Books

Beowulf: The Script Book contains the original script for the Beowulf movie and the script that eventually made it to the screen with commentary by Roger Avary. For a variety of reasons, I was not expecting to stay up all night reading Beowulf: The Script Book, but that’s what happened. I love it when writers […]

I’m a morning person, so even though we have a two hour delay, I was up at the usual time. I love having time to read and reflect in the morning, and I hate feeling rushed, so I’m enjoying every minute of this time. I finished Howards End yesterday morning, and I liked it more […]

Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistlestop Cafe was entertaining but definitely a product of the 80s. I must have seen the movie because as soon as I started reading, I remembered the basics of the plot. What I found most engaging was the structure and how the multiple points of view across different time periods […]

I know I said I was going to read slowly and deliberately, but Sweet Land Stories was an extremely fast read. I’m not quite sure how to describe this collection, but it wasn’t at all what I expected. Each of the stories was pretty disturbing and tackled various types of moral ambiguity. What tied them […]

This was a fantastic year for reading! I read 265 books, which is more than I’ve ever read in a year. I can’t get too excited because around forty of the books I read were picture books I checked out of the library for a banned books activity. My overall page count was less than […]

Disgrace was a lot. It had everything that usually makes me love a book: masterful writing, a messy main character (who I wanted to punch in the face), and many angles for critical analysis. I wish I had more time to sit with it and dig deeper into the characters and the social commentary, especially […]

I was a brat and read The Thanksgiving Visitor by Truman Capote last night. To be fair, I love Capote’s writing and vividly remember my first encounters with his works. I had to read Other Voices, Other Rooms my senior year in AP English, and I still remember how the writing made me feel even […]

I wasn’t expecting to get sucked into March, but I did and spent over two hours reading on Saturday night because I had to finish it. I’m not even sure what compelled me, especially since I’ve never read Little Women. It was probably a combination of the beauty of the writing and the character development. […]

A Man for All Seasons was good. I read it quickly and was nostalgic for my obsession with the Tudors. I had no time to indulge or even start my next book, however, because life and work became ridiculously overwhelming. Today was the first day of winter break, and I finally had time to slow […]

The end of November was extremely busy, so I didn’t have time to write a Nonfiction November recap. Because of stress and reading two books with over 500 pages, November wasn’t my best month for reading in terms of total books read (only ten). I was, however, able to read six works of nonfiction including […]

For some reason, the first thing that came to mind when I saw today’s photo challenge prompt was how much I value the autographed copies of my books, especially those with the dedication, “To Michelle.” Here are the stories behind the encounters with some of my favorite authors. I had the opportunity to meet Sir […]

The Underdogs: A Novel of the Mexican Revolution, was good. I didn’t love it, but I learned a lot and I’m glad I read it.  And now for bookshelf #5! Since it’s Nonfiction November, I’ll read Nobody Knows My Name by James Baldwin. Once again, I’ve read most of the books on this shelf. Apparently […]