Quick Review: Chick lit that hits the nail on the head with a likeable heroine, A fast-paced plot and an ending with a twist. What is it about chick lit that lends itself so well to themes of redemption? Like Faithful by Alice Hoffman, here’s a story set against the backdrop of my favorite city, featuring …
Quick Review: A thoughtful, approachable, visually appealing cookbook that makes even The Most exotic recipe seem within reach. (This post contains affiliate links. That means when you click on a link, I get a small commission.) Isn’t this book pretty? I’m definitely guilty of judging a book by it’s cover. The photographs and layout inside …
Quick Review: A book about regret, transformation and redemption that will have you rooting for the main character. I’ve read quite a few Alice Hoffman novels in my day. (Will I ever read them all? I don’t know! She’s so prolific, I can’t keep up.) This month, I read two of Alice’s novels back to back: …
The Girls, out from Random House on June 14th, left me with the nagging feeling of familiarity. I’m only 36, so it’s not because I lived the heyday of the 60s and 70s. Set in Northern California, at the end of the 1960’s, Evie’s story hits all the hallmarks of teenage angst– friend drama, divorcing …
What is the difference between a lie of omission and a lie, period? And is one worse than the other? I would argue that both are no good, but that a lie of omission has technicality going for it. Technically, one did not utter a falsehood. One merely failed to correct an assumption, which places …
Augusten Burroughs has an enviable knack for introspection and self-awareness. He has also has a writing voice that made me wonder at first if I were reading fiction or a memoir–at some points, I actually was not 100% confident Lust & Wonder was a memoir! Burroughs manages to make himself a sympathetic character, though I …
Have you ever been to Israel? I went when I was 15, and even in my self-absorbed, navel-gazing teenage state, I knew that Israel was the most beautiful place I’d ever seen. It was the first foreign country I’d ever travelled to (Canada notwithstanding) and I’ve been to many others since then. Still the most …
What was it that possessed me to request this book for review? I don’t normally pick diet books, preferring to read actual literature and knowing that most of what it inside diet books is freely available on the Internet. Maybe it was the phrase “spontaneous weight loss.” Maybe it’s because I caught up in the …
Stop me if you’ve heard this before. It’s been a long time since I wrote a blog post. I don’t what the point of this is anymore. etc. etc. etc. The point is that sometimes I have things I want to say and I like to share them, and hope other people don’t mind too much. Actually, …