In one week, starting on Halloween, head over to Lizzie Ross, Writer for the annual celebration of Witch Week, a time to read and discuss our favorite fantasy books and authors (and who couldn’t use a bit of fantasy right now?) The theme this year is “Gothick” and Lizzie has a simply fabulous lineup in […]
Many, many years ago, in my eighth grade oral presentation class, one of the few talks I remember giving was one about e-books. They were not even really a thing back then, but for some reason the topic was in the air. I argued against them, saying that paper was more permanent, more aesthetic, […]
Looking for a book to lighten my mood, I tried and discarded a number of candidates, from contemporary and historical rom-coms to fantasies to classic mysteries. Nothing held my attention for long: too crude, too contrived, too anachronistic, too dated. Would I ever find something to brighten up my reading life? A couple of tried […]
September was World Kid Lit Month, a new-to-me event that translates diverse, global and translated children’s books. I joined in by reading The Beast Player, by Japanese author Nahoko Uehashi (translated by Cathy Hirano). The imaginary but Japanese-flavored fantasy world about a divided kingdom within which magical beasts live in an uneasy relationship with humans […]
Lately, I’ve read a number of books about trauma, abuse, and the therapies leading to healing and recovery. I find this such a fascinating and important topic, because (as is pointed out in The Body Keeps the Score), even if we are not personally victims of abuse, when it is not properly treated, it ripples […]
Top Ten Tuesday is a feature at That Artsy Reader Girl. This week the prompt is Books on my Fall 2020 TBR. And it turns out that THREE of my favorite fantasy authors (two of whom release their books at excruciatingly long intervals) have new titles out this fall, so I had to join in! […]
Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea (1952) I’ve never been drawn to reading Hemingway, never got pulled into the mythology around him. I’d heard his language was simple — some said to the point of being a simplistic sort of “he-man” utterance, even though others lauded it as a pillar of modernism. I […]
Back in June, I decided to challenge myself to spend the whole month of July reading books in French to try to boost my language skills. I invited anyone who was interested in reading in another languages to join a challenge I called Summer in Other Languages. Now summer is coming to a close, so […]
I sometimes humorously refer to my reading habit as an “addiction.” Of course, addiction is no joke, and any kind of compulsive behavior is not a good thing. But what actually makes something an addiction rather than a healthy pleasure? I looked up some of the criteria and tried to apply them to myself as […]
This month, I planned a Robertson Davies Reading Weekend to take place around the author’s birthdate of August 28. It was a lovely long weekend of reading and discussing his wonderful books with fellow aficionados, and I hope it introduced him to some new readers. You can find all the details in the wrap-up post. […]