Found in Translation: Katherine Pancol

    Given that I just woke up from a dream in which my blog domain name had expired and caused every post to vanish, I feel I am long overdue for a post—and today, I finally have something positive to report. I’ve mentioned my love for French authors in translation many a time (The…

Summer Reads Series, Pt. 1: Today Will Be Different

  After the emotional rollercoaster that was A Little Life, I felt a humorous palate cleanser was in perfect order. I was in Venice, California, and after numerous Google searches, a disheartening conversation with a salesgirl in Malibu that went something like, “bookstores? Umm, I don’t know, California doesn’t have that many. We have a…

My Thoughts on ‘A Little Life’

A Little Life has been on my list for almost two years now, when it was published to immediate acclaim. Having gotten 300 pages into The Goldfinch and abandoning it due to an inability to take even the remotest interest in the plotline, I was hesitant about this one. Also, as someone who both refuses…

Need to While Away a Winter Weekend? Try a Cozy Mystery

  I had never heard the term “cozy mystery” until a few months back. I have made my love for mysteries fairly apparent on the site, but I always lumped them into one category. Imagine my surprise, then, when I discovered that within the mystery genre sits a small, adorable category described by Wikipedia as:…

Fall Fiction Favorites: Part I

            PART I: The Muse               I love Fiction books, but I’ve gotten to a point in life where I read so many of them, that for me to truly enjoy one, it needs to have “a hook.” Generally, that hook is a page-turning “thriller” element—but when it’s something altogether more unique—then all the…

Swinging Back to the Sixties & Seventies

Two Nostalgic Reads to Add to Your Fall List Towards the end of each summer, I always fatigued by the deluge of contemporary fiction/trashy book hybrids that we call ‘beach reads’, and this year was no exception. However, I’m not one to forgo a lazy summer day composed entirely of reading, so I knew compromise…

Summer Reads Series: The Grand Finale

  I have reviewed my fair share of “summer’s best books” this year, and, while they are books that I love reading, I have found that they are my least favorite topic to tackle. First of all, they are reviewed by everyone—Amazon readers, your mom’s friend who just so happened to have read that book…

Summer Reads Series: Truly, Madly, Guilty

  Over the past three years, amidst the annual deluge of ‘beach reads’, Liane Moriarty has emerged as the reigning queen. While Moriarty has been publishing books since 2004, the witty Australian made headlines (or, at least, an impressive number of book recommendation columns within newspapers and magazines) with her 2013 novel The Husband’s Secret….

At Hampden College, A Different Kind of Greek Life

  I’ve made no secret of the fact that I did not share the public affection for Donna Tartt’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Goldfinch. Given the praise it received, though, I was determined to take a stab at some of her other work, in hope of discerning that it was the protagonist [quite possible] or…

An Inside Look at the Restaurant Industry with Stephanie Danler’s ‘Sweetbitter’

“TERROIR…I looked it up in the World Atlas of Wine in the manager’s office. It seemed a bit far-fetched. That food had character, composed of the soil, the climate, the time of year. That you could taste that character. But still. An idea mystical enough to be highly seductive.”