Halbs – Page 33 – Cannonball Read 17

An Honest and Gracious Look at the Complexities of Adoption

All You Can Ever Know: A Memoir by Nicole Chung

August 21, 2019 by Halbs Leave a Comment

From now on, when people ask what being adopted is like, I’ll just smile and tell them to read this book. It’s all in here. The simultaneous emotions of feeling special because you were chosen by a family and worthless because your parents didn’t want you. The confusion of not knowing who exactly you are, or whether you should feel thankful that you were taken in or annoyed that human right was even in question. Who are your “real” parents, if there is such a […]

Scribotherapy

Writing to Save Your Life: How to Honor Your Story Through Journaling by Michele Weldon

August 19, 2019 by Halbs Leave a Comment

Writers love reading, writing, and reading about writing. If you ask any writer to name some impactful books that have encouraged their craft, I guarantee you they will be able to pound out a list of 3-5 books immediately. My personal list includes If You Want to Write by Brenda Ueland, On Writing by Stephen King, and any Jack Kerouac poem (they’re not usually specifically about writing, but always about living, and writing is about living, so I count Kerouac). I’m not quite sure where I found out […]

More Marlowe

The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler

August 16, 2019 by Halbs Leave a Comment

“Organized crime is just the dirty side of the sharp dollar.” “What’s the clean side?” “I never saw it. Let’s have a drink.” If quotes like that excite you, and you tend to view the world through a haze of cigarette smoke and gimlet fog, then this book could very well be for you. The Long Goodbye is Raymond Chandler’s sixth novel featuring the jaded private dick with a heart of…silver, Philip Marlowe. It’s not the best in the series, but it’s towards the top. […]

A Small and Compelling Fictional Look at 90s Startup Culture

Microserfs by Douglas Coupland

August 8, 2019 by Halbs Leave a Comment

AMC’s “Halt and Catch Fire” is one of my all-time favorite shows. When it recently ended (and stuck the landing, might I add) I was craving something very niche – a humane look at the tech world in the 1990s, and the people in that world. Thank goodness for the Net, because the Halt and Catch Fire’s subreddit developed a recommended reading list. That’s how I found writer/artist Douglas Coupland’s microserfs. It’s a novel about some low level Microsoft employees (microserfs) who decide to strike […]

No Stranger to the Vine

Cork Dork: A Wine-Fueled Adventure Among the Obsessive Sommeliers, Big Bottle Hunters, and Rogue Scientists Who Taught Me to Live for Taste by Bianca Bosker

July 25, 2019 by Halbs Leave a Comment

The main two things you need to know when considering my review is that (1) I don’t know anything about wine and (2) I do like witty, smart writers. If you know a lot about wine and you don’t like journalists inserting personal asides into non-fic, your feelings about this book will probably differ from mine. Writer/sommelier Bianca Bosker’s book is educational, funny, and at times inspiring. It pairs nicely with A History of the World in Six Glasses. That work gives you a great introduction […]

An Homage to an Homage to Twin Peaks?

The Blinds by Adam Sternbergh

July 22, 2019 by Halbs Leave a Comment

I added The Blinds to my Goodreads list a couple years ago when writer Adam Sternbergh gave an intriguing interview to Texas Monthly magazine. It was all about his travel through Texas to research what West Texas was really like so he could nail it in the book. Since The Blinds was recently a Kindle deal, I nabbed it and gave it a go. At times, the writing is fantastic – fatalistically and pithily humorous. Kind of like a mix of Raymond Chandler and Catch-22. Unfortunately, the back […]

Zirza on A Gothic Classic for a ReasonIt's one of those wish-you-could-read-it-again-for-the-first-time books. I loved it.
Emmalita on “It came to something when you found yourself hoping that the footsteps you heard were ghosts.”I loved the ending! I don’t think it’s been out long enough to talk about why though.
Dixie on Track Her Down by Melinda LeighI am just starting Track Her Down and I have read them all in order till now and thought I...
Roland of Gilead on How can you give us the gift of a crazy character named Rando Thoughtful and then just as suddenly take that gift away? We need to talk, Uncle Stevie.I came across this randomly years after it was written because I was searching "Random Thoughtful. But I have the...
Emmalita on “Only you, Em, would refer to heartbreak as a distraction. I think I would have a more sympathetic response if I asked to marry a bookcase.”Oh my goodness, Gallifrey was beautiful. I’m sure her mittens were gloriously murdery.

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