Orange is the new black (non-fiction)Piper Kerman Piper Kerman’s life was comfortably suburban and solidly upper middle-class–she was a Smith graduate with all the door-openings and privilege that a Seven Sisters degree can convey. But Kerman also yearned for the adrenalin rush that came with living on the edge. And less than two years after graduation, the twenty-three-year-old found herself running …
A Red Herring Without Mustard Alan Bradley I have a real problem with mysteries. I don’t like them. Add to that the fact that I’m an Anglophile and my problem gets curiouser and curiouser–for who does mysteries better than the British? Miss Marple? No thank you. Poirot? I’ll pass. Sherlock Holmes? Not so much. And I …
I remember reading Nora Ephron’s Heartburn in the mid-eighties … and I remember my (mental, anyway!) gasp when I read that the delightful novel was Ephron’s revenge after her marriage to journalist Carl Bernstein failed. Here she sums up the deliciousness that is reading. I should probably frame it. May you find endless stacks in your life beyond, Nora. …
The IlluminationKevin Brockmeier There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in. ~ Leonard Cohen Kevin Brockmeier creates a very believable world where every hurt–from hangnail to heart attack–shines with some sort of light, either shimmering, pulsing, flickering, blinding. At the very outset of the Illumination, as it was almost immediately called, …
Misfortuneby Wesley Stace Is Rose Loveall “Miss Fortune”? Did her fortune pass her by miss her? Did she long for miss fortune? Or, is her cross-dressing life itself a misfortune? I loved Wesley Stace’s By George and wasn’t displeased with Misfortune, either. It is, however, a riot of a novel filled with more characters and …
The Leftovers Tom Perrotta As I mentioned last post in my ‘Next Up’ blurb, I loaded The Leftovers by Tom Perrotta on my Kindle after leaving behind (pun!) Misfortune at my daughter’s. When the Left Behind series was all the rage several years ago I had no desire to even pick up the books. In …
The Fault In Our Starsby John Green “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,But in ourselves, that we are underlings.” ~ Julius Caesar Last month I heard author John Green on NPR and immediately …
11/22/63Stephen King “The past fought change because it was destructive to the future.” Never in my life did I think I’d read two Stephen King books in one year. You might remember that last spring my book club Chicks on Books read Full Dark No Stars … and that, surprising to me, I loved it. …
The Coffins of Little HopeTimothy Schaffert Give me an octogenarian obituary writer–and one named Essie, at that–and you’ve got me hooked. And while it took nearly the entire book to figure out the title (and, quite frankly, I don’t really understand why it was chosen–although the wordplay was clever), I wasn’t disappointed. Essie Myles, twice-widowed, …
Half-assedJennette Fulda A few years ago I lost some weight and also began faithfully reading several blogs. One of the blogs I discovered was Half of Me, written by one “Pasta Queen”. The blog chronicled the life of a twenty-something woman on a quest to lose half her body weight; I think I jumped in …
This is my symphony 