If not for the humor in the exposition of her epistolary novel, I’d have never read, much less bought Maria Semple’s bestseller, Where’d You Go, Bernadette (2012). A satire of the Seattle-based super rich and privileged, I found myself not liking many of the characters because they typified so many of my stereotypes of the super rich: delusional, entitled, competitive, paranoid, and money/power/status obsessed. Despite my less than positive review, the novel is well-written and stylistically inventive. For these reasons, it gets three rather than two stars. Read […]
When in Rome…
Rabid fandom is one reason I’ve yet to watch Titanic and never got into Friends, Lost, among many other highly successful films and TV shows. Instead, I tend to dedicate my viewing time to the underdogs, which is to say that a lot of the shows that I do like tend to get cancelled, i.e. Arrested Development, Life, Chicago Code, Human Target, Men of a Certain Age. To date, The Good Wife is the only one of my faves to have escaped that fate. With that said, you can imagine how resistant […]
By Lying, Cheating, and Cheating, Yes, “This Is How You Lose Her”
Junot Diaz’s This Is How You Lose Her (2012) is an eight story collection of machismo, misogynistic narratives centered around Yunior, a seemingly compulsive cheater who is forced to face the consequences of his actions. Never having read Diaz before, I had no idea what to expect, and after reading epigraph by Sandra Cisneros, I used my knowledge her structure and style from The House on Mango Street (1984) to guide me. What ensued was a rather confusing read. Unlike some who found Diaz’s use of Spanglish to be the […]
“Not Only Can I Act, I Can Also Write!”…But Not As Well
I’m a bit of a perfectionist, so to date, I have written two complete short stories which I first wrote many years ago. Since then, they’ve been in a constant state of revision because they lack a certain je ne sais quoi for publishing. I wish other writers were as self-aware: Amazon is currently filled with published novels that are truly the works of amateur writers. One such amateur work is Molly Ringwald’s When It Happens to You: A Novel in Stories (2012). At $1.99 at the time of […]
Is This the Future of Romance Novels?
To say that I’ve been disappointed with the romance novels I’ve read of late would be an understatement. I don’t know if it’s a case of me struggling to evolve after having read the same authors for the past twenty years, but I’m seriously bummed out that I’ve not been able to binge on reading romances in the way that I used to. My latest attempt at falling in love with a romance came with reading Sophia Nash’s The Once and Future Duchess (2014). I’m sorry […]
Mission: College Access and Success
If you’ve ever wondered why the guidance department seems to be less than helpful in counseling during the college access process, there’s a reason. According to Mandy Savitz-Romer and Suzanne Bouffard in Ready, Willing, and Able: A Developmental Approach to College Access and Success (2014), that reason is the following: “…[S]chool counselors, who typically hold master’s degrees in counseling and licenses provided by state departments of education, rarely obtain training in college counseling…In fact, according to the National Association of College Admissions and Counseling, out of the […]
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