Happily, I will be reviewing a number of short stories and poems this year, as a function of teaching a high school English class for a home school co-op. Last year, with my son in middle school, I read several short stories but didn’t think to review them. While I really like reviewing anthologies and…
This short story is not on the list of Best Short Stories. I read it because a friend recommended it to me, since I was writing a story with a similar scope. I had presented my writing group with a rough draft of a story that takes place basically on the computer, in the space…
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…
Yes, this is a writing and reading blog. I do take the liberty of reviewing other entertainment, however, when I feel it is applicable to either the writing or reading life. Sometimes something is so good, that I might be stretching it a bit, and when I saw Arrival I knew that I wanted to…
The last four years have seen a lot of change in my life. Four years ago, my husband graduated from school and changed careers, and my last child at home went off to kindergarten. I started writing full-time and published a novel within nine months. Two years ago, we made the decision to take said-son…
So, turns out lists of literary fiction are not that easy to find, unless you are looking for results from a particular year. That, however, is a list that I am not yet making. So I did my best. (Honestly, it’s not the easy to categorize literary fiction, anyhow. I’m pretty sure some of these…
This wasn’t a list I was going to make. But then, I found myself with three adorable nephews and an Amazon Prime account for their birthdays. Now, I know some of the books that I have loved reading to my kids–and Lord knows I spent enough time researching the best and most classic books–but I…
Woah, this list took me a long time to scrape together. Please don’t make too much of it (as I have not read the vast majority of the books), but I wanted a place to start with titles that didn’t appear in my largely American- and Western European-heavy best books lists. This list is not…
Escape from Mr. Lemoncello’s Library, by Chris Grabenstein. This New York Times bestseller was published by Yearling in 2013. Both my daughter and I were attracted to this book on the shelves at bookstores and book sales. It wasn’t so much the look of the cover as its prominent placement coupled with the title: Escape…
Continuing to list the Best Books and breaking it up by genre, we have now made our way to nonfiction and journalism. (Then later I added science, because honestly I love to read in this nonfiction category more than most the others.) Actually, I compiled this one long ago, but the length of the list…
It’s been two and a half years since I posted “Sound Advice,” an entry on The Starving Artist about reading. At the time, I was wanting to read more and also seeing it as part of my job as a writer, but I was struggling with a long string of books which were sub-par. I…
Yes, I absolutely had to combine the three into one post. It was just too hard to find lists that accurately distinguished between children’s, middle grades, and young adult reads. In fact, there may be no accurately distinguishing between them. See post HERE to get an idea of what I mean. And on top of…
I have recently joined a science fiction/fantasy writers group in the area. I thought that since my first novel was magic realism, the second was fantasy, and the third will also be fantasy, it would behoove me to get a little more into the culture, to learn from it and to basically not be totally…
We are fast approaching the inaugural (their fancy way of saying first-ever-hopefully-of-many) Read Local Book Festival. The festival is a weekend-long event with general proceeds going to the libraries, and embraces local authors, bloggers, publishers, bookstores, and libraries from around the Triangle (Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill and beyond). It would be a great time for…
Another Best Books list, this time for the best history books of all time. This is one my husband and father-in-law would really enjoy. Personally, the titles are about to put me to sleep, so I think I’ll keep this list tucked away for when I need to do some research or am traveling somewhere.…
Whew, baby! Just realizing that I have a back-logged guest post from before I went all disappeared from the flu and bronchitis. Many apologies to Sandra Danby, whose post was supposed to coincide with the release of her first novel, last month. I am intrigued that she wrote a book that seems very similar to…
There’s just no way for me to keep up with every book and writing and indie publishing site on the internet. There are too many, to begin with. And stuff on the internet tends to be transient. It’s in its nature. So I don’t have time to follow every blip on the screen. I tend…
Continuing the list of “best books,” with a pretty long list of best travel writing. (Man! I love travel!) Note, once again, that I have not read all these. They are books I would like to read, and the list is compiled from a number of other best books lists. Some of these are fiction,…
What is Wattpad? In theory, many of you don’t need to be told, because, after all, it has 25,000,ooo users. In reality, however, I have found not a single person who knew what I was talking about at the word “Wattpad.” I had read a blurb about Wattpad in some sort of What’s New? section…
It’s not easy to find a good laugh. But I often find myself thinking, “I sure could use a good laugh.” Comedy is tough business, which is why most nights when I go looking to laugh all I end up with is crossed eyes from an optical illusion and an urban definition for the phrase…
the starving artist 