance with the length of the books. But are the books really that long? Let’s do a little comparison. Each of the books (The Hobbit and then the trilogy…
This is one of those books that has sat in the back of my head and at the bottom of my list of books-to-read for many years. It felt like if I took literature seriously and was a truly modern, truly literate person, then I would have to read this one some time. In fact,…
I was in Syracuse, New York. I had packed the last two books in the Lord of the Rings series and then had devoured what was left of them. I was headed to a pedicure with my mother-in-law, sister-in-law and daughter and had about 20 minutes before my appointment to spare. There were two used…
I’m going to review these books together, because they had been all mixed up in my memory. (Not anymore.) They are also both classics of dystopian fiction and are both books you might be required to read in high school or college. I was in high school when I was assigned 1984 and a college…
I’m sure I must have read Little House on the Prairie when I was a kid. And maybe Little House in the Big Woods. I don’t recall, though I do see the old copy on my bookshelf. What I do recall is being part of a generation during whose childhood the popular television series (with…
It may seem like there are a whole lotta books that I have been enthusiastically looking forward to reading. It would seem that way because it is that way. I have always been an avid reader and a curious individual, and there are so many books that I haven’t quite got around to yet, including…
This book will forever be a little mixed up in my consciousness with the place and circumstances under which I read it. Sometimes that happens to a book—like if you read it while on bedrest or on a bus on the way to Florida. This one has a stronger association for me than some. To…
Wonder by R.J. Palacio is my daughter’s favorite book (and she is not alone). I’ve been meaning to read it for at least a year, and I have even already watched the movie (because my daughter wasn’t going to wait around for me). Having barely set the book down over the past two days, I…
the starving artist 