Tag: reading challenge
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Hemingway has become more myth than man to modern readers, but Paula McLain’s book offers an intriguing glance into the man and the (first) woman who married him. McLain manages to capture Hemingway’s charm as well as his rougher, more cruel traits, as well as what it’s like for his wife, who doesn’t consider herself…
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There is just something about fashion, and the culture of the 70s, and battles between the French and the Americans that I just find endlessly fascinating. I have to admit that as far as political history goes, anything that happened after the 1960s feels much to recent and much too boring. But socially and culturally,…
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Every so often, you come across a book that you’re excited for, but when you actually come to read it, you’re a bit disappointed. That’s how I felt reading this updated version of Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey. Now I’ve never read Val McDermid, though I know she’s a well-known mystery writer who has sold a…
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Mary Costello’s book follows a similar path as the last one I read by Cynthia Ozick. They are both books that detail the trajectory of a single life. But Costello’s book is much quieter and much sadder. The events that occur in Tess Lohan, the protagonist’s, life are not driven by herself. Tess allows life…
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I must apologize for the relative quiet around here…it’s been a crazy month, and things are only just beginning to simmer back down to their normal temperature. I promise Baking for Bookworms will be up next week. But on to the book: Maria Semple’s book is the quintessential summer reading material, light, vaguely related to…
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I don’t know what I expected this book to be when I picked it up. I read part of the New York Times book review, enough to be interested, and I added it to my to-read list. I never expected to be so enchanted with this book. Twenty pages in, and I still had no…
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If I could choose any cool older sister I wanted, it would definitely be Mindy Kaling. This outspoken, charming, witty woman totally won over my heart with her show The Mindy Project before I ever watched her in the show she’s most famous for, The Office, in which she acted, produced, and wrote. Her tone…
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I’m constantly intrigued, fascinated, and captivated by Italy. I have never been there, though I hope someday soon that will change, and yet I’m in love with the culture and the landscape. It’s a place, in other words, that calls to me. Frances Mayes’ memoir enabled me to deepen my understanding of the Tuscan landscape.…
Allison Burris 