It probably will not surprise anyone that a “sophisticated dork” like me loves musicals. I grew up watching movie classics like Singin’ in the Rain, West Side Story, and The King and I with my mom, and was involved with theater all through my high school career as a member of the crew (those who [...]
Book Review
One of the ways that I try to remind myself of my One Little Word for 2016, open, is to think about one of the rules of improv I remember from Tina Fey’s Bossypants – always respond to your partner with YES, AND… For Fey, the idea of YES, AND is to contribute, to show up and [...]
I can point to two specific pieces of satire that inspired me pick up HRC: State Secrets and the Rebirth of Hillary Clinton by Jonathan Allen and Amir Parnes: SNL’s cold open (above) from their Feb. 13 show and this article from The Onion, Female Presidential Candidate Who Was United States Senator, Secretary Of State [...]
Last year, I started to get on a little bit of a kick for books about space and space travel. It started with Chris Hadfield’s really wonderful memoir An Astronauts Guide to Life on Earth and continued with Leaving Orbit by Margaret Lazarus Dean. And then of course there was The Martian (audio book and movie), and [...]
I’ve had “develop a yoga practice” and “practice meditation” on my resolutions lists for the last several years and never really made much progress with either. It’s partially laziness and partially intimidation – both practices seem simple, but are actually much more difficult to master than they appear. But many of the books I’ve read [...]
My first novel of 2016 set the year off on such a good foot – I absolutely loved The Turner House by Angela Flournoy. The Turner House is a big family story, set in a crumbling black neighborhood in Detroit. Patriarch Francis Turner has died and his wife, Viola, is getting too old to manage [...]
One of my bookish weaknesses is fiction with creative narrative structure. I love novels in letters, novels with dual narratives or multiple narrators, really anything that plays around with structure in some way. Both of the books I want to write about today have something a little unique in the way they tell their stories. [...]
My final book of 2015 was Gold Fame Citrus by Claire Vaye Watkins. It was a book I really enjoyed, but also a book I didn’t feel like I really “got” until I closed the last page and started looking for some analysis online. Be warned, this whole post is pretty full of spoilers for [...]
The Happiness of Pursuit by Chris Guillebeau first got on my radar last last year when he was interviewed on one of my favorite podcasts. Guillebeau talked about the benefits of a creative pursuit and the satisfaction you can get from a quest of some kind. At the time I was well in the middle [...]
Over the seven years that I’ve been a blogger, I’ve averaged about 60 percent nonfiction and 40 percent fiction. These percentages have been remarkably consistent, and without much effort on my part. But this year was a big departure from that trend – at last count, I was at less than 40 percent nonfiction for [...]
