Chocolat

The movie Chocolat is probably one of my favorite movies. The story always makes me sad and happy cry, the characters feel real and beautiful and the movie's general aesthetic is right up my alley. Also the chocolate, good lord the chocolate. The movie gives me all of the feelings including hunger. So, when I …

The Three-body Problem

Have I mentioned how much I love being in a bookclub? At first I thought it was just because there's nothing I love more than having a conversation about a book, but now I'm realizing that I also like when someone else tells me what to read. I would never have thought to pick up …

Difficult Women

An interesting side effect of social media (looking at you Twitter) is that the online communities we become a part of contain people who have an internet life and an entirely separate not the internet life (some people call this "real life"...this blogger remains skeptical that it's any more real than this). I love following …

White Teeth

I've been stalling and completely incapable of stringing two sentences together about White Teeth by Zadie Smith. It's a book worth writing about and discussing. I've just been a little tired and distracted. Then I found out that Zadie Smith was 24 when this book was published. Well, that kicked my almost 27 year old …

Lincoln in the Bardo

I'd like to, in an official way, thank all Independent Bookstores for all that they do. Not only because it was recently Independent Bookstore Day but also because one of the Independent Bookstores me has a bookclub that I joined and met some wonderful people and read a slightly weird book. Lincoln in the Bardo …

Artemis

More and more I'm encountering popular books and movies which are by most accounts entertaining enough but if too much thought, or any, really, is given to them they simply don't hold up. They're toxic bubblegum.  Ready Player One by Ernest Cline is a timely example and now I'm adding Artemis by Andy Weir to the list. …

Eric

There is nothing quite like a Terry Pratchett book to cleanse my reading palette. The man writes in exactly my kind of witty. This is the second Discworld book I've delved into the first, Small Gods, took the solemn topic of religion and turned down every witty and clever road to make light of it …

The Badass Librarians of Timbuktu

Holy hiatus, Batman! A new city and a new gig have kept me distracted and away from my books for longer than I like. I've finally adjusted to a new schedule and when I haven't been exploring I've been working my way through The Bad-ass Librarians of Timbuktu by Joshua Hammer. I was happy to …

A Gentleman In Moscow

A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles is the type of book that I would look at and assume it's going to be a very literary novel in the most depressing slightly difficult to read sense. The very premise, a Count from Russia is deemed an "unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal" and is sentenced to house …

Ready Player One

Did I purposely read Ready Player One by Earnest Cline right when the trailer for its movie dropped? Would that I could plan my life and posts out to that extent. If it makes me sound more impressive and savvy let's go with I planned this totally on purpose and not at all because my …