The Human Need for Connection: Knowing Someone Would Miss Us One of the oldest human needs is having someone to wonder where you are when you don’t come home at night. Margaret Mead It is 11:47 p.m. Your key has not turned in the lock. A cup of tea sits untouched on the kitchen counter, Read more…

The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry review: Finding family between the shelves Some novels announce their intentions with a dramatic opening. Others slip quietly into your life and make themselves at home. Gabrielle Zevin’s The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry belongs to the latter kind. It begins with an irritable bookseller on a Read more…

Remarkably Bright Creatures Book Review: Grief, Belonging and One Very Clever Octopus An elderly cleaner and a captive octopus hardly sound like the likeliest pair around which to build a novel. Yet that unusual friendship is precisely what gives Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt its charm. What begins as a gently eccentric story Read more…