New York Stories – 4/5 Stars I read Elizabeth Hardwick’s collected essays earlier this year. I also read her novel Sleepless Nights last year. This is a collection of stories that encompasses about 45-50 years worth of short stories edited and selected by Darryl Pinckney, another novelist and critic who also famously worked with and was friends with Hardwick. I read these stories in a variety of orders, and since they are not part of an intentional collection this blending and mixing up of the […]
The One I’ve Been Waiting For
For most of CBR10, I’ve been in a real reading rut. While I’ve read plenty of books I liked, there have been only a few that met my criteria for The Kind of Book I Love to Read: The story is engrossing: I have to feel like I can’t put it down. It’s not just engrossing, but also evokes specific emotions: I love a book that makes me feel happy or excited, or that awakens my curiosity or makes me want to learn something new. […]
I want a daemon!
I loved His Dark Materials trilogy so I was very excited when I realized that Philip Pullman had a new novel out. I was a little bit less sure if I necessarily wanted a new novel in the same universe but was definitely willing to give it a shot. As much as I love Harry Potter, I would at this point prefer to get another murder mystery from J.K. Rowling than another tie in to Hogwarts and that universe. As a result, I wasn’t sure […]
The Golden Compass and joys of explaining “original sin”
This is probably my fourth reading of The Golden Compass and this time I read it aloud to my nine year old daughter over the course of several months at bedtime. She’s already read The Chronicles of Narnia, started the Prydain Chronicles, and is three volumes into Harry Potter so now seemed like a good time to introduce her to the His Dark Materials trilogy. I love introducing books to my daughter and watching her devour them the way I have. Reading this book aloud make […]