Category: books
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Book Review: The Hygge Holiday by Rosie Blake
For two years I lived in a small town near Brussels, Belgium, and seeking to make friends, I joined an international cooking club. There were twelve members, and we were each assigned a month where we hosted the entire group for lunch, with foods from our own culture. Each month was new and exciting, learning…
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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
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Book Review: The Bombay Prince by Sujata Massey (Soho Crime, June, 2021)
Author Sujata Massey brings us once again to 1920s colonial India with the third in a series featuring protagonist Perveen Mistry, the first female lawyer in Bombay, India. I discovered the series while recuperating from a broken ankle during the summer of 2019. As I was house-bound (relying on crutches and/or a knee scooter to…
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Book Review: The Undefeated by Kwame Alexander and illustrated by Kadir Nelson
I’ve been a fan of Kwame Alexander since I read his Newbery Award winning novel The Crossover. “Fan” might be a bit of an understatement. I confess that I follow him on all his social media platforms, have a Google alert set up for news about him, follow him on Amazon and on Goodreads –…
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Book Review: Twenty-one Truths About Love by Matthew Dicks
This book was just not for me. Some readers have noted that the format was not to their liking, but I didn’t mind the story unfolding in list format. I’ve read other books not told in traditional narrative prose, such as Bridget Jones’s Diary told in journal entries and Salmon Fishing in the Yemen told…
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Book Review: Learning to Talk to Plants by Marta Orriols (Pushkin Press, June 2021)
From the publisher: “By turns devastating and darkly funny, Learning to Talk to Plants is a piercingly honest portrayal of grief – and of the many ways to lose someone.” The publisher’s quote above really says it all for this book, at least for me. I rated this book a 4/5, mostly because it was so painful…
Michelle Blanchard Ardillo 