Category: Literature

Literature 0 comments on The Comeback – ELLA BERMAN

The Comeback – ELLA BERMAN

The Comeback by Ella Berman

The pandemic keeps me at home, but it’s the fires raging across the west coast that force me to stay indoors. I select books that keep me from feeling like every day is groundhog day. I read books to temporarily escape the disasters within the disasters within the disasters. It’s practically fall now. 2020 creeps past us in a figurative and literal haze.

So let’s time-travel to an (only) slightly simpler time. We don’t go too far. We back up by one year, when our collective consciousness, shamefully, had not yet grappled with racial injustice; when the news cycle was not yet littered with Covid-19 death counts; and when watching The Kardashians was seen as nothing more than mindless, yet relatively harmless reality tv salad. Let’s go back, just for the duration of Ella Berman’s novel “The Comeback”, to a time when #metoo was at the forefront of our twitter feeds.

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by Nadine
Literature 0 comments on Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers – MARY ROACH

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers – MARY ROACH

I don’t know about you, but this year my death anxiety crept up on me like a colony of ants that wriggles its way over an unassuming child’s arm sitting in a meadow.

Instead of dealing with it the way I usually do, which is by reading books on spirituality, I went straight for a comedic, factual, and rather unself-helpy take on what happens with our physical bodies once we die.

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by Nadine
Lifestyle, Literature, Writing Craft/Creativity 0 comments on The Haiku Mind: 108 Poems to Cultivate Awareness & Open Your Heart – PATRICIA DONEGAN

The Haiku Mind: 108 Poems to Cultivate Awareness & Open Your Heart – PATRICIA DONEGAN

Poetry is one of those genres that’s been hard for me to get into. I don’t know why. Perhaps it’s because I’ve tried to live the past few years with narrative clarity. Poetry, much like lyrics to certain songs, leave so much to interpretation that it requires a certain type of patience to look between the lines and find meaning. Continue Reading “The Haiku Mind: 108 Poems to Cultivate Awareness & Open Your Heart – PATRICIA DONEGAN”

by Nadine
Book Review, Literature, Memoir/Biography

The Autobiography of Malcom X As Told to Alex Haley

The Autobiography of Malcolm X is one of the important non-fiction books. And I didn’t know it was. No one told me! Not school, not the internet, not my friends. I only stumbled upon it by chance when one afternoon I strolled past NYU in Manhattan and browsed a long table of used books set up by a street merchant. The cover caught my eye, because the subject of racism had been heavily on my mind lately. Continue Reading “The Autobiography of Malcom X As Told to Alex Haley”

by Nadine
Book Review, Literature 0 comments on The Handmaid’s Tale – MARGARET ATWOOD

The Handmaid’s Tale – MARGARET ATWOOD

We are living in an era that has enabled an openly misogynist man to become president. Backed in part by alt-right religious fanatics, Trump’s administration actively works on dismantling protections for minority groups, including women. Reading Margaret Atwood’s 1986 novel “The Handmaid’s Tale” against this backdrop strikes a particularly sensitive chord with me. Her story is set in a world that represents my worst fears, a world where I’m no longer allowed to follow my passions such as reading, writing and filmmaking, and where I have been forced to relinquish autonomy over my own body. Continue Reading “The Handmaid’s Tale – MARGARET ATWOOD”

by Nadine
Book Review, Literature 0 comments on The Summer that Melted Everything – TIFFANY MCDANIEL

The Summer that Melted Everything – TIFFANY MCDANIEL

This is Tiffany McDaniel’s debut novel, and let me tell you… that is one hell of a novel! Set in the Midwestern town of Breathed in the mid-80’s, The Summer That Melted Everything is a story about the strange happenings surrounding the arrival of a young black boy. True to time and setting, we are thrust into a saga that tackles everything from racism, prejudice, small-town mob mentality, homophobia, and HIV/AIDS. It’s easy to want to turn my back on a narrative that normalizes these cringe worthy characters, but McDaniel manages to infuse so much compassion and empathy in these people that I find myself strangely drawn to the anti-heroes of her tale. Continue Reading “The Summer that Melted Everything – TIFFANY MCDANIEL”

by Nadine
Book Review, Literature 4 comments on The Girl on the Train – PAULA HAWKINS

The Girl on the Train – PAULA HAWKINS

It’s not enough to be a gripping and jumpy novel. Often, the most successful stories are the ones that remind us of our darkest selves or make us revisit moments in our lives that we thought we had safely left in the past. Good novels make us regurgitate our experiences. We project the nadirs of our existence onto works of art, from a distance at first. If the writing is good and doesn’t distract, we will feel the narrative with every fiber of our bodies.

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by Nadine
Book Review, Literature 1 comment on The Cuckoo’s Calling – ROBERT GALBRAITH

The Cuckoo’s Calling – ROBERT GALBRAITH

Robert Galbraith put together an enticing cast of characters, rich in complexity and distinct in their agendas. I would not expect otherwise, since Robert Galbraith is actually a pseudonym for none other than Harry Potter creator J.K. Rowling (the cat’s been out of the bag for years on that one though, they actually reveal that fact on the back of the cover).

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by Nadine