David Sedaris’ Christmas stories have me torn. My favorite of the six short stories is his retelling of his holiday job as Santa’s Elf. He turns a humiliating job into well, not so humiliating. Sedaris recounts the beauty of people watching. The various Santas and their different approaches with the anticipated children and the parents […]
WARNING: DO NOT READ IN THE WOODS WHEN YOU ARE ACTUALLY IN THE WOODS! I made the foolish mistake of reading Tana French’s In The Woods while at my family’s home in upper Wisconsin, in a wooded isolated area. I don’t want to come off as some kind of chicken because the novel wasn’t actually […]
I really enjoyed Dark Places, it is one of the few books that shows the heroine in a bad light and at times I was so annoyed by her lack of direction that I wanted to throw the book against that wall. But that doesn’t mean I stopped reading it, quite the contrary, I ate […]
Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk by David Sedaris is a child’s storybook for adults, or a fucked up version of Aesop’s Fables. The book is filled with short stories accompanied with illustrations of everyday occurrences or controversial themes, all portrayed by animals. Strangely enough, they all seem to have a moral. In The Squirrel and the Chipmunk […]
David Sedaris’s short stories have me laughing out loud with people turning the heads to look. I can just hear them saying/thinking “What’s wrong with that girl?” Nothing is off-limits for this author, his parent’s dog replacing their children, being taught to play guitar by a midget so his father can put a jazz bad […]
“Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and having nothing to do…” Alice Liddell’s story does not begin on this “golden afternoon” but this particular day defines her as “Alice”. Melanie Benjamin has brought The real Alice’s life to light beautifully. Mr. Liddell is the Dean of […]
Pride and Prejudice I feel is the ultimate love story. Our heroine, Elizabeth Bennet is pretty, witty and wise with a great sense of time and humor. Mr. Darcy is rude, proud and very disagreeable, even if he is worth ten thousand a year. Both cannot stand each other. So what makes this the ultimate […]
Sense and Sensibility is a novel of the Dashwoods. Mrs. Dashwood, a silly women focused on acquiring a comfortable fortune and abode along with marrying off her daughters well. Elinor, a very sensible girl who always does the logical or right thing. Marianne who unlike her sister follows her heart and lives in the moment. […]