My mom thinks I'm cool
Have I told you about my friend Rosie? She’s very smart, and very funny, and my partner in crime when it comes to creating book challenges. She recently started a bookstagram account, too, and it’s simply gorgeous. If you aren’t following her already, you should be.
What is the fear? It is something to do with death and time and age. Simply: I am eighteen in my mind I am eighteen and if I do nothing if I stand still nothing will change. I will be eighteen always. For always. Time will stop. I’ll never die. Very banal, this fear. Everyone has it these days.
Yes, I’m still working on my 2016 book challenge.
Since The Painted Girls fulfilled the “something your mom recommends” category, I present to you my genius mother’s review:
“This book called my name from several places—bookstores, airports, discount chains—so I finally gave in and purchased it. Having a niece in the ballet industry, combined with my love of historical fiction, drew me in, wooed me. And once I began to read I couldn’t put it down. The dark underbelly of Paris, teeming with ne’er-do-wells, is revealed: the façade of the well-to-do patrons, the incredible struggle of the poor, the heartbreaking sacrifices of the dancers, all woven together to create an intriguing tale of love and loss.”
No. 18 on my challenge. Thanks for the recommendation, Momma. I whole-heartedly agree.
I found these and I stole these. The rest of them can be found on Contently.
I want to share an article with you. It was written by Koa Beck and published in The Atlantic on December 31, 2015. I was directed to it for work reasons earlier this spring and have read it several times since. I think I learn something new every time. So now it’s your turn. Let me know what you think.
Female Characters Don’t Have to be Likeable
Several novels this year starred female protagonists as flawed and interesting as literature’s most memorable male characters.
Shortly after Jill Alexander Essbaum’s novel Hausfrau was published in the spring, the New York Times book critic Janet Maslin dismissed the novel on the basis of the main female character being an “insufferable American narcissist.” The story, a modern Anna Karenina–Madame Bovary hybrid set in a suburb of Zürich, features a compulsively unfaithful housewife named Anna. While Maslin wasn’t a fan of Essbaum’s writing (which she compared to “a sink full of dishwater”), her criticism lingered on Anna’s unsavory traits. “This may be hard to believe, but Anna becomes even more myopic and selfish in the book’s later stages,” Maslin wrote. “[Anna’s husband] becomes more interesting, she grows less so, and still she snivels at center stage, whining about her bad luck and mistreatment.”
WordPress says I’ve been a blogger for two years today. Not a very good one, but there you go. To celebrate, here’s a photo of my Brindle & Glass books in their red chair prison. Also, my nephews, my birthday plant, and my after Christmas Christmas lights. I like it.
I got a new mug for my birthday and I love it so much that it inspired me to whip up a new Instagram account for TouchWood Editions and Brindle & Glass. Find us @twe.bg.
I love books and I love lists, so what better way to celebrate the end of the year than with a bunch of Best Books of 2015 lists (a two column bulleted list that I coded myself, I might add):
And from Brooklyn Magazine, a list much like my own: The Best of the Bests: Ranking the 2015 Best Books Lists.
Finally, to commemorate the near end of my book challenge (I’m working on the last three books as you read), here’s an exhaustive gallery of the books I read in 2015 (including those not read for the challenge), in no particular order (my apologies, the covers aren’t linked to their reviews—I couldn’t figure out how to code around that particular impossibility in gallery view):
I am nearly finished my reading challenge for the year, but I still need to decide what to read for my last category—a book that is more than ten years old. These are the options from my book shelf. Any suggestions / thoughts?
It’s finally here! It’s finally here! I already know that Furiously Happy is going to be one of my favourite books, and not just because it’s gold and sparkly. And after how much I loved Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, I’m pretty ding dang darn excited for Hollow City, too! #ILoveBeingABookNerd
