A Wandering Reader

Everything I Never Told You not only appeared on all the best books lists of 2014, but it was often cited as the best book of the year. If folks couldn’t decide on a single best book then they cited it in the top five.

Will you let me talk about my winter Europe trip and show my dreary gray photos? Eric had a work conference in Brussels and I jumped on the opportunity to tag along.

This book isn’t exactly new, but I see it pop up frequently – at used bookstores, in airport lounges, on a friend’s reading list. It’s been on my own bookshelf for years, staring me down, and beckoning a read. I took the plunge and thought it was worth a review.

Memorial Day weekend marks the unofficial start of summer and is a great time to start your warm season to-do list. While most New Yorkers catch the first Friday afternoon train out of the city, New York is actually a fantastic place to visit in the summer with lots of free or low-cost events

In The Empathy Exams there’s not much that Leslie Jamison doesn’t cover on the spectrum of human suffering: disease, grief, violence, illness, wounds, pain, loss, regret. The book is not an exposition on gloom and doom, however.

There have been a lot of tragedies and unrest in the news lately – earthquakes, shootings, train accidents. While I often turn to books to teach me something, I also love escaping into the pages of a well-crafted, intelligent, and uplifting story. Unfortunately, many critically-acclaimed books aren’t exactly feel-good reads. Further, happy

True Story: In 1819, the 238-ton whaleship Essex was attacked and sunk by a sperm whale in an isolated area of the South Pacific. The 20-man crew set out in three small boats to try to reach the coast of South America (the place they deemed safest).

I’ve gone to some fantastic places with my freelance job at Oyster.com. I did most of my traveling through the fall/winter/spring of this year, therefore missing a good portion of New York’s brutal winter.

Cheryl Strayed is my new girl crush. I’ve been telling everyone I know about her because she. is. awesome. First, she wrote Wild, which was made into a movie with Reese Witherspoon and is everywhere lately.

April is National Poetry Month so I thought I’d squeeze this in before the month’s end. Poetry is kind of a beast – some people are very into it, some people don’t get it at all, and some folks only like poems that rhyme.