GLOSSING OVER IT

fiction. fashion. food. frivolity.

Q&A with Author Erin Celello

Today I’m thrilled to be featuring an interview with Madison author Erin Celello about her latest novel, Learning to Stay (NAL/Penguin 2013), which, as Erin describes it, explores “the question of what happens when one person in a marriage becomes someone fundamentally different.” In Learning to Stay, what triggers the change is a traumatic brain injury that the husband, [...]

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Love Stories We Love

Valentine’s Day has got me thinking of my favorite love stories in fiction. There are so many of them, and I’m sure even more favorites will spring to mind as soon as I publish this post. Here are just a few that stand out for me. You’ll see they are just as varied in genre [...]

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Back to School Style for Grown-Ups

The hot hot summer has begun to cool and soon it’s time for back to school. Since I’m not a teacher and no longer a student, and since my son is still in diapers, I can think about the first day of school without panic. (Though I do still have that recurring dream about not [...]

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The “YES” (in other words, agented!)

I have a quote, framed and printed on a letterpress card, next to my desk. It’s a reminder to help me through all the “nos” and the “maybe ifs” that come with being a writer and putting my work out into the world. Today, I’m here to attest that it’s true. That after the final [...]

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On Style and Smarts

[Image from theberry.com] Oscar Wilde had a lot of great, pithy quotes, like this one. Do you agree? I agree with the overeducated part. Just ask my grandmother, who is working her way through the Great Books in her eighties.  As for being overdressed, I have to say that it is possible, and I’ve been guilty of [...]

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Blogs to Books

Yep, I’m that person. The person who buys books for everyone on her holiday list. What to get Dad who returns nearly everything I buy him? Books. What to get my nephew whose Japanamation jargon resembles a foreign language? Books. And what to get my niece who, like me when I was a kid, aspires [...]

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Literary Looks: The Great Gatsby

There are people who live in my head. I’ve collected them over time, over thousands of pages read everywhere: on subway seats, in library cubicles, under the covers, over the moon. The best of these people are realer to me, and more enduring, than many flesh and blood faces that pass through my days. Characters [...]

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Literary Looks: The Sun Also Rises

Lately, I’ve been feasting on a lot of good reads. To celebrate, I’m compiling the first of a series of literary looks inspired by books and writers. My book club recently finished The Paris Wife by Paula McLain. It’s a well-researched, fictional account of Hemingway’s relationship with his first wife, Hadley, told from her point of view. During [...]

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Book Review: An Urban Fairy Tale

The Ballad of West Tenth Street: A Novel by Marjorie Kernan My rating: 4 of 5 stars A friend from my writing group (and the fastest reader I know) recommended this book to me. The back cover of The Ballad of West Tenth Street calls the novel an “urban fairy tale.” The story revolves around [...]

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Review: The Help

The Help by Kathryn Stockett My rating: 3 of 5 stars I feel like I was one of the last people in the world to read this book. That’s what happens when the stack of “to read” books next to your bed barely even fits in your nightstand–which I bought specifically because it had a [...]

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