Stephanie LaCava tells the story of her childhood — uprooted from New York to a village outside Paris — by focusing on the strange objects she collected and obsessed over in An Extraordinary Theory of Objects: A Memoir of an Outsider in Paris. It’s an interesting way to tell a story, but I ended up far more interested in the… Read more
Happy Wednesday — it’s time for some new words! You know how this works – share a few words from your current book that you had to look up, then head over to Bermuda Onion’s Weblog to learn some new ones. This week, my words are from Waiting for Sunrise by William Boyd. 1. Architraves – The molded frame around a doorway… Read more
Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. You know the rules: grab your current read, open to a random page and share a two sentence teaser with us (no spoilers!). Be sure to tell us about the book, so we can add it to our TBR list! This week, I’m reading Waiting for Sunrise… Read more
Here’s what’s coming up on the site this week: Monday: My weekly preview, plus some new books that I am very excited about! Tuesday: A Teaser from my current read, Waiting for Sunrise by William Boyd. Wednesday: I have some great new words from my new book for Wondrous Words Wednesday. Thursday: Check back on Thursday for my review of an Extraordinary Theory by… Read more
I’ve posted several comments about eBooks and eReaders, so why not one more? This states the case very simply — and I don’t know anyone, even the most avid Kindle or Nook fan, who is ready to get rid of all of their books: “Books are no more threatened by Kindle than stairs by elevators.” – Stephen Fry, English comedian, writer,… Read more
Today, I’ve got a really special guest post. Helen Harper, a romance novelist, emailed me regarding a review of her new book, Bloodfire, and to comment on a quotable I posted a few weeks ago. It was a quote from John Waters about the books he read in school. I have always been an avid reader, even as a kid, and it… Read more
Interesting commentary on Fiction vs. Non-Fiction” “Fiction seems to be more effective at changing beliefs than nonfiction, which is designed to persuade through arguments and evidence. Studies show that when we read nonfiction, we read with our shields up. We are critical and skeptical. But when we are absorbed in a story, we drop our intellectual guard. We are moved… Read more
I’ll say it up front: I am a pack rat. I come by it honestly. My father is a pack rat — he saves everything, and whenever you need some obscure bit of something, he normally has it. (Whether or not he can find it is a different story.) My mother is not one of us. She has no problems… Read more
Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. You know the rules: grab your current read, open to a random page and share a two sentence teaser with us (no spoilers!). Be sure to tell us about the book, so we can add it to our TBR list! This week, I am back to… Read more
Monday always seems like a good day to talk about the new books that have made their way onto my shelves. It’s the start of a new week and I can just dig in with a new book. First, a week or so ago, I emailed the good folks at Putnam when I saw that Owen Laukkanen has a new… Read more