Tag: books
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Book Review: Little Alleluias by Mary Oliver
Reading Mary Oliver is sort of like feeling your heart pounding in your throat, threatening to break at any moment. I feel sadness at the very beauty of her words, and then I feel mad because I can’t replicate that same beauty with my own. I am trying very hard to be a writer. I…
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Book Review: Buzz! Boom! Bang! By Benjamin Gottwald
This delightful children’s picture book has no words, just beautiful and colorful illustrations. It is a master class in the literary device onomatopoeia. If I were still teaching middle school language arts, I would bring this book into my 7th and 8th grade literature classroom and have students sit in small groups to “read” it…
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Book Review: The Great Gatsby
This “Cook the Book” edition (Chronicle Books) is a republishing of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby, complete with a set of 15 recipes at the end of the book, recipes of the food and drink mentioned throughout the novel. This edition is beautifully done, with an authentic Art Deco feel to it thanks…
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Book Review: Overdue by Stephanie Perkins
When perusing available titles in NetGalley, the beginning of the description of this one really jumped out at me: Ingrid Dahl, a cheerful twenty-nine-year-old librarian in the cozy mountain town of Ridgetop, North Carolina… The description finishes with “Overdue is a beautiful, slow-burn romance full of lust and longing about new beginnings and finding your way.”…
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Book Review: Through an Open Window by Pamela Terry
First, thank you to NetGalley and Pamela Terry, through her publisher Penguin Random House, for the ARC of this new novel, to be published on August 19, 2025. This is Pamela Terry’s third novel, and I feel that her work becomes stronger and stronger with each new book. She is a true Southerner, and her…
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Book Review: Here After by Amy Lin
I checked this book out from the new release shelf at my local public library, Aspen Hill Public Library of Montgomery County, MD, and I must admit I was drawn to it by its size and cover. It is a hardback, but it is a non-traditional size, more of the size of a diary or…
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Book Review: Gabby Torres is the Best Winner Ever by Angela Dominguez
Have you ever noticed how you see or read something about an obscure hobby and then, immediately after that, this same thing keeps popping up everywhere you look? This happens to me all the time. A few years ago my husband took a sudden interest in the birds that frequented our backyard. First it was…
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First Quarter 2025 Reading Tally
I looked forward to several things as I approached retirement in January of 2024: more travel, get serious about writing my novel, reach out and reconnect with family and friends who live far from me, exercise more, and finally, but certainly not least, READ MORE. I believe I have indeed accomplished all of them, but…
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Book Review: How to Have a Happy Birthday: Create Meaning, Fulfillment, and Joy on Your Special Day by Tamar Hurwitz-Fleming
Should be easy, right? It’s your birthday. There’s a cake. With candles. People sing. You make a wish and blow out the candles. Presto. You are having a happy birthday. But, it really isn’t that simple at all. In her new book, which she proclaims herself that it was a long time coming, Tamar Hurwitz-Fleming…
Michelle Blanchard Ardillo 