I decided to read The Woman Who Walked Into Doors, by Roddy Doyle, because Maya has a couple of his children’s books, and they are really clever and well written and smart. So I thought I would try one of his novels for adults. This book is pretty amazing, especially since it’s written by a man. That sounds like a pretty sweeping statement, I know, but he really seems to GET a lot of the nuances of being a woman, especially about the pressures put on us by men regarding sexuality and so on. I mentioned some of this in an earlier post. Well, I am now at the part…

I was walking the dog this morning, in the dark, waiting for her to poop, (carrying my bag, and yes, I cleaned it up after), and listening to my beautiful little iPod Nano. I love listening to music, but even more, I like listening to podcasts. So I was listening to an NPR show that I downloaded from Audible.com, To the Best Of Our Knowledge. This show was called Fact or Fiction, and the first guest was a woman named Christine Wicker, who has gone out and interviewed people about their beliefs in magic. People who actually think they are vampires, werewolves, whatever. It was pretty interesting. So, if you’re…

From Powell’s Books website: ————————————————————————————————– For thirty-one-year old Cornelia Brown, life is a series of movie moments, and “Jimmy Stewart is always and indisputably the best man in the world, unless Cary Grant should happen to show up.” So imagine Cornelia’s delight when her very own Cary Grant walks through the door of the hip Philadelphia café she manages. Handsome and debonair, Martin Grace sweeps Cornelia off her feet, becoming Cary Grant to Cornelia’s Katharine Hepburn, Clark Gable to her Joan Crawford. Meanwhile, on the other side of town, eleven-year-old Clare Hobbes must learn to fend for herself after her increasingly unstable mother has a breakdown and disappears. With no…

OK, I am sure. Jane Austin was NOT a romantic (though you wouldn’t know it to watch the film adaptations of her books, especially the most recent adaptation of “Pride and Prejudice”). Yes, her stories are love stories, but she was writing against the romantic books of the time. She is famous for her treatment of the “human condition”, and her heroines were often put in the position of balancing practical matters like financial necessity (marrying well) and other, more internal concerns, like morality, friendship, and dare I say it, love. Sounds like a romance, I know, but really, it’s different. I know, most people don’t care about this…about whether…

As you know, I turned 40 a week or so ago, and I received quite a few gift certificates to Barnes and Noble. Yay! Books! So now, I’m thinking about what books I might like to buy with said gift certificates. Any suggestions? I do prefer paperbacks, because hardbacks take too much space on the bookshelf. One place I like to look for ideas is the employee suggestion page for Powell’s Books. They have some good ones. Some of these are still hardbacks, unfortunately. Here are a few I’m thinking about getting: Love Walked In Award-winning poet Marisa de los Santos’s first novel is the story of a 31-year-old café…