Dear Bookworms, For every book that is published and sent out into the world, there are at least eight that remain, for one reason or another, unpublished and unheard of – well, unheard of by you and I anyway. Literature, as we know from the other Thursday Next adventures, is a world unto itself in…
Dear Bookworms, Overall, The Right Design by Isabella Louise Anderson is best described as a quick romp – in more ways than one. Originally written as a NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) composition, the finished product is not strongly developed but rather short and light, best suited as a quick afternoon beach read. As such,…
Dear Bookworms, The world is full of hurting people. Everywhere you go there are individuals caught in the traps of drug use, depression and hopelessness. A few years ago, a young man named Jamie Tworkowski came face to face with this reality when he met a woman struggling with the weight of these very things…
Dear Bookworms, Robby Novak is your average 11 year old boy, well, except for the fact that he has skyrocketed to internet fame thanks to his extremely popular YouTube videos. Robby Novak, you see, is Kid President. If you’ve never seen a Kid President video, do yourself a favor and go look up “A Pep…
Dear Bookworms, In The Eyre Affair, the first novel of Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next series, we readers are introduced to a brand new class of detective: Literary Detective. Fforde takes us on a journey with his charming heroine Thursday as she navigates a world in which book-related crime is a daily occurrence and literary enthusiasm…
Dear Bookworms, “Her name is Vera and she is a poor peasant girl.” So begins the fairytale that Anya Whitson weaves for her daughters. It is about how Vera meets her prince and falls in love despite the hardships and obstacles of living in the Snow Kingdom under the rule of the Black Knight. That’s…
Dear Bookworms, There are some things that only true readers really understand. The delight in the smell of an old book, the thrill over a long-anticipated copy of a favorite author’s newest work, that hollow sense of aimlessness after you’ve finished a long series, or the excitement of discovering a new series and knowing there…
Dear Bookworms, A powerful government. A system that unfairly divides people into castes. A chosen hero(ine) who fights, bleeds and sacrifices in order to overthrow the corrupt regime. Sound familiar? Of course it does. Those are the basic building blocks of the young adult dystopian novel, and we’ve all read one or five within the…
Dear Bookworms, As the days get shorter and the cold weather sets in, everyone I talk to seems to be feeling some version of tired and run down. Well, here is my prescription to combat all of that: curl up with a soft blanket, a cup of tea and this month’s book recommendation: Is It…
Dear Bookworms, I love fiction. I love it for so many reasons, but the biggest reason I think is because of the power it possesses to teach us. Reading allows us to learn about things and places we will never see, to experience adventures well beyond the scope of our lives and, most importantly, to…