A blog about books, the publishing world, and maintaining ultimate litness.
Entwined by Heather Dixon (now Wallwork), a retelling of “The Twelve Dancing Princesses” fairy tale, was one of my favorite books I read in my youth. So when I learned that she had written another fairy tale retelling, this time after “The Nutcracker” and “The Pied Piper,” called Enchanted Sonata, I wanted to read it. […]
The ghost of Sylvia Plath is intrinsically linked with any discussion surrounding her novel The Bell Jar. In the literary space, there always seemed to be some mysterious aura surrounding it, leaden with heavy context even if you don’t strictly remember the story behind the weight the bare mention of the book carries. The book […]
After reading The Painted Veil by Maugham, in which cholera is prominently featured, I thought it was an ideal time to brave reading Love in the Time of Cholera, thinking it might be a nice segue even though I absolutely hated Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s most popular novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude. Cholera has very […]
I first read Machiavelli’s The Prince as assigned reading for a sophomore history class in high school. I remember being surprised at enjoying it. It’s basically a pamphlet how-to for princes and rulers, and often values cold pragmatism over morality. I don’t remember if I found it particularly shocking the first time around, but I […]
The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom is a very wholesome, sweet book, in the same realm of A Man Called Ove by Frederik Backman. It’s written in a refreshingly straight-forward prose, and is a very short, easy read. It follows a man who dies, goes to Heaven, and encounters five people […]
After hearing so many people rave about her, I finally read a Clarice Lispector novel. And I hated it. I wanted to DNF The Passion According to G.H. so many times; I again got through it out of sheer obstinacy. Though I’m not sure I can say I “read” it since often I just literally […]
I saw the ghost of my mothers in the reflection and they opened their mouths and spit out my eyes because I wasn’t supposed to see the woman I should be. And my ears are on the nightstands. They keep me awake at night. Do you hear them wail? The versions of you that […]
I like to believe they will weep when they lay me to rest but I’m afraid they will only cry if they once found me pretty. “Beautiful girl,” those people would say, “Such a shame.” And perhaps still only if I remained pretty, laying there in an open coffin, young, pale, and peaceful. Dead is […]
In the continual flux of this seasonal rut there are certain callbacks some might call them drawbacks of being in your eyes’ limelight. Perhaps one day soon ignoring your casual remembrance will become more than a failed reflex. And karma will stop sifting through my memory’s index. But for now, my nerves enter a […]
There are thousands of boys and men Being sent in planes and ships To a land far and foreign And only a few well-disguised crooks, And perhaps future history books, Could tell you why. The pretense is security And the innocent’s purity When asked hard questions They blame past presidents, Making the death of […]