BETTER CHARACTERS

From the voice of Lorelei Gilmore (literally, if you’re listening on audiobook) is this fun and fulfilling book about a young(ish) actress in New York working and striving to find success and happiness in both a business and city often characterized by a certain harshness. Francis Banks is approaching her late twenties and her self-imposed deadline to “be successful” or give up acting in favor of more “reasonable” career goals. We journey with Franny through her final year be

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

I am not someone who can separate my political views from the other aspects of my life because, among many other reasons, this country's politics at times dictate my life. I voted for Hillary in the primaries, and while I have deep respect for Senator Bernie Sanders, I've been on the Clinton bandwagon for quite some time now. I also feel I should include that I did not vote for her in 2008, because most days she is actually too moderate for my tastes. But it is absolutely und

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

Admittedly, this is called the "Better Characters Blog" and non-fiction doesn't so much have characters as it has...real people. And while an argument can be made that written history can distort the realities of these people in a way that makes them seem character-like ("Let them eat cake!"), to delve into the non-fiction genre seems to go against the core of this blog. Well, too bad. My blog, my rules and when I say I read everything under the sun, I mean it. I'll counter m