Category: books
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Book Review: Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano
There is a family of ten (10!!!) sisters who live in my neighborhood, a suburb of Washington, DC, and I am friends with almost all of them. I see some of them almost every weekend as they are all parishioners at my church. They have created something like 32 first cousins among their respective families. […]
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Book Review: When the Moon Turns Blue by Pamela Terry
“You can take the girl out of the South, but you can’t take the South out of the girl.” The older I get, the more I identify with this old saying. I’m a Southern girl, born and raised in Louisiana, but have now lived in Maryland (NOT the South, no matter what you Yankees say […]
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Book Review: Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus
A few months ago I was reading through my April issue of Bon Appetit magazine when I stumbled upon a personal essay called “It Was Quite Possibly the Worst First Date Ever. Then I Ordered the Scallops.” It was one of the funniest things I had read in quite a while. I read it aloud […]
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Book Review: Fauci, Expect the Unexpected, Ten Lessons on Truth, Service, and the Way Forward
After seeing Dr. Fauci on televised news conferences for months on end and hearing his name bantered about by both supporters and detractors, when I saw this book on the new release shelf at my library I picked it up to hear from Dr. Fauci himself. First of all, this book is not exactly written […]
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Book Review: The Essential Instant Pot Cookbook by Coco Morante
At what point when reading a cookbook do you make the decision to just go ahead and purchase a copy for yourself? Wait, you don’t read cookbooks? I do. I check out bags of them from the library and read them cover to cover like my favorite mysteries or biographies. Sometimes I jot down a […]
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Book Review: Jazz Age Cocktails by Cecelia Tichi
Don’t be confused by the title of this book. Yes, it is about cocktails popular during the Jazz Age, but this is not just a book of cocktail recipes. It is a history book, a book of US social history during the time of Prohibition, with recipes for the cocktails of the day sprinkled throughout. […]
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Book Review: Soomi’s Sweater by Susie Oh
This is a short and sweet picture book, but for me the illustrations are far superior to the story line. Susie Oh’s drawings have captured the soft, maternal feelings that I know so well from having raised two daughters of my own. I could feel the excitement from Soomi when she received a new sweater, […]
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Book Review: The Dig by John Preston (Other Press, 2007)
At some point during the pandemic, my husband and I watched the Netflix original film The Dig (Netflix, 2021) starring Ralph Fiennes and Carey Mulligan. We were both quite taken with it. I immediately googled it and found that it was based upon a work of historical fiction of the same name by John Preston. […]
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Interview: Eman Quotah, author of Bride of the Sea
See my most recent published piece for Washington Independent Review of Books: http://www.washingtonindependentreviewofbooks.com/features/an-interview-with-eman-quotah
Michelle Blanchard Ardillo 