Reviews

All good children's stories are the same: young creature breaks rules, has incredible adventure, then returns home with the knowledge that aforementioned rules are there for a reason.

Of course, the actual message to the careful reader is: break rules as often as you can, because who the hell doesn't want to have an adventure?

― Brian K. Vaughan, Saga, Vol. 3

Are you growing frustrated hearing about films and series you simply must watch, only to find they are on yet another streaming platform that will come with yet another monthly fee? Me too. That’s why I finally decided to give Acorn TV: the Best British TV and Film, a try. It’s free with your Johnson County Library card!

After finishing Opioid, Indiana, I immediately wanted to read it again. Even though it's a fairly short book, Brian Allen Carr handles the difficult subject matter with so much insight and empathy that I was disappointed I didn't get to spend more time with all the characters.

The Wives should come with a warning. Settle in, silence your phone, and have some snacks handy. Because once you get into this story, you won't want to stop reading.

Fairy tales are often dismissed as stories only for children, but I've never been able to stop reading them, even as an adult.  C.S.

I'm going to start off with a confession: I have absolutely no talent as a baker or cook of any kind. At best I can boil water and at worst... well. Let's just say I have a bad habit of leaving out key ingredients and forgetting that I left food in the oven until the smoke alarm goes off. My completely inedible, rock-hard Rice Krispie treats are still something of a legend among my family.

Friends, I’m so excited! Michelle Obama’s documentary, based on the memoir Becoming, is coming soon to Netflix. Read more:

Netflix & Higher Ground Productions Announce Original Documentary "Becoming"

From the post, my emphasis in bold:

A NOTE FROM MICHELLE OBAMA:

International historical fiction is not my typical genre, but Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko swept me off my feet. This epic Korean family story starts in the late 1800’s and spans all the way to the late 1980’s. The unifying thread of the tale is Sunja, a resourceful and headstrong woman who has to repeatedly prove her convictions and loyalties through life’s many tests.

If you are a fan of the western genre, chances are you have heard of Lonesome Dove. Likewise, if you follow award winning books, you may have seen it on a list for its 1985 Spur Award or its 1986 Pulitzer Prize. Some of you may have even watched the CBS miniseries from 1989 starring Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones. Lonesome Dove is not an obscure novel and it has received a great deal of praise, but coming in at a whopping 843 pages it can be daunting to those of us more used to a book in the 200-250 page range.

Socrates famously worried that the development of writing would atrophy the ability to store and remember information, that dependence on external memory would negatively change the brain. And he was right, reading and writing have changed the way human brains work--though whether for better or worse is still up for debate. Similarly, Nicholas G. Carr famously asked Is Google Making Us Stupid? in an article in The Atlantic a dozen years ago.