AOÛT 2022

I'm catching a train tomorrow. Headed south, chasing beaches and sunshine (fingers crossed). My internet presence will depend entirely on whether I can find wifi—that magical little thing that makes modern life bearable...

"We were eternal, we were the Chosen People, the echo of our names would resound beneath the stars long after we vanished from this earth." First book of the season and already my first obsession. This sprawling epic completely knocked me out...

On foot from the Arctic Circle to the Himalayas (1941-1942). "I never hit rock bottom, that final point where you just give up. Some tiny part of my mind clung to the idea that surrender meant death." In 1939, Slavomir Rawicz was captured...

Son of a real estate speculator who struck it rich, Johann Friedrich von Allmen developed expensive tastes early: five-star hotels, Michelin restaurants, bespoke clothing, and above all, collectibles. So much so that his inheritance evaporated...

I'm part of the generation that watched Nadia Comaneci's triumph at the 1976 Olympics live on TV (graduation year, drought year, everyone glued to their screens). This fourteen-year-old Romanian gymnast stunned the world...

It's complicated talking about this book. Some parts blew me away, others left me cold. But I finished it, and certain elements stuck with me—which counts for something. This story weaves together identity, ambition, and reinvention...

"Treets tasted better before." "Everything was better before." One winter morning, Carole receives a strange gift in the mail: a little snow globe. She knows what this means—a sign from her father, whose sudden departures and unexpected returns...

I might be the only person in the entire blogosphere who hated The Engagements, Sullivan's first novel with its hollow feminism. But the reviews for her second were so glowing I couldn't resist. Maine tells the story of four generations of women...

"What knowledge was offered to her? What secrets did the world hold? And which would be revealed through the earth and which through words?" Talmadge spent his entire life in an orchard. When he first arrived there as a child...

"His brain was like a garbage can, overflowing with all kinds of trash that his mouth eventually vomited out." Dynmouth is a small English seaside town with its churches, park, vicar, and annual festival. Timothy Gedge is a peculiar boy...