“I wanted to cut loose from the world, and I shared, too his desire to escape to the wild, a desire that can rip away all human softness and leave you stranded in a world of savage, courteous despair”.- Helen Macdonald on T.H. White’s need to train a goshawk. When her father passed away suddenly… View more
“All these non-singing, non-dancing, wish-I-had-me-some-clothes fools who tell me my albums suck. Why should I pay any attention to them?” -Prince I opened up the internet yesterday and gasped out loud. I understand that the last few months may have made celebrity death reactions a near cynical experience, I’m there with you on that level, but… View more
The stats are in. Millennial children (those born after 2005) spend an average of 35 hours a week on media. That’s the equivalent to a French work week! Though there are positive aspects to TV- certain shows can teach your child information they may not otherwise be exposed to, there have, in recent years been… View more
Life is a struggle. Sometimes just getting out of bed can be hard. Trying to justify to yourself that you are good enough merely for waking and running errands, while it may be a stretch, is completely necessary sometimes. Jenny Lawson is mentally ill. Sometimes, she admits that she sets the bar unabashedly low that… View more
Ruta Sepetys’ most recent work Salt to Sea is a very well written historic novel– accurate in its description of time and place with mostly fictional characters that are based on real people’s lives and experiences. It illustrates the evacuation of East Prussia in January of 1945, a miserable winter towards the end of WWII when… View more
Aaron Becker’s first wordless picture book, Journey came out in August 2013 and received a Caldecott honor in 2014. There’s a scene in the book near the beginning where the main character, a young girl seemingly unmoved and bored by her life takes a red crayon, draws a door on her wall and ends up… View more
On March 25th this week Third Man Records, the labeled owned by Jack White, released Midwest Farmer’s Daughter, the debut album from Margo Price. It’s getting a lot of buzz this week among critics and Nashville music hawks, and for good reason. Margo Price is originally from Aledo, Illinois; for us in Cedar Rapids that… View more
“That you are here—that life exists, and identity; That the powerful play goes on, and you will contribute a verse.” ― Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass There are humans who conquer literature and humans who conquer science, but it is a rare human who can successfully master both. Paul Kalanithi is one such human. In… View more
The sixth and final season of award-winning costume drama, Downton Abbey, has come and gone. For those of us following the adventures of the Crawley family, Sunday nights have become a bit of a lonely affair. Cast adrift and clutching our teacups, we must now sit back and wait for writer Julian Fellowes to pen… View more
A growing trend in readership and publishing comes in the form of the graphic novel. Perhaps a connection with the film industries penchant for comic book superheros, readers are reaching out for bright colors, bold pictures, and quick interchanges of graphic novels. One should not assume that though the interactions between the characters are brief… View more