What it is: The Cleft by Doris Lessing is a novel about a Roman man who tells the story about the beginning of humanity, which consists of only women. They live communally and conceive babies through moonlight. Suddenly a baby boy is born, and eventually their society changes to establish, embrace, and struggle with gender roles. The…
I like to think that some day I’ll write a book. I have no idea what that book would be, but seeing my name in a bookstore would be absolutely amazing. In the meantime, I get to admire my blog friend Beth Teliho whose same dream of releasing a novel is coming true next month. If…
New year, new reading list. This year, after reading a post at Cynk’s blog, I’m taking on the Read Harder Challenge. I’ve committed to completing 24 book-related challenges. Gamification of personal goals is a huge motivator for me, and even though I didn’t meet my Goodreads goal of 30 books in 2014, I’m setting that same goal…
Goodreads recently published an infographic entitled “Sex and Reading: A Look at Who’s Reading Whom” with stats collected by 20,000 male users and 20,000 female users of the site. The takeaway is this: men and women each primarily lean towards reading their own gender. Yet those first two circles are troubling–only 20% of a female’s…
Reading has always been a primarily solitary activity. Sure, adults read aloud to young children, but in most cases that stops when a child gains the ability to read independently. Just because we read the actual words alone, though, doesn’t mean that books aren’t meant to be shared. Discussions about literature in class, at book club,…
We Are In A Book! by Mo Willems is officially my new favorite children’s book. I stumbled across it while killing time at a bookstore and fell in love. The book has two characters: Gerald (an elephant) and Piggie (a pig–I was going to let you assume Piggie was indeed a pig but you never…
The 1948 picture book Blueberries for Sal never fails to take me back to my childhood. My parents used to read it to me at bedtime until I was old enough to read it to them instead. I loved hearing about Sal and her mother going blueberry picking to stock up for the winter. Sal starts…
The first thing I did when I arrived in New York City for fall break was sleep. The second thing I did was go to Barnes & Noble and buy Gone Girl. I haven’t read a book–a “real book” (namely, not a textbook)–since August, and I’d been meaning to read Gone Girl for months before the movie…
Victim to Charm 