ByGD
This spring it felt like every bookish social media account I follow was raving about The Kiss Quotient, the debut novel by Helen Hoang. The premise was charming – a gender-flipped Pretty Woman starring a mixed-race man and an autistic woman. The backstory (you know how I can’t resist a good backstory) involved the author locating herself on the spectrum through research for the novel. It was only a matter of time until I read it. Read More
ByGD
When I was in the second grade, my teacher read Old Yeller to the class. When she got to the end, she started crying and had to go get Mrs. Wilson to finish for her. From then on I felt smugly superior to my teacher. Don’t get me wrong. Ain’t nothing sadder than a dead dog, but get a hold of yourself woman. That was my attitude then. Read More
ByGD
There are two things I have to do whenever I’m near Leavenworth, Washington. I must eat at South, arguably the best Mexican restaurant in the state, and I must visit A Book for All Seasons. So even if the temperature hadn’t topped 100 F at our campsite overlooking the Wenatchee River this summer, sending us into town in search of air conditioning, I probably would have found myself browsing the warren of rooms in Leavenworth’s brilliantly curated independent bookstore. Read More
ByGD
The Architect’s Apprentice has the most beautiful cover. It’s a book cover that promises a rich and intricate story, full of mystery and love and loss in exotic and far away lands. We live in an age of lies, but author Elif Shafak delivers on the cover’s promise. Read More
ByGD
It might seem like I blog a review of every book I read, but I don’t. For example, as a research exercise for my NaNo-reboot project, I read 10 romance novels in January, and I didn’t review a single one here. I did rate them on Goodreads and basically kept saying,
It’s pretty good … for a romance.