Earlier this week I reviewed Jessica Soffer's debut novel, Tomorrow There will be Apricots. The power and grace of this novel have now pushed me to a point of superstition because she is the fifth debut novelist this year (!) who has grabbed and shaken me and each has done it in a different way. It's making me fearful that I'll be reading nothing but drek for the rest of 2013 ... Read More...
Shakespeare Saved My Life
Dr. Laura Bates is an English professor, specializing in Shakespeare, at Indiana State University. For the past fifteen years she has taught at college and in prison, where she brings Shakespeare into the lives of some of the prison systems most hardened criminals. Shakespeare Saved My Life is her book about this journey and about one inmate in particular that she worked ... Read More...
Woke Up Lonely by Fiona Maazel
Many people have experienced loneliness in their life but for Thurlow Dan it was a call to organize a movement. The Helix is his solution to the isolated insulated lives we live—a reach-out-and-connect-with-someone group with no ideology beyond sharing and human interaction. Unfortunately, it is this lack of forethought that has landed Thurlow in some big trouble in Fiona’s ... Read More...
Tomorrow There will be Apricots
Tomorrow there will be Apricots is a portrait in sadness, the kind inflicted by others and the kind brought on by self. Lorca is a 14-year-old girl who is trying to gain the attention of her distant mother, who is a chef, and so turns to Victoria, an Iraqi woman who once owned a popular restaurant in the neighborhood and is now offering cooking classes. Her husband has recently ... Read More...
Powell’s Event: Peter Rock
Last week I reviewed the The Shelter Cycle, the newest book from Portland author, Peter Rock, and got to attend a reading of the book at Powell’s. It was the second author event I attended where the writer is also a teacher and it makes for a unique evening. To begin with, there are often a lot of students in the crowd—especially for Rock who teaches at a local private ... Read More...
The Interestings
At a summer camp called Spirit-in-the-Woods, a group of six teens is brought together. For five it is a return to a paradise they’ve known in past summers but for Julie Jacobson, a scholarship student, it is a trip to a new world, far from her dreary prosaic life in a small town. Spirit-in-the-Woods is an arts camp and each of the students is considered to have artistic ... Read More...
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