The Secret Menu: Chinese Food in America and How I Made It by Shiamin Kwa is more than a memoir. It is more of an anthropological study of the Chinese culture in America, where the author wasn’t Chinese enough for home and too Chinese for her new country. In fact,…
Keep readingDo you have a Buy Nothing group in your neighborhood? If you don’t know the answer to this question, head over to Facebook and search for it! Warning: participation in the Buy Nothing world can be quite addicting! About The Buy Nothing Project: The Buy Nothing Project, the world’s largest…
Keep readingI’ll begin this review of The Optimists by Brian Platzer with a quote from another reviewer on Goodreads: I’ll admit, when I finished this book I immediately went to Goodreads to look at some of the reviews, a few 5-star, a few 1-star, and then I turned to the 3-star…
Keep readingRUN, don’t walk…to read The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout! Another Strout masterpiece! How I love her writing! So many emotions, such great pacing, beautiful prose, but not pretentious or showy. See my review here. Also, Saoirse by Charleen Hurtubise is such a great book. If you like…
Keep readingTo use a term often used in antique appraisals, this debut novel comes with quite a provenance, as it was written by the daughter of the late Judith Miller (1951-2023), a regular specialist on the wildly popular BBC Antiques Roadshow. Antiques Roadshow, both the UK version and the American version,…
Keep readingThe title of this book, Saoirse, is an Irish name that means freedom. And, in this powerful novel, a US debut for this American writer living and working in Ireland for the last few decades, the main character longs for just that…freedom from her past, from her trauma, from her…
Keep readingThere’s almost constant chatter about the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, but long before there was a Harry and Meghan, there was a David and Wallis. While the severity of what happened during what will forever be known as the Abdication Crisis does not compare to the “spare” and his…
Keep readingI picked this up from the Librarian’s Choice shelves at my local public library (shout out to Aspen Hill Library in Montgomery County, Maryland). Two things caught my attention. First of all, that cover is an eye catcher for sure. The second thing was the starburst blurb on the front…
Keep readingIf you could be a character from a book or film, who would you be? Why? As an avid reader my whole life, I have many “favorite books” and the list of the top ten continues to change and evolve over the decades and years of my reading life. The…
Keep readingFirst of all, thank you to NetGalley and Random House (an imprint of Penguin Random House) for the ARC ebook of Elizabeth Strout’s newest book, The Things We Never Say (May 5, 2026, 224 pages). I lobbied hard for an ARC, and thankfully, the literature gods heard my cry, or…
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Michelle Blanchard Ardillo