All us booky types talk and blog about traveling by book all the time. We’d like to read around the world, see faraway islands, climb Mount Everest, dive to the bottom of the sea and fight giant squids. But I’ve never once said, “Gee, I wonder what it would be like to live on the [...]
I wasn’t quite sure what the title meant at first - “I’d Like”. But now I see it’s a perfect fit for these thirteen short stories with hints of longing written by Amanda Michalopoulou. Common threads loop through the stories sometimes by way of a simple object - a red beret, a porcelain [...]
If you were a teenager in the ’80s like I was, This Will Go Down on Your Permanent Record will send you whirling back to all the complexities of trying to sort out who you were becoming. If you’re not a product of the ’80s, well, not to worry. It doesn’t matter the decade, we’ve [...]
Teacher, calligrapher, restaurant owner. These were all common jobs during Japan’s Edo period. If you were a man. But what if you were a woman who had to support herself? What if you were one of the best and willing to stay the best, despite the prejudices against you?
The Budding Tree - Six Stories of [...]
When I was young, there was a series of biographies I loved reading. Our teacher gave me extra credit for each one I read, and I thought I was really pulling one over on her because I was reading them purely for the entertainment value. I guess in the end, my teacher knew [...]
Sometimes a book draws you in like a lucid dream. You smell, hear, touch; you see everything before your eyes but printed words on a page. This was the journey I took in Locke 1928, guided by the masterful storytelling of Shawna Yang Ryan. The pages are filled with Chinese folklore, moving flashbacks, and [...]
Once in a Promised Land by Laila Halaby is the tragic story of a Jordanian couple in the U.S., struggling with secrets that drive wedges between them. Set in the shadow of 9/11, this novel tells of two people caught in their knot of lies while getting tied up ever tighter in the [...]
When I first started reading The Writing Circle by Rozena Maart (TSAR Publications), I immediately began wondering about the character Isabel. Why did she need someone to follow her home from work? Why did her house have large security gates around it, and why was someone supposed to watch for her at the [...]
Ever wonder what it was like to live on a commune back in the days of “Make Love, Not War”? Sandra Eugster takes you on a journey to such a place in her honest and revealing memoir Notes from Nethers. Sandra grew up on a West Virginia commune founded by her mother in [...]
Yalo, written by Elias Khoury and published by Archipelago Books, takes place in war-torn Beirut of the 1980’s where the main character (Yalo) is accused of rape and is imprisoned and tortured. Forced to write his confession, he starts to sort through his twisted memories of childhood, life as a soldier, and the crimes [...]
