The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, by V.E. Schwab
I have a hearing loss in my left ear, but (for very real and very stubborn reasons) I don’t wear a hearing aid, which creates some truly masterful socially awkward opportunities. Just the other day, I was enjoying the last of my eggs and toast at the diner my husband and I enjoy sneaking off […]
Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt
What to Read When…you just need to breathe a bit. I’d just finished Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad which left me feeling…shaken (so much so that I still don’t know what to say about it; look for that blog post a little later). I needed a book I could relax into. Not something “light,” but […]
The Lobotomist’s Wife by Samantha Greene Woodruff
What to Read When…you’re in the waiting room of your therapist’s office. I thought I’d start a list of “What to Read When…” only because there are so many times in our lives when a book can save us from a variety of social angst, or divert our attention from bad days or existential crises. […]
All the Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr
Once a year I travel to a church about a half hour from my house and watch over 3rd or 4th or 8th graders as they sweat and squirm through a Pennsylvania state standardized test. As a cyber teacher, it’s one of the few times during the year I see my students in person. I’ve […]
The Dance of the Dissident Daughter, by Sue Monk Kidd
Sometimes you read a book at a specific time in your life and it takes such deep root inside your mind that you continue to feel its impact long after you’ve forgotten the name of the book. I was flipping through my little book of read books and found this title and in an instant, […]
The Signature of All Things, by Elizabeth Gilbert
Before beginning this post, I searched the house for my copy of Eat, Pray, Love. I thought it would be interesting to compare the writing style between the books, since I thought I remembered that Gilbert sounds like a more serious Mindy Kaling in the former (have you read Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? […]
The 100-Year-Old-Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared, by Jonas Jonasson
If you’ve been feeling old lately, that all the magic is gone from this world, and that life has no more beautiful surprises left for you…this is the book you need to read. This story is a delight from the very first scene when Allan (the 100-Year-Old-Man) does what all of us fantasize about doing […]
The Goldfinch, by Donna Tartt
This is a big book, with a big story, and a big THEME. The English teacher in me wants to dissect what Tartt has to say about “art for art’s sake” what with the painting of the goldfinch that the lead character steals from the museum in the moments after the bomb goes off and […]
One Last Thing Before I Go, by Jonathan Tropper
I’m obviously interested in characters at the lowest point of their lives, making the worst choice of their lives, but how could one possibly make that funny? Incredibly, Tropper knows how, and his One Last Thing Before I Go was the most fun I’ve had with a story in a long time. Silver’s life is […]
Euphoria, by Lily King
In one of the multiverses (and now I’m betraying my begrudging enjoyment those movies), I would have definitely lived the life of Margaret Mead. She was born in Philadelphia, close to where I grew up, went to school at Columbia, where my father did, and traveled to foreign lands to learn about cultures and peoples […]