What a depressing book. From start-to-finish, I couldn’t wait to be done. Every turn of the page seemed to bring on a new horror. From squashed mice and executions gone terribly wrong, to evil-hearted characters and an unsatisfactory ending, there was plenty to be upset about. That said, Stephen King’s The Green Mile was no…
A Future Worth Living For
I am participating in the Cannonball Read 13, which you can learn more about here. I’ve committed to 26 book reviews — let’s see if I can pull that off. This review is currently featured on the home page. Enjoy! What a delightfully pleasant read. The Midnight Library, by Matt Haig, offers a story filled…
When Breath Becomes Air
As a cancer patient, myself, I approached Paul Kalanithi’s book with a measure of caution. I knew I would enjoy the clinical stuff because that’s always interesting. But I was scared about the inevitable ending. I expected it to strike a particularly raw nerve, and it did.
Wash Your Hands, Don’t Hoard Toilet Paper, and Try to Avoid the Cancer
2020 was weird. Everything was sort of a hazy blur. Time both stood still and moved forward at an alarming speed. Reality — a distant concept — faded into the history of a seemingly ancient 2019. I didn’t know how to feel or whether I actually felt anything. My thoughts and emotions were on this…
Magpie Murders: A Modern Day Agatha Christie Mystery
Set in a small English town, Anthony Horowitz’s Magpie Murders features all the archetypes that whodunit connoisseurs have come to expect from the genre. There’s a nosy neighbor, a vicar, a small-town doctor, plenty of small-minded townsfolk, a wealthy man of power, and a ridiculously intelligent detective. Horowitz also slips in a few less-conventional elements,…
Elena Ferrante’s The Days of Abandonment
I keep making the mistake of reading a good book, deciding that I would like to write a blog post about it, but then not… I have a pile of books that I read during my last reading sprint, and I’d love to share them with you, but unfortunately, the details are beginning to turn…
Some Thoughts On Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist
So. Much. Hype. Written by Brazilian author Paulo Coelho, and published in 1988, this short novel exploded as an international bestseller roughly around 2009, when it was translated into sixty-seven languages. It has sold over sixty-five million copies and set the Guinness World Record for the most translated book by a living author (I guess…
Why Literature?
I chose a humanities degree not because I wanted to make a lot of money (my current job hunt is proof of that), but because it satisfies the needs of my soul. Literature carries within it the solution to almost every human need. It fills the gaps of missing education – be it history, culture,…
New Year, New Me… Yeah, Probably Not
I really love the concept of starting fresh each year — reinventing myself, making meaningful change — it’s powerful. In theory, New Year’s resolutions are great — not only do they force us to look back at what we’ve been doing and re-evaluate, but they also ask us to do better. Eating too much pie?…
A Minnesota Fall
I have not been very focused on my reading lately because much of my energy has been devoted to other things. In general, I tend to go through reading phases during which I’ll read five books in a row without hardly ever coming up for air. Then, I’ll follow that with a reading…
A-Z Alphabet Book
Hello, Friends! I have been wanting to do this for a while now but didn’t have the platform to do so until I started this blog. During my last year of college at UC Santa Cruz, I found myself alone in a new city and surrounded by students who were ten years younger than me….
Twin Cities Book Festival | Rain Taxi
I have been looking for ways to get involved with the local literary community since I moved to Minnesota, and was thrilled to have the opportunity to volunteer yesterday for the Rain Taxi-sponsored Twin Cities Book Festival. Gathered together, in a spacious building at the Minnesota State Fairgrounds, were the city’s finest authors, readers, publishers,…
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