Travels With Charley is a travel memoir written by the famous Nobel Prize winning author John Steinbeck. Steinbeck piles some books, shotguns, tinned food, and his poodle Charley into a truck/camper van and sets off around the U.S. The book was first published in 1962 which was an interesting time for the U.S. and the … Continue reading
Category Archives: American
A Review of Raymond Carver’s “Fat”
The beauty of the short story is that it is short. If you want some fantasy, fiction, drama, suspense, or action but don’t have the time, then the short story is actually perfect. You can often read them in one sitting. Collections of short stories are very rare in popular fiction. If an author writes … Continue reading
A review of Kate Bolick’s “Spinster”
I’m married. Yet after reading Kate Bolick’s book I proudly call myself ‘Spinster’ in all its glory. Glory might seem like a strong word for a term that is often associated with old wrinkly women and hundreds of cats, but being a spinster is so much more. A very dear friend of mine sent me … Continue reading
A defence of Nancy: rethinking poverty and “The Craft”
It is easy to think of Nancy as a bitch who deserves everything she gets in the end. But that is the same type of thinking that blames people for being poor as though those people actually want to have no money. Continue reading
“Tricky Twenty-Two”: the latest Plum installment from Janet Evanovich
The latest Stephanie Plum book, “Tricky Twenty-Two” was released in November this year. I’ve been following the series since book number one, “One For The Money” and every November, which is usually the release month for the Plum series, is like a Crime Fiction Christmas. And so here we are again with another review of … Continue reading
Sylvia Plath’s “The Bell Jar” still speaks to the modern struggles of academia and the pressures to succeed
I recently re-read The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. The book has been a favourite of mine, but this time around I really felt the book spoke to me in a way. Academia and I have a complicated relationship. I love to study and learn, and I also love to share that knowledge with fellow … Continue reading
Fluid Identity: what it means to be Bharati Mukherjee’s “Jasmine”
“We murder who we were so we can rebirth ourselves in the image of our dreams.” (29) This is, for me, the most powerful sentence in Bharati Mukherjee’s Jasmine. In this one sentence it summarises the story of the novel by embodying the nature of transcontinental lives and living. The main protagonist in Mukherjee’s novel … Continue reading
Fire and Clay: a Review of Helen Wecker’s “The Golem and the Djinni”
The Golem and the Djinni is, like many fantasy stories, long. With close to 700 pages it’s a commitment sort of book. Nothing you would hastily rush into, something that requires diligence and effort. Something that requires patience. For a long time, it was a book that I could not read because I lacked the time … Continue reading
A Review of the Third Book in the All Souls Trilogy: “The Book of Life”
I felt relief when I saw that this book was coming out this Summer. I have started many a trilogy/series where I have waited, painstakingly, as the years go by and still no new release (George R.R. Martin and Patrick Rothfuss, I’m looking at you both!). Deborah Harkness, thankfully, did not put me through such … Continue reading
Top Secret Twenty-One: a review of Janet Evanovich’s newest Plum adventure
Janet Evanovich has released two new covers for her latest Stephanie Plum book. I am extremely picky about books in series matching so I went for the lime green cover instead of the purple. I didn’t realise that I had bought the large print edition online until it arrived in the mail. The fact that … Continue reading
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