When a book is this original, this heartfelt, this inspiring, this real, I find myself babbling in cliché: Wonder is truly wondrous. Auggie Pullman is 10. He's about to start fifth grade after being homeschooled, and he's more than a little nervous: "I know I’m not an...
Almigal is “absolutely, positively the luckiest girl in the world.” But sometimes, even the luckiest girl wishes all her friends wore hearing aids … or wishes she didn’t feel left out when she can’t hear “every single sound in the whole entire universe!” And who...
What an ideal post for today ...
I’ve been sitting on this fabulously fun title (which pubs today) for a while because I was afraid of even remotely jinxing a recent wedding (and what a gorgeous event it was for the perfectly matched couple, the young groom being one of my favorite...
Well, of course, Wendelin Van Draanen is a runner ...
This cookbook is probably the most unusual little collection I've ever come across ...
For a couple of days, I went back and forth with The Snow Child stuck in my ears (which the inimitable Debra Monk – one of my favorite stage actors ever! – happens to narrate, oh wow!) and reading Ruta Sepetys' between shades of gray on the page...
Peter Hessler and I started out in the wrong voice – literally. I stuck River Town (the first of Hessler's "China Trilogy," made up of River Town, Oracle Bones, and Country Driving) in my ears and nearly threw the iPod off the cliffs in the first half...
Ready for some Saturday fun? Turn off all those screens and power up with your ever-more powerful imagination instead! Come join Zane as he turns things ordinary into magical adventures! What Zane sees as a flying saucer's crest, Lamar mistakenly calls a hubcap. No, Zane's...
Who knows how it happened, but Carl Hiaasen has become my latest reliable antidote to combat the seemingly neverending succession of death and destruction horror titles I've been relentlessly reading either by assignment or by choice. Admittedly, many of them have been utterly amazing, but sometimes...
Just as North Korea’s presence in news headlines has proliferated of late – thanks to the installation of the third-generation round-faced despot; nuclear tests; failed missiles; blatant threats – book shelves, too, have seen an increase in North Korea-themed titles, predominantly written by non-Korean authors. In...
Mega-bestselling author Carl Hiaasen might write formulaic young adult titles, but he's just so goofball funny, it's hard to put his books down – not to mention the covers are so irresistible, too. Following the massive success of his YA debut Hoot (which also got...
"To start with, look at all the books." Thus opens Jeffrey Eugenides third and latest novel with another memorable first-line zinger – most definitely three for three. Alas, what follows that fabulous start isn't nearly quite as zingy. So far, Eugenides is averaging a new title about...
Being always a dozen or so titles behind, a confluence of certain events seem to need to happen for some posts to finally get from my brain to the ...
As we leave the wild mountains and head back to (so-called) civilization this morning, I'm convinced that Ashley Spires' Larf captures that disorienting journey just right, with lots of easy laughter offered on every page. Re-entry always requires maintaining a sense of humor! Larf thinks he...
Given this is a presidential election year, I know you've been searching for the perfect (non-partisan!) political primer. Look no further ...
This is a book I bought twice: first to stick in my ears on long runs (chillingly read by a Korean American triumvirate of Tim Kang, Josiah D. Lee, and James Kyson Lee), and when I couldn't soak in the story quickly enough, I ordered...
If you missed last year's Habibi by Craig Thompson, stop everything right this second and go order it immediately. I'll wait ...
While everyone else has been lost to Linsanity, I've been contrarily following baseball ...
On the kitchen wall is taped a large sign: "My name is Dr. Jennifer White. I am sixty-four years old. I have dementia. My son, Mark, is twenty-nine. My daughter, Fiona, twenty-four. A caregiver, Magdalena, lives with me." What else should you know without telling you...
