“The opposite of play isn’t work. It’s depression.” Stuart Brown’s book on play promises a lot; it’s not just a description of play, but play’s role in society and necessity in social and cognitive development. He traverses the animal kingdom to make his points in the first half and in the last half he veers off track and becomes totally anecdotal. First of all the whole animal thing could be science sure, whatever, but there is no way of telling, because there are LITERALLY NO […]
All we ask is to be allowed to remain the writers of our own story
I’m a big fan of Atul Gawande’s work, easily the best I’ve read by a medical doctor. His style is effortless, and he manages to find the right balance of technical and non-technical. Being Mortal feels like his most personal work, and I loved it. While his first three books mostly covered his own experiences through surgical residency and practice, his latest explores a topic he admits up front to knowing very little about. He mentions right away that his medical training included almost nothing […]
Actress, knitter, author. Is there anything she can’t do?
I’m a big fan of Krysten Ritter. I love her as Jessica Jones. She was a fun addition to Veronica Mars. She killed it as the B in Apartment 23. And she broke my heart on Breaking Bad. And now, she’s written her first novel **, a mysterious thriller that proves she’s an author to look out for in the future. Bonfire tells the story of Abby, a tough environmental lawyer at a big Chicago firm, who is sent to the small (AND TERRIBLE) town […]
Can you hear me now?
I like my alone time. I need my alone time. Accept for rare cases when I am totally immersed in a particular book, I can’t read when there is too much background noise: TV, music, conversations. I prefer silence so that trying to block out other sounds doesn’t constantly pull me out of my reading. I also often have a Pavlovian response to the various dings my cell phone makes. My body’s reaction to cell phone alerts is something like the nonverbal equivalent of Ugh!, particularly when […]
Won’t Someone Please Think of the Cat???
Stories set in the context of a family split are generally told from the perspective of one of the adults in the relationship, or from that of the child(ren) caught in the middle. Sandi Ward’s debut novel “The Astonishing Thing” employs a different voice: that of the family cat. Admittedly, when I first read the concept of the novel my thought was that it would go something like this: “Hoomin, feed me.” “Medium hoomin, stop yelling at large hoomin – I am trying to nap.” […]
Friends to lovers
This is book three and the last installment in the Blackshear series, with the focus on Nick. First of all I have to agree with Narfna – the cover model is so far removed from what I imagine Nick would look like. As a barrister in London, he would definitely not be the bronzed weight lifter type! Once again, Ms Grant has written a rather unlikeable heroine in Kate Westbrook; a young woman not as experienced in the ways of the world as Martha and […]
- « Previous Page
- 1
- …
- 100
- 101
- 102
- 103
- 104
- …
- 118
- Next Page »