6 Sickening Moments in Classic Literature

If you've ever taken a course in creative writing, you'll know that being on this list is a compliment! A writer's main goal is to manipulate his reader's emotions. The writers on this list manipulated my emotions so effectively that they bypassed all secondary and tertiary emotions and tapped into one of my primary emotions, …

Harry Potter and the Power of the Heptalogy

JK Rowling's Harry Potter books claim 7 of the slots in the top 10 bestselling books of all times. That's a stupefying statistic if I've ever heard one! Rowling's writing is enchanting in its own right. If she had stopped at Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, the book still would have fared well with children. If she had wrapped Harry's …

Pictures of Hollis Woods: can places have souls?

I've devoured several new and brilliant books in the last few weeks, but today I'm in the mood for a throwback. The first time I read Patricia Reilly Giff's Pictures of Hollis Woods, I was ten, maybe eleven? I read it again when I was fifteen or sixteen, then again when I was around nineteen. Something I've noticed …

My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry: A Bit of a Browbeater

I usually pull positive excerpts from books. This week, I decided to nitpick a bit. I wanted to like the book My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry, but there were two elements to the narrative that made it difficult for me to engage with the story. First up: the Imagination Bruiser I love unusual verbs, visual …

The 10 Books I Brought to Brazil

I'm here, at last, on my new island home where orchids grow on trees, my husband makes juice from pineapple, ginger, and mint, and the toilet paper is always a little bit soggy from the ocean breeze. Back home, my friends and family poked fun at me for my non-traditional luggage. I was allowed to check two …

Hint: They’re Not from the News

Articles of the week... Surpise! Instead of publishing my standard "Articles of the Week" template, I decided to shout out a few of the blogs I have been binge-reading since I joined the wordpress community. If you don't see your blog here, it's not for lack of love! These are the first blogs that came …

The Age of Innocence: How a Pulitzer Prize Winner Breaks Rules

Wow! I hardly know where to begin praising Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence. Normally, there is one aspect of a book that stands out to me as its superlative. In this case, mastery is suffused across every page. Prose is beautiful. Pacing is efficient. Characters are deep and fresh. Because I would never be able to …

On the Oddity of Pop Culture

Articles of the week... I took a mini staycation this weekend to play around with some art techniques I've been itching to try. The staycation was great. I highly recommend them to people who need to take their mind off of its beaten path! And here are some articles which have also been helping me distract myself …

A Prayer for Owen Meanie: Purrfect Characterization

Today I'm sharing a passage from a book that I admire but don't particularly like (do any of you all have those books?) John Irving is definitely among the highest echelons of lifelike-character craftsmen. While I don't particularly like any of his characters, I feel as confident in their existence, while I am reading his …

Stargirl: And the Evidence of Souls

Lately, I've been feeling like I've swallowed an ocean of impatience. The silver lining is that my impatience level has to do with a lot of exciting happenings on the horizon. But for now, I am just plodding along, sloshy with impatience. I've decided to share an excerpt from one of my favorite, soul-moving books: Stargirl, by …