Why: Road to Paradise by Paullina Simons piqued my interest because my friends and I took a road trip the summer after high school, just as Shelby sets out to do. (Shout out to our fearless LQ Leader, Joli for sitting in …

I’m doing this thing where I’m reading debuts. I’m doing it because I’m trying to write my own first novel, and it seems like a good idea to read the first novels of other people. You know, the novels of people …

I’m having a serious like-dislike relationship with Amor Towles’s A Gentleman in Moscow. While I really loved parts of it, there were parts I really disliked too. A Gentleman in Moscow begins in post-WWI Russia. It opens in a courtroom, …

Let me preface this review by saying this: I am not exactly a science fiction girl. That doesn’t mean I dislike it – it’s just not something I read on a regular basis. So, when I saw this book in …

I’ve been meaning to read The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics by Daniel James Brown since it came out in 2013. My students have been loving both the young …

I admit, I was a reluctant listener when it came to audiobooks. A friend first recommended Audible (Amazon’s audiobook website) to me in 2011, but I didn’t listen to my first book until early in 2015. I was doing a …

Memes are everywhere. They are a cultural phenomenon. Webster’s dictionary describes a meme as “an idea, behavior, style, or usage that spreads from one person to another in a culture” or an amusing or interesting picture, video, etc., that is …

In a story that’s at once sprawling and hyper-local, Anna Quindlen renders an immensely likable main character. Our narrator is a girl, bound-and-determined to both hold on to the dearest things, and to shake off the oppressive habits of her family’s …