Books

There is a quiet joy in being surprised by a book. What you suppose it will be like when you pick it up in a bookstore and are intrigued enough by the back cover blurb to add it to your TBR pile – in my case, a towering mountain that Continue Reading

Falling in love is a glorious thing. All that newness! All that possibility! All the promise of a bright and shiny future hand-in-hand with someone more special than anyone else alive. It’s heavy exclamation use territory and 16-year-old Arthur, one of the lovestruck protagonists in What If It’s Us? by Continue Reading

There is something utterly beguiling about walking (literally or figuratively) into what feels like nothing and watching it grow and grow until it is most definitely something. This is true of novels as much as anything, and especially true of Roger’s Levy deceptively simply-titled The Rig, an economically-named book that Continue Reading

The very recent death of Valerie Harper, who played Rhoda Morgenstern on The Mary Tyler Moore Show and its spinoff show, simply titled RHODA with wit, sass and lovable intelligence, prompted me to read finally the history of The Mary Tyler Show and how this brilliantly-clever, very funny and heartfelt Continue Reading

One of the great gifts of of being alive is when something small and unexpected becomes something altogether toweringly transformational, changing life for the better in a thousand different fundamental ways. It makes even more of an impact when this great change emerges from something calamitous or dark, such as Continue Reading

SNAPSHOTCentral International School’s annual lock-in is legendary. Bonds are made. Contests are fought. Stories are forged that will be passed down from student to student for years to come. This year’s lock-in begins normally enough. Then a group of students led by Marisa Cuevas stage an ecoprotest and chain themselves Continue Reading

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

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

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