Dancing With the Stars has often been a guilty pleasure of mine. I haven’t seen it in a while, but there have been seasons where I painstakingly found all the dances on Youtube (I don’t have cable) to follow what was happening. So when I heard there was a romance novel that was based on the show, I was ready to give it a try. I must have seen a Cannonball review of Take the Lead (2017) by Alexis Daria, although I can’t remember for sure now. Initially I […]
Misogyny around the world
I can’t remember where I first saw Daring to Drive (2017) by Manal al-Sharif, but I knew women had just been allowed the basic right to drive in Saudi Arabia. I was both horrified and fascinated that women wouldn’t be allowed to drive in this day and age, and I wanted to know more. Al-Sharif was jailed for eleven days in 2011 for daring to drive her brother’s car in opposition to the ban on women driving in Saudi Arabia. However, this story is much more than […]
We are trapped in our lives like birds on a chain
The Goldfinch (2013) by Donna Tartt is one I’d heard a lot of but wasn’t sure I wanted to read. It won the Pulitzer and was on a bunch of lists, but it was long and felt like a big commitment. I also didn’t have a very good idea of what it was about. But when it showed up on two of my book lists and my book club decided to read it, I figured it was inevitable. I found The Goldfinch to be well-written with realistic, interesting characters and […]
Undercover lovin’
I’ve read a number of books by Julie James, so when I saw The Thing About Love on NPR’s Best Books of 2017 list, I picked it up immediately. It turns out that I really liked this one. There may not be as much excitement as I had been expecting, especially considering that it involves two FBI agents and their related cases. However, the characters have good chemistry, and this book felt more realistic than others I’ve read by James. John Shepherd and Jessica Harlow were in the same […]