Musings

It hit me a few nights ago just how much I love everything about reading.

I love being asked for a book recommendation, then giving one I think is exactly right.

I love looking at my bookshelves and knowing every book on it, the story, the characters, the cover, the feelings when I finished.

I live in Madison, WI, and yesterday we had a giant blizzard. A blizzard so big the entire city shut down — city and state government, public schools, both of the major shopping malls, and the entire University of Wisconsin. That’s right, yesterday I had snow day!

Over the summer I traveled from Madison to Minnesota at least five times (I must have blocked out the exact number). Since then, I’ve gone home at least two more times. The best thing about those trips was discovering that yes, I can listen to audiobooks! Before my long, solo car rides, I’d never been [...]

Welcome to the first day of The Classics Circuit for author Wilkie Collins! Over the next month you’ll be seeing posts reviewing a number of Collins’ books and talking about his life. You can follow this link to see a full list of classics tour spots over the next month. I somehow got the honor [...]

When you’re browsing through the bookstore, reading reviews online, or just chatting about books in general, what makes a book stick out for you? Are there any subjects or themes or character types that make you look more closely? What follows is a list of things that will pretty much guarantee I’ll give an unfamiliar [...]

The Sisterhood of the Summer Book Reviews — a project where my sister and I read and review each others favorite books — was supposed to just be a summer thing. However, our reviews were well-received and we had fun, so we decided to keep doing reviews together throughout the year. We saw each other [...]

I actually don’t have any updates on my reading life for this Sunday Salon, I think because things in my regular life (i.e. everything that’s not reading) have been sort of tough the last few days. Over the summer I’ve been interning with the Madison city newspaper, The Capital Times (TCT). Like all newspapers, TCT [...]

I went to the library on Thursday to grab a couple of books for a post next week on a local author for GalleySmith’s Literary Road Trip. One book I got took me into the library’s essay section, somewhere I actually haven’t browsed in a long time. I love reading great personal essays and essay-length [...]

I’ve been debating how to write my Infinite Summer posts. After some deep soul-searching and contemplation, I’ve decided to think of them as a reading journal of what it’s like to try this immensely large and intimidating novel. I hope that sounds interesting to you, dear readers. At this point, reading Infinite Jest is like [...]