Category: Reading
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Top Five Reads of the Year
Here are my five favorite reads of the year, a nice mix of old classics and new discoveries. Please post your favorite reads of the year in the comments. (These are books read during the past year and enjoyed, but not necessarily published in 2015.) Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel (my essay on a kinder, gentler…
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Recommended Reading: The Bloody Chamber
I’m recommending a hidden classic this week: The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter. Carter gives familiar fairy tales a feminist twist. The stories revolve around the theme of young women (and sometimes men) crossing the threshold into adulthood, generally through sexual experiences. Penguin has some beautiful editions, and this is one of them.
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An appreciation of Jane Austen…
I recently completed reading all of Jane Austen’s finished novels, a pleasant and rewarding project. Although her body of work was not large, there is not a single clunker in the bunch. The same cannot be said for many other novelists. The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good…
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Recommended Reading: Going Through the Change
Going Through the Change: A Menopausal Superhero Novel: Samantha is a friend, and this is her first published novel. It is about four menopausal women who gain superpowers, a nice twist on the usual superhero fantasy. I promise if you read the first chapter, it will definitely hook you! This is the first in a planned trilogy.
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Recommended Reading: Welcome to Night Vale
I have never heard the podcast Welcome to Night Vale; I just bought this book based on hearing an interview with the authors on NPR and then seeing it in the bookstore. I really enjoyed the parts about the imaginary town of Night Vale itself and “the voice of Night Vale” sections, which are probably…
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Recommended: Slade House by David Mitchell
A new recommended read: Slade House by David Mitchell. Every nine years on the last Saturday in October, a mysterious iron door appears in the wall of Slade Alley. If you open it–and you should hope you don’t–you’ll find yourself in an impossible garden looking at the back of Slade House, at a place where it absolutely…
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Recommended Reading: Men Explain Things to Me
You may think Men Explain Things to Me, Rebecca Solnit’s short collection of essays (including the one that helped spawn the term “man-splaining”), is necessary reading for women, and you’d be right. But it’s also a great read for all creative types. When I first started reading these essays, I felt angry. That’s okay; I’m used…
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The long and short of it…
I used to love long books. I liked getting sucked into a fictional world and really getting to know a large cast of characters. The absorbing sweep and breadth of an epic is hard to beat. Some of my favorite long books include: East of Eden by John Steinbeck; The Stand by Stephen King; Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry; Sea of Poppies by…
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Rooms by Lauren Oliver | Books Worth Reading
Here’s an autumnal book for you! Rooms by Lauren Oliver is a different take on the classic haunted house story. The house in question is haunted by two women whose spirits have essentially merged with the house and can observe–even experience, in a sense–everything that happens inside. When Richard Walker, who owns the house, dies, his estranged,…
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Book review: Three Themed Anthologies
I have never been a huge fan of short stories. I prefer to seek my teeth into something meatier, a novel. Short story collections by a single author have always felt particularly unsatisfying to me. Invariably, the stories vary in quality but share similar themes, insights, and style, so that they all start to run…
Shannon Turlington 