[Programming note: my in-laws are in town, so Al and I will be busy having fun with them for the next little while. Blogging may be intermittent. Try to hold on without me.] Far from the Tree is a book that I had heard a lot about before I read it, and then once I […]
I’ve been reading a lot of books lately about places and cultures that I didn’t know I was interested in until I started reading about them. I learned that I was interested in Japan after reading Richard Lloyd Parry’s excellent People Who Eat Darkness, and I suppose, in the same way, I learned I was […]
I’ve been absolutely devouring books lately, like a starving person who can only take in nutrition through the eyes. That’s a thing, right? One of the things that I love most about my new life as a writer is how much I get to read and consider it “work.” I’ve learned that when left to […]
I read the novel Cloud Atlas when I was back in San Francisco visiting my family. It took me almost a week to plow through, because it’s massive and complex and it can be a tad long-winded. But to my surprise, I really enjoyed it. You see, I didn’t expect to like Cloud Atlas, mostly because […]
I recently finished Alan Hollinghurt’s The Line of Beauty, winner of the 2004 Man Booker Prize for fiction. It is an excellent and intimidating book: excellent in that it’s exquisitely plotted and crafted, intimidating for the very same reasons. One of the reviewers on the back cover (Publishers Weekly) raved that it is “almost perfectly […]
Since I’ve been off the radar for a week, I feel that I must make up for it by giving you some bang for your blogging buck. Today, I want to talk about a series of books I recently finished, the so-called The Giver Quartet, by Lois Lowry. Four book reviews for the price of […]
For my thirtieth birthday, Al bought me a genetic testing kit – you can send it away and find out what percentage of Neanderthal DNA you carry, for example, and you can also discover all the hideous genetic diseases you might unwittingly pass to your children. I know it’s not the most romantic gift, but […]
As a writer, I feel that it’s part of my job to constantly read. Which is good, because I would do this anyway. Even during my law school and attorney days, after long days of reading dry-as-a-bone legal documents and cases, I’d come home and read fiction for hours. In fact, looking back over my […]