Tag Archives: Novels
12 Months of Books: July Suggestions
Hello, friends! Can you believe that it is July already? We are halfway through with 2018, which mean’s we’re also halfway through with the 2018 reading challenge. I’ve been fighting through some mental/creative blocks this summer, but I have been reading! I managed to finish seven books in June, which is a huge win for […]
Review: Circe by Madeline Miller
I’ve said often on the blog that I’m not always one to jump in on new releases or contemporary fiction trends. I usually prefer to wait until a book’s been around for a while before I decide if I want to read it. But when Circe by Madeline Miller debuted in April, the cover alone caught […]
Caroline by Sarah Miller
One of my favorite movies is You’ve Got Mail, the classic Tom Hanks/Meg Ryan romantic comedy. I love it for many reasons, but one of the main reasons is that Meg Ryan’s character, Kathleen Kelly, is a book lover. So much so, in fact, that she runs a children’s bookshop. In the movie she says When […]
Another Brooklyn by Jacqueline Woodson
Back in November of last year I attended NCTE’s huge annual conference. If you’re unfamiliar with NCTE, it stands for the National Council of Teachers of English, and their annual conference is a pretty big deal. The first time I went, in 2016, I referred to it as “the big one,” and my friends and family mocked me […]
Three Reasons to Reread
Recently I reread two books. The very act of rereading these books got me thinking about what it means to really reread something, and why that might be a beneficial exercise.
The Madwoman Upstairs by Catherine Lowell
One of the many things I love about reading is that magic moment when you fall into a story so captivating that you lose track of time and live inside the pages for a while. As I’ve grown busier and busier, those moments seem few and far between. It’s not often that I have an […]
Gilead and the Gift of Fiction
There is a song by Sara Groves called “Add to the Beauty” that I try to listen to at least once every morning–either while I’m getting ready to leave home or while I’m driving up I-75 to work. Over the years this song has become a daily reminder of some of the things I value […]
What is it About the Tudors?
When I was a kid, I read a lot of historical fiction geared towards young readers. One subject I remember reading about a lot was the Tudor dynasty–Henry VIII and his six wives. There was one book written from Elizabeth I’s perspective, one from Mary Tudor’s perspective, even one, I believe about Lady Jane Grey. […]
No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy
I have this little tradition of going to the bookstore on my last day of work to buy summer reading books that I don’t need. Somehow these new books always get catapulted to the top of my “To Be Read” list. I’d seen No Country for Old Men before and even read the first few pages, […]
To a God Unknown by John Steinbeck
Last year I read East of Eden by John Steinbeck, and I liked it so much that it made my list of favorites from 2016. The fact that I loved East of Eden so much is only one of the reasons I picked up To a God Unknown this summer. Another main reason that I picked up this […]
Book Fifty 