Alas, this was the last Maggie O'Farrell I had left. Ever since discovering The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox (my first and still favorite, I admit), I've moved her books to the top of the top of the To-Be-Read piles with regularity. Now that I've...
On a summer afternoon in mid-1950s rural England on the border between Devon and Cornwall, journalist Innes Kent, already 34, happens upon angry Alexandra Sinclair, not yet 22. During their brief exchange in her parents' yard after he hits car trouble, he manages to inadvertently...
Ready for some literal fun? This book is so ingenious, I can hardly stand it! Talk about different ways of seeing ...
The morning began with an early birthday in our house before going off to another swim meet. Always the swim meet! Egads, the time passes so quickly, I can't keep up. That the kids are getting older only means I'm getting more ancient. Someone, please...
Sleeping Sloth is jolted awake by a ringing phone he can't pick up in time. Thank goodness for answering machines (methinks parents might need to explain that anachronistic precursor to voice mail) because the lucky message announces Sloth has won a prize! But oh, no!...
Ready for some swashbuckling adventure ...
This week has been especially stormy and wet, so I thought I needed to throw in a rainbow in the midst of bursting clouds. The waking glee of three young children staying with their grandfather quickly turns to "[w]himper, sigh, cloudy sky," when their plans for...
Give me a story with two narratives interwoven through nonlinear timelines and, usually, I'll be one committed reader. The House Girl opens in 1852 rural Virginia with a teenage slave girl named Josephine, then fast forwards in the next chapter to Lina, an ambitious attorney...
Meet irresistible, rambunctious, adorable Bella ...
Internationally renowned for her two bestselling novels, The Time Traveler’s Wife and Her Fearful Symmetry, Audrey Niffenegger is also a splendiforous artist with double the graphic titles to her lauded name. Her fourth and latest is "a new fairy tale" with origins that begin with movement: "Awhile ago, Wayne...
Wow, I sort of wondered ...
Welcome to Hollow Ridge High School ...
Perhaps I just need to stay away from award-winning bestsellers. But sometimes, my curiosity over all those stickers, prizes, and multiplying sales just can't be contained ...
Here's another tiny-world overlap that convinces me that some higher power is directing my reading choices: first-time author Christa Parravani is married to Gulf War veteran author Anthony Swofford (Jarhead) – 'Tony' in Her – who appeared in the 2008 Oscar-nominated documentary, Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience, which was directed by...
Jenny Wingfield seems to be a bit of serial first-hit wonder. That's actually not a judgment but an observation: her first film she wrote, The Man in the Moon, was glorified by the late Roger Ebert, gave Reese Witherspoon her screen debut, and was the last...
When our son broke his little toddler wrist (one of those moments parents will always remember in slow motion), he was so attached to his truck-of-the-moment that his chubby fingers never let go of this mini-vehicle even during his x-ray. Now that he's almost ready...
For anyone with a child who will soon become an older sibling, this book is IT. And if that lucky elder happens to be a sister-in-waiting, this couldn't be more perfect. "You're in there and I'm out here, outside Mama's belly. I'm waiting for you!" the...
I refer to myself as a 'recovering Catholic,' and yet I can't stay out of churches for long. I enter as a tourist – admiration for architecture seems to be genetically coded into our extended family – but I linger to breathe deeply, clear the mind temporarily,...
Although I haven't read any actual reviews, I know from seeing this title included in so many Best-of-2012 lists that the lauded reactions have reflected both quantity and quality. Leave it to me to take a somewhat contrary position: while I went through the whole gamut of...
Eleanor Brown's eponymous "weird sisters" – introduced with a quote from the good Bard's Macbeth: "I dreamt last night of the three weird sisters" – are perhaps the most erudite characters I've encountered in a long time. Trained by a professor father who speaks to them mostly in...
