A love of words, academia, and mystery are all that’s needed to fall in love with Susie Dent’s novel, Guilty by Definition. Editors of the Clarendon English Dictionary start receiving cryptic letters hinting at a mystery and the recovery of a possible item of great significance. The letters indicate the timeline coincides with the disappearance of one of the dictionary’s ... Read More...
Feel Good Reading: Mini-Reviews
Photo by Sixteen Miles Out on Unsplash My subject line today is a weak attempt on my part to make light of why I haven’t written a review in so long. I mentioned having COVID in my July recap, but that was two weeks ago. I’ve had little to do but read so reviews should have been flowing like water. Instead, the only thing flowing is my nose when I’m not sleeping or ... Read More...
Must Love Books
Given how much I love anything having to do with books, today’s review won’t come as much of a surprise: Must Love Books a debut by Shauna Robinson. That title! How could I not read it, especially because it’s about Nora, a young Black woman working in the publishing industry. After five years as an editorial assistant at Parsons Press, a business publisher things are looking ... Read More...
The Woman They Could Not Silence
The general consensus among people who know me is I don’t need more reading that could make me angry. This might be true, but as history is written by the victors and the victors for centuries have been men we all need to read nonfiction that challenges the prevailing history. This was the case when I read The Woman They Could Not Silence by Kate Moore. I thought my head was ... Read More...
Ending October: Mini-Reviews
October was a massive month in book publishing and I was fortunate enough to read some amazing new releases (The Goldfinch, We Are Water, The Signature of All Things). With my focus on works of such depth and intensity some of the novels that did not move me to the same degree got ignored. Here then are three books I read with varying degrees of enjoyment. New ... 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...
