our reading lives

4 min read 2021-12-08 18:36:00

I Broke My Book Buying Ban and I am Not One Bit Sorry

As readers, we sometimes ask quite a lot of ourselves. We might make TBR lists and plan our reads ahead, prepare schemes on how to buy books and

6 min read 2021-12-08 18:33:00

Six book packages have arrived today, the dining room table has towering book piles on it preventing anyone from actually eating there, and the

3 min read 2021-12-07 18:39:00

I have a troubled relationship with the classics, and from what I see around me, it’s a category of books that readers tend to either love or

5 min read 2021-12-07 18:38:00

Last fall I drove to Rochester to visit my parents, listening to the audiobook of Rumaan Alam’s novel Leave the World Behind in the car. I started

1 min read 2021-11-26 18:42:00

Dear Mom, A score-odd years ago, you forbade me from reading Baby-Sitters Club books. Well…mostly. What you technically said was, I wasn’t

1 min read 2021-11-26 18:36:00

If you have ever felt particularly attacked after reading a negative review concerning a book you love, welcome to the club. While it is pretty

1 min read 2021-11-24 18:36:00

I recently started a reread of Tamora Pierce’s Song of the Lioness books for the second time in less than six months without realizing it. This is

1 min read 2021-11-24 18:32:00

Overcome with emotion, I cried for the first leg of the nine-and-a-half hour train raid from Montpelier, Vermont, to my home hub, Philadelphia’s

1 min read 2021-11-23 18:36:00

Going to bookstores as a bibliophile is like going to a house of worship. I get dressed nicely, I make sure I’m on my best behavior, and I go in

1 min read 2021-11-23 18:34:00

My personal journey with religion has been complex, to say the least. And how could it not be, when my parents baptized me into a faith that neither

1 min read 2021-10-05 17:35:00

Growing up, I had a feeling the horror genre might not be my cup of tea when I noticed I was the only one of my three siblings closing my eyes for

1 min read 2021-09-24 17:33:00

Nothing truly prepared me for parenthood until I was thrown right into it with the birth of my son. I could read parenting books and blogs, ask for

1 min read 2021-07-22 17:36:00

I have obsessive-compulsive disorder that often focuses on health-related intrusive thoughts. So, as you can imagine, living through a global

3 min read 2021-04-13 17:38:00

I grew up reading Brian Jacques’s Redwall series, though I fell off the wagon somewhere around The Long Patrol. I still have memories of going

4 min read 2021-04-08 17:36:00

It was while I wandered the system of alleys in Los Angeles’s Old Pasadena with my mom and my older sister that I stumbled upon the bookstore. It