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…
Is a writing residency worth it? For me, it has been the lifeblood to a career that is crowded out by life as a mother, wife, hobbyist, home school educator, and middle class American (Lord, help us). This is, true, only my second writing residency. It is also the same residency as the one I…
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…
