Last year, I read two amazing books by Julia Holden. She was kind enough to grant me an interview when I contacted her to tell her how much I enjoyed her work, and I’ve just come up for air after writing a bunch of articles about term life insurance, so I thought it was time [...]

INTRO | PART 2 What question are you never, or rarely, asked in interviews, that you really wish people would ask? How would you answer it? Considering that both my novels are set principally in Paris, I’m surprised nobody’s ever asked me for travel advice. I’ve got a lot of opinions – and if somebody [...]

INTRO | PART 1 What are you reading these days? Or, what types of things do you like to read when you have time? I just read Patricia Wood’s Lottery, and I’m in the middle of Allegra Goodman’s Kaaterskill Falls. Very, very different books, but both quite wonderful. Got tunes? What’s flowing from your headphones [...]

by Philip Pullman There are books that you can read while laying flat on a mattress, and there are books you have to sit up to read. The Amber Spyglass, the final installment in the His Dark Materials trilogy is one of the latter. Despite the fact that I was nursing the cold that wouldn’t [...]

Rather than chastise myself yet again for not having the Uverse guys restring the house with Cat5e cable while they were here in October, I thought I’d answer this week’s question from Booking Through Thursday. It’s technically not Thursday any more, but I won’t tell if you don’t. Deal? They ask: What’s your favorite book [...]

With the purchase of new exercise equipment – no not beer pong tables, but a weight set that took five hours to put together, my lofty plans for the library have changed. Is it still a library if you have a weight machine in the corner? I think so, after all the books outweigh the [...]

I’ve just spent several minutes teaching my popup blocker that the halo-scan comments some of my blog-buddies use are not a threat, and should be allowed. I’m quite certain I’ve done this before, but I have three computers, so maybe this one got missed. While I’m on the subject of blog-buddies, I’d like to welcome [...]

As much as I’d love to have a zero gravity recliner. the closest I can come, at least for reading, is a tub full of lightly fragrant bubbles floating on hot water. a back pillow, and a bottle of cool water to sip. The thing is, more and more recently, I’ve been just lounging in [...]

by Philip Pullman If reading fantasy novels that made you think counted as using exercise equipment I would be incredibly buff, because this week, I finished The Subtle Knife, the second novel in the His Dark Materials trilogy that opened with The Golden Compass. In this installment of Lyra’s story, which opens in “our” version [...]

by Dorothea Benton Frank Maria is the daughter of an Italian American couple who relocated to South Carolina to live out their golden years. She lives in a townhouse in Charleston with her neurosurgeon lover Michael, whom her parents refuse to acknowledge because not only are Maria and Michael not married, but he’s also an [...]