Growing up isn’t easy. But this feat of transitioning into adulthood from childhood is made all the more complicated when you have your feet in multiple worlds, none of which really seem to go together. Darius Kellner, an Iranian-American 16-year-old from Portland who’s obsessed with tea-making, Star Trek and Lord Continue Reading
Books
Book review: After Alice by Gregory Maguire
In our information-hungry, story-craving modern age, there is an almost unquenchable thirst for sequels, prequels and accompanying tales. Conditioned by revivals and reimaginings, reboots and revisits, the modern pop culture consumer views story add-ons as an almost inalienable right, a belief bolstered by a postmodern sensibility and digital access to Continue Reading
Book review: The Sparkle Pages by Meg Bignell
Susannah Parks, protagonist of The Sparkle Pages by Meg Bignell, is in a funk. A major, major four kids-haven’t had sex in months-husband seems to barely notice her funk. The kind we all fall into at some point or another (or perhaps multiple times even) when the bright shiny youthful Continue Reading
The sustaining power of friendship: Iphigenia Murphy finds herself in ’90s Queens
SNAPSHOTIt’s 1992. Leaving home hasn’t solved Iphigenia Murphy’s problems–she suspects it’s really just a matter of time before they’ll catch up with her. Iffy is searching for her long-lost mother, and urban camping in a Queens park is safer than living at home. Iffy discovers her own resourcefulness living in Continue Reading
Book review: The Bookish Life of Nina Hill by Abbi Waxman
If you’re reading a romantic comedy, such as the utter delight that is The Bookish Life of Nina Hill by Abbi Waxman, you are meant to sit back happily, watch love unfold through quirky and lovingly flawed characters and wait expectantly for the inevitable happy ever after. It’s also quite Continue Reading
Book review: On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong is a rare and special thing. A book that is so exquisitely and gorgeously well-written, that possesses such a richly-poetic and tender soul that you gasp again and again as you read its transcendantly beautiful writing and yet, which feels deeply emotionally Continue Reading
Book review: Ancestral Night by Elizabeth Bear
One of the inestimable delights of plunging into a really well thought out space opera is how many incredibly fascinating observations they have to make about the human condition. That’s true of almost all science fiction to be fair, but there is something about the larger than life look (they Continue Reading
Book review: The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker
You have to hand it to humanity, well the writers among us anyway – they can think up an awful lot of inventive way for our species to collectively bite the dust. We’ve had zombies, catastrophic pandemics, worldwide super storms, climate change, alien invasions and a whole host more, and Continue Reading
Book review: To Be Taught, If Fortunate by Becky Chambers
One of humanity’s greatest defining characteristics is our aspirational curiosity. In other words, our desire to know things simply for the pure thrill of knowing things, a quality that while a laudable goal in and of itself, has allowed us to grow and develop like no other species. While things Continue Reading
Book review: The Other Mother by Matthew Green
Grief isn’t just an emotional state. It is a reshaping of everything you have ever known, a resculpting of a world view that once felt as permanent as a towering mountain of solid rock but now feels like here-one-day-gone-the-next sandbars that come and go with the tide. It’s something that Continue Reading