My friend D, a history major at one of the Seventh-day Adventist colleges in Washington, decided for his book club pick that we’d read a new biography of one of the church founding mothers, Ellen G. White. She’s received a lot of attention from a theological perspective, but she’s barely made any indentation on 19th century American studies from a cultural or historical perspective. I was interested to see what a variety of scholars would produce. I also wanted to read this volume, since my […]
Who run the world? Merls.
The rather inauspicious beginning for Jennifer Donnelly’s Waterfire Saga has blossomed into a smart, mature series about the power of female friendship and the good young women can accomplish TOGETHER. How refreshing! I greedily devoured Dark Tide in less than two days, and I’m already super impatient for Book 4, which will close off the series. I will try to summarize in broad brush strokes, so that I don’t spoil major plot points for those who want to read the series (and you really, really […]
Man Booker 2015–nothing brief about this weighty book!
I make it a point to read the winner of the Man Booker Award each year. I’ve managed to accomplish this task for the last three years running, even if I have to wait a bit at the library for the book. I don’t always get to the shortlist nominees, however. And sometimes, my predictions for the winner are wrong. Of the 2015 shortlisted books, I’d only read Chigozie Obioma’s The Fishermen (which I thought was very good), so I’d been pulling for that one. […]
“Please, sir. I want some more.”
While I’ve been reading brand-new books and others that have languished on my to-read list, I’ve been trying to read books on my shelf that I own and haven’t cracked open yet. I’ve had a years-long stack that just hasn’t gotten read, so I thought if I checked out some of the audiobooks, I could get through that list faster. Oliver Twist was one of those books on my shelf. Charles Dickens is known for his picaresque tales of poverty, suffering, and corruption in England, […]
1001 nights of hidden meanings.
I don’t know a whole lot about The Arabian Nights (or 1001 Nights), but I do know the general premise, thanks to popular culture—Scheherazade spins a web for 1001 nights to save her life from the whims of a capricious ruler and so captivates him with her storytelling that he allows her to live at the very end. The stories are populated with thieves, the poor, the rich, rulers, and djinn. It is this fabric against which Salman Rushdie sets his Two Years Eight Months […]
I want to be Mindy’s soup snake now.
A few years ago, I cackled my way through Mindy Kaling’s first memoir, Is Everyone Hanging Out without Me? I realize I’m in the minority here, but there’s something mesmerizing about Kelly Kapoor’s narcissism on The Office, so I was eager to get acquainted with the real-life Kaling. I rabidly watched The Mindy Project, and I was delighted to hear that a second memoir was in the works. I find Kaling to be a thoughtful person and her comedy in the Fey-and-Poehler style, so I […]
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