The first time I became aware of John Green, I was choking back loud, messy sobs in my room at two in the morning. I was eighteen, it was 2012, and I’d just stayed up engrossed in his breakout hit The Fault in Our Stars. I don’t remember how a copy ended up in my…
When I first created the Book of the Month Club, I only had two rules: No books I’d read before and no classics. Since I started the blog to expand my reading horizons, the first rule was easy enough to follow. The second rule, though, became more difficult to adhere to as time went on.…
For me, October is a month of contradictions. On the one hand, I bask in the cooler weather and return of the rain, enjoying how each day my afternoon walks offer a changing tableau of color. On the other, even as I collect fallen leaves in my coat pockets and drink hot chocolate at the…
Literary categories are famously hard to define. I’ve gone on before about who decides what’s considered “literary fiction” vs. “genre fiction”, and whether the distinction is important. Plenty of books we’ve read in our Book of the Month Club straddle the lines between sci-fi, fantasy, and “speculative fiction”, with none falling easily into one bracket…
In this month’s book, All About Love: New Visions, author bell hooks writes, “Creating a false self to mask fears and insecurities has become so common that many of us forget who we are and what we feel underneath the pretense. Breaking through this denial is always the first step in uncovering our longing to…
Over thousands of years of human evolution and technological innovation, there are a few pieces of humanity that persevere through the ages: the love of a good meal, the appreciation of beauty, and the need to tell stories. Stories in particular are interesting in the way they’ve evolved alongside us. From ancient oral traditions to…
54 years ago, a gay bar in Lower Manhattan was raided by the police. Tempers flared. Handcuffs were pulled out. People were beaten. It wasn’t the first time this had happened, and it certainly wouldn’t be the last, but what happened when the police wagons were late was unique. Bystanders intervened and fought back. Police…
There’s a prevailing idea in the literary scene that comics and graphic novels have no place amongst capital “L” Literature. It’s not surprising– after all, these are the same people who turn up their noses at genre fiction and romance, even though many of the books they venerate fall into the aforementioned categories or founded…
A confession: There is nothing I dislike more than not understanding something. Last April for National Poetry Month, I took on Terrance Hayes’ Lighthead. I hadn’t had any exposure to poetry since I’d left college and found myself floundering within the first few pages of the collection. Sticky notes were everywhere. Too many tabs were…
There was a funny moment last year when, in the introduction for March’s Book of the Month Conversations With Friends, I rallied against judging a book by its cover. Determined to get over my own prejudices, I’d chosen Sally Rooney’s debut novel while staunchly ignoring all the signs on the book cover and blurb that…
Tea Reads 