Have you ever read a book that made you flinch as you were reading it? That was the case for me with Dark Places. Even though what I was reading made my stomach turn at times, I kept turning the pages—almost reading with just one eye opened and the other scrunched to the [...]

Manga have exploded in popularity in the U.S. in the last twenty years; growing from a hard to find cult item to spilling across the shelves of major bookstore chains. A shorthand description might call Manga the Japanese equivalent to comic books in America, but that would be a disservice to the breadth and variety [...]

Spaghetti Western is one of the most delicious terms ever coined to describe a film genre. It was invented in the pages of Variety, the entertainment industry bible, as a mocking way to describe a wave of new westerns washing up in America in the mid-1960s from that most unlikely of sources Italy! Today fans [...]

Now that I am juggling a career and motherhood I find myself dreading the question - what’s for dinner?  I have no time and no energy to cook elaborate meals and found a cookbook that has helped me immensely in the kitchen. It contains over a hundred recipes, including slow cooker meals which i love [...]

This is one of those cases where although I didn’t love the main character, the plot and intriguing writing style kept it interesting and entertaining. The Goose Girl is very loosely based on the Grimm fairytale of the same name, which I happened to have read a few years ago and completely forgot about in the [...]

This was a book that intrigued me— a whole novel told from the point of view of a dog!   “What an interesting idea,” I thought.  Well, not only was this an interesting idea, it also did not disappoint me as I read it.  The main human character, Denny Swift, is a race car driver.  Denny [...]

This is the final book in the His Dark Materials trilogy, the first of which, The Golden Compass, I reviewed back in November. I apologize for not writing about The Subtle Knife, but I just didn’t find it to be anywhere near as well written or captivating as the first and third books. The Amber [...]

This entertaining picture book’s original plot involves a classical singer, her talented Siamese cat, and, of course, hijinks. I loved the detailed watercolor illustrations, and while some aspects of the storyline are a bit unrealistic, I suppose that shouldn’t be too surprising in a children’s book. Cat lovers and/or opera enthusiasts in particular shouldn’t miss this one.

I decided to read The Shipping News, winner of both the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize, after stumbling upon it in my favorite travel literature destination in Manhattan, Idlewild Books. It’s hard to believe, but the only other Pulitzer winner for fiction that I’ve read outside of a classroom is The Yearling, by Marjorie [...]

The story is set in the early 1900s. Trains were an important part of transportation around the country. Isaac Bell, the main character, is a detective who is driven by his sense of justice. He and the others at the Van Dorn dective agency made a good team. They are tasked with finding the person [...]