MADreads

Sometimes it can take a lifetime to understand a flashpoint decision which changes your life completely.

Sometimes the biggest pivot you take in life is one you do not choose yourself.

For cartoonist and memoirist Robin Ha, there is life before age 14, in South Korea---a life of solid academic achievement, good friends, favorite comics, and a proud role as her mother’s “warrior apprentice” in the fight to gain respect as a single mother running her own business.

Then, FLASH.

There is life after age 14, in America.

Jeannie Gaffigan is a writer and executive producer of The Jim Gaffigan Show.  Both seasons are currently airing on TV Land.  She's also a business partner and wife to comedian Jim Gaffigan. She's a year older than I am and grew up in Milwaukee.  I've long admired how she manages five kids and their appointments, activities, school schedule and gets them all to church.  I know this because I've read Jim Gaffigan's comedy memoirs and watch The Jim Gaffigan Show, which is described as loosely (or exactly?) based on the lives of the Gaffigans.  If it's at all true, Jeannie an

It’s a telling sign of how much everyday life has shifted during the Covid-19 pandemic when an author publicly discourages people from reading her book. “Maybe wait a few months” Emily St. John Mandel responded on Twitter to a suggestion that people read her 2014 novel Station Eleven.

It’s been a while since I’ve read really a good anthropomorphic novel (stories where animals take on human characteristics). When the ALA awards were announced and Scary Stories for Young Foxes was named a Newbery Honor, I figured it must be special. Special is only one of the many ways to describe this book. Harrowing, magical, sad, corrupt, and resilient are other words that come to mind but once you read it you’ll have your own words to describe it.  “All scary stories have two sides,” says the old storyteller to the seven fox pups eager to be frightened.