The Travelling Cat Chronicles Book Review: A Journey That Stays With You Cats have a way of making themselves indispensable without appearing to try. They claim the most comfortable corner of the sofa, demand food at inconvenient hours, and behave as though sharing a home with us is a favor they’re doing us. Then, somewhere Read more…

The Reading List Book Review: Finding Company Between the Pages There is something personal about recommending a favorite book. You hand over a title and hope another person will find something of what you found there. Sometimes, the conversation afterward tells you more about that person than an evening of polite questions ever could. Sara Read more…

The Correspondent by Virginia Evans Review: What Her Letters Leave Unsaid Sybil Van Antwerp can tell an author exactly what she thinks of a book. She can send a brisk note to a friend and offer advice to a boy who needs someone to listen. Ask her what is happening to her eyesight, though, and Read more…

Before the Coffee Gets Cold Review: Can the Past Still Change Us? What would you do if you could revisit one moment from your past? Would you seek an explanation, confess a hidden feeling, or say the goodbye you never had? Toshikazu Kawaguchi explores these questions in a quiet Tokyo café where time travel comes Read more…

Broken Country Book Review: A Beautiful Story That Needed More Emotional Depth What happens when the person you once loved returns after you have built an entirely different life? Broken Country by Clare Leslie Hall begins with that familiar question, then leads it somewhere darker. The Dorset countryside of the 1950s and 1960s provides the Read more…

Time Is a Mother Book Review: Grief, Memory, and the Strange Work of Living On Grief doesn’t arrive politely. It barges in, moves things around, and stays long after you’ve run out of energy to fight it. As a book, Time Is a Mother by Ocean Vuong lives inside that aftershock. It doesn’t try to Read more…