Ah, Stephen King. He’s been my number one go-to author since I was in my early teens and read It and The Tommyknockers. I pretty much never looked back from that point on and while not every book he publishes is a slam dunk (Dreamcatcher is one of the most jawdroppingly terrible things, and I never even bothered to finish Lisey’s Story I was so bored and annoyed by it), when you’re as prolific as King is, that’s no real surprise. But I’d still much rather read an off target Stephen King […]
Trigger Warning: Life can be tragic
Last month, the New York Times, and subsequently other major news outlets, covered the controversy over trigger warnings in academia, i.e., a growing movement on US college campuses to have professors provide warnings in advance of potentially disturbing topics covered in their syllabi (rape, racism, suicide, etc.). When I saw some of the books listed as requiring trigger warnings (Huck Finn, The Great Gatsby, Things Fall Apart), I was deeply disturbed and I generally agree with those who have spoken out against warnings. And does […]
Take a trip to 1970’s Tehran
Ugh. So far behind, and it’s only June. I’ve started working from home again, and finding myself wishing for more hours in the day to get everything done. I’m keeping up with the reading, but the reviewing is killing me. Gonna do my best. I feel like it was ages ago that I read Persepolis. And when I was reading it, I had a lot of important things I wanted to say. That I needed to say. And now I can’t remember any of them. […]
An Unbelievable Bore
It seems as if every wanna be romance writer makes Amazon their dumping ground. Desperate to find some new authors to diversify my limited favorite authors’ selections, I stumbled upon Terri Osburn’s Home to Stay (2014), a bland, forgettable romance that emphasizes why I hate small town romance series. Home to Stay is the story of Willow Parsons and Randy Navarro, residents of Anchor Island. Willow, living on the island for only a year, works as a bartender and harbors a secret that keeps her emotionally distant and secretive […]
Wanted: Connectors, Mavens, and Salesmen
Malcolm Gladwell is a storyteller. What I find particularly admirable about his work is that he is able to convey what has been traditionally a spoken language skill into a written one–while reducing seemingly complex ideas into digestible bite-size chunks. It is not surprising, then, that The Tipping Point (2000) was a best seller and achieved “one of the best books of the decade” status on many lists. Pulling from a broad set of examples from different aspects of life and history, such as from Paul Revere’s […]
I Just Don’t Know What to Do With Myself
I’ve tagged “The Leftovers” as science fiction, although I’m not sure it was intended as such. The book opens with a great conceit: Over 2% of the Earth’s population has disappeared. Just poof, gone! Some think it was the Rapture; most are simply stunned and confused by what has happened. The novel focuses on the residents of a quaint suburbia called Mapleton and how they attempt to move on several years after the great exodus. I absolutely loved the premise. What would you do if […]
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