BETTER CHARACTERS

The reluctant hero. It's a tale as old as time and one of my favorites, although I prefer to frame it as a hero of circumstance. This theme is extremely common in comic books and fantasy literature, feel-good news stories, and war-time movies. But I find it such an interesting contemplation for life: are great people drawn into extraordinary circumstances or do extraordinary circumstances create great people? For my part, I am drawn to the latter and, it seems, so is Geraldin

Well, on the plus side, instead of not blogging for two years I just took a quaint little 7 month break this time. I'll save you (and me, mostly because I don't know how many "you's" are out there) the time of explaining that my life, like so many of our lives, is busy and complicated. But can we talk for a second about the power of reading? I find, and this is always true, when I get busy or stressed or anxious I stop reading. I make excuses about not having enough time, but

Hi. Again. You know how sometimes you start a blog because your freelance career, and your full-time painting job, and you volunteer leadership position with a storefront theatre company, and being a Company Member with two other theatre companies, and having a social life just don't seem like enough so you think "sure, why not, let's set lofty book reading and blogging goals"? Then you start a blog and let it fade to the background of your life. Then you restart it AND THEN

This book is a powerhouse. I think it knocked the wind out of me a half dozen times. A black woman named Dana lives in 1976 California until one day she is pulled from her world into the pre-Civil War Antebellum South and intervenes to save the life of a small white boy and son of a plantation owner, Rufus Weyland. In a period that is roughly two weeks in her contemporary time and more than a decade in the 19th century, Dana is repeatedly thrown between time and place to help

The first time I read Emma, I was 22 and I very much did not enjoy it. I thought Emma was insufferable* and the story was too melodramatic. Fast forward: reread at the age of 30 and I freaking love this book! Recently, you may have noticed an uptick in the number of Austen books on this blog. That's because I am a part of a Jane Austen book club. So, there’s that. But if I did not mention this before, I think it’s an important piece of advice: if you have not ever read Austen

There’s undeniably a cultural stigma of ageism which compounds on the hinderance of women’s stories being told with as much honesty and dignity as their male counterparts. In many (most?) parts of the western world, there’s a cultural break where once a woman is no longer considered a sexually viable option, their importance is somehow diminished. It’s absurd, if not only because these are people who have so many experiences and lessons to offer the younger generations. The P

On August 1, 2016 I tweeted: "I get pretty annoyed with female literary characters named Hope." I’m behind on updating this blog so despite it being September now, I am pretty sure that tweet was in reference to this book. And I stand by it: I think the same character with a less obvious metaphor for a name certainly would not diminish how great The Sudden Appearance of Hope is. Hope Arden is an extraordinary woman, and I mean this in the most literal sense. Because Hope is f

There are all sorts of ways to write historical fiction (and, really, I love them all). But perhaps the one that is most rare, difficult and often leaves itself open to sweeping criticisms is this: when the time period and events are well documented, the historical figure is well known, but there are gaping holes in their story which the author tries to fill with what they think most likely took place. It does not fit into the biography genre because there is not enough infor

There's an entire generation of women who are pretty consistently attacked by the feminist movement for having been "content" to "just" be wives and mothers. It's an attack that is both unfair and untrue, and Elizabeth J. Church's debut novel, The Atomic Weight of Love, gives us the inside look into this, The Greatest Generation...of women. We first meet a young Meridian Wallace as she is embarking on her undergraduate studies in ornithology at the University of Chicago in 19

Fair warning: you will hit a point where you will not want to put this book down. So if you’re like me, prepare for a “stay up late to find out what happens” finish. Last year I read Carey’s The Girl With All the Gifts which is simply fantastic. I highly recommend it - I hesitate to call it a “zombie story” because I (and I assume others) am getting bored with the genre, but it’s wonderfully atypical and full of suspenseful surprises. So when I saw he had another book availab