I don’t usually write a “reading plans” post, but I thought it would be nice to highlight the awesome book clubs and read-alongs that I take part in every month. Rather than write a post for each one individually, I’m going to start writing one post at the beginning of every month that acknowledges them […]

Puttin’ the Blog in Balrog — The Readalong Back in June, a group of us started reading The Lord of the Rings as a project hosted by SJ of Snobbery. “Puttin’ the Blog in Balrog,” as SJ named it, began with The Hobbit on June 23rd and ended with The Return of the King on […]

The Magicians by Lev Grossman Fiction — Fantasy Plume, 2009 Kindle edition 428 pages From the publisher: Like everyone else, precocious high school senior Quentin Coldwater assumes that magic isn’t real, until he finds himself admitted to a very secretive and exclusive college of magic in upstate New York. There he indulges in the joys […]

Graceling by Kristin Cashore Young Adult Fiction — Fantasy Graphia, 2009 Paperback 480 pages From the back cover: “Katsa has been able to kill a man with her bare hands since she was eight–she’s a Graceling, one of the rare people in her land born with an extreme skill. As niece of the king, she […]

It’s time to put the blog in Balrog, baby! Today kicks off the Lord of the Rings (re)readalong being hosted by sj of Snobbery, and I am really excited about this one. My introduction to this series came in the form of cartoon movies that I watched with my dad when I was a little […]

Today is Bloomsday, the day on which Joyce’s Ulysses is based (the protagonist’s name is Leopold Bloom, hence Bloomsday). In honor of this day, O of Délaissé is hosting a readalong of this book (or any other of Joyce’s works, in case interested readers aren’t ready to dive into Ulysses). I am going to attempt […]

Good afternoon, folks! I hope you’ve all had a lovely weekend and a relaxing Sunday so far. Before I get into what’s going on in my reading world over the next few weeks, I’d like to take a minute and thank all of the wonderful people at Armchair BEA for a fantastic event last week. […]

Yesterday, Brenna of Literary Musings blogged about her favorite book blogs (which you should really check out because there are some really great blogs listed there). I was only familiar with three of the blogs on her list, so I checked out the rest and added them to my RSS reader. One of those blogs is […]

So. Let’s talk about Toni Morrison for a moment, shall we? Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winning author Toni Morrison has a new novel coming out in May, which I reviewed here yesterday. In honor of Morrison’s forthcoming novel, the good folks at Book Riot have declared May 8th “Toni Morrison Day,” and they have a […]

Ninth Ward by Jewell Parker Rhodes Fiction (Children’s) Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 2010 Kindle edition 224 pages (in hardcover edition) From the author’s website: Twelve-year-old Lanesha lives in a tight-knit community in New Orleanes’ Ninth Ward. She doesn’t have a fancy house like her uptown family or lots of friends like other kids […]

The Tiger’s Wife by Téa Obreht Fiction Random House, 2011 Paperback 368 pages Synopsis from Amazon: In a Balkan country mending from years of conflict, Natalia, a young doctor, arrives on a mission of mercy at an orphanage by the sea. By the time she and her lifelong friend Zóra begin to inoculate the children […]

This post will conclude my lengthy project on the Transcendentalists…for now. I will be reading more about/from them in the future, but the year is almost over and I have other things I’d like to start reading in January. I have found this project interesting and enlightening, and I’m glad that I decided to wrap […]

Today is the last day of the Transcendentalist Event that Jill from A Room of One’s Own was nice enough to host for us. I read two books out of everything I wanted to read, but I am going to continue my reading of the Transcendentalists until the end of the year. So more posts […]

American Transcendentalism: A History by Philip F. Gura Nonfiction Hill and Wang, 2008 Paperback 384 pages From the back cover: American Transcendentalism is a comprehensive narrative history of America’s first group of public intellectuals, the men and women who defined American literature and indelibly marked American reform in the decades before and after the Civil […]