7 September 2026 A Potent Snapshot: Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck Usually writing my way in to these reviews is pretty straightforward. Sit down. Start writing. Get there. Done. In fact, my book reviews don’t usually take longer than an hour to write; their intention is purely personal: make something of the book so your brain doesn’t turn to mush you remember—and can make something of—what you’ve read. But for some reason, writing into this one feels like pulling teeth. I ordered this...

(shamelessly showing off my LEGO flower collection) On the Necessity of Suspending Disbelief: The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway Everyone and their brother and their brother’s dog's BFF seems to have read Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea in, like, middle school—everyone but me (and, it turns out, my husband). As I am currently writing a story about a fisherman, a piece I suspect will be novella-length, I realized early my tale’s parallels to both The Old Man and the Sea and Moby...

27 August 2026 I believe in synchronicity. Everything seems connected by threads (string theory), and coincidences are often poignant or meaningful. When I finished Stephen King’s 11/22/63, I picked up Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Bluebeard, and, at 40 pages in, I realized my misapprehension (I was conflating Bluebeard with Blackbeard), as the story did not seem to be about any sort of pirate. Indeed, it turns out the original Bluebeard, as written by the French author Charles Perrault, is a tale...