ANIE HART

A Goodreads pile-on can start faster than you can finish chapter one. The book doesn’t even have to be published. It can be as simple as a mention of Israel or a Jewish character, a celebrity you don’t like, or an author who has said or not said something. Judgment happens, context disappears, and within hours the verdict is in. The punishment is one-star reviews flooding the book’s Goodreads…

“She was a smart girl, until she fell in love.” I keep thinking about the scene in Sex and the City where the girls are given a cautionary tale by a woman in the bathroom while they are at an auction of a socialite selling all her jewelry after her husband left her.  This feels like that cautionary tale.  The flags are all red, and I’m sure after writing the book, even Burden can see…

When a young girl gets molested by her pedophile teacher, do we only blame the molestor, or do we as a community share some blame? I found this the most interesting to look into in a multiple pov literary Lolita thriller.  We get inside the mind of the principal that hired him, the parents of a young girl who is one of his victims. Maybe they saw some signs, but were too distracted by their own…

Christina sings us the somber first verse of “true colors” sharing the darkness she went through, and the reason for her sad eyes, how she was made to feel small by abuse. And more abuse. And more abuse. It gets dark. Very dark.  And the way it is written is intimate, as if she’s talking directly to you. She shares passages from her diary from her younger years. So it’s from that younger mind;…

Lena is back with her unyielding honesty and giving us the behind the scenes of her come up, starting with her indie movie Tiny Furniture that led her to the show we all know and love; GIRLS, through the pain of being misunderstood in her previous book, chronic illness, rehab, break ups and moving into healing with this new book. You’ve probably seen the headlines already cherrypicking the…

The pulitzer is shortly about to announce it’s nominees and winners! I am of course mostly looking to see who wins the fiction genre, and while waiting I looked up some stats to see if I could narrow down to a few options. The jury is kept secret to protect the jury from lobbying or any outside pressure, it also gives speculators no information to go on based on jury members taste or…

I read BOTH book 2 and 3 so you don’t have to – and I just watched the The devil wears prada 2, and I have the rundown for you. I will try and not spoil the second movie’s plot (nobody wants this, even if you think you do!), but there will be spoilers of the second book – it is after all COMPLETELY different from the movie. And for the ones that are interested, there’s a small summary of book 3 –…

Twice a year the booker prize chooses books that we end up talking about the whole year. It’s one of the most popular awards and the literary Everest of challenges. Many try to read the longlist, shortlist, winner or in some extreme cases – ALL the qualified books. (There are many! This year I believe there are 186 eligible books.) The judges sure have their jobs cut out for them – but what a…

Jenette McCurdy became a bestseller with her memoir “I’m glad my mom died” and takes the difficult jump from celebrity memoir and into fiction.  McCurdy clearly has a talent for writing and her deadpan humor really shines through. She’s sturdy in her delivery, she knows where she is going and not a single page is wasted. For those complaining about books with long chapters – check this one out –…

Maybe it’s a book club book, a celebrity pick, a new release, and old classic or a movie based on a book about to drop. Here’s some inspiration if you’re feeling stuck. New releases: Call me Ishmaelle by Xiaolu Guo I saw this book on so many book prize speculation lists, but it didn’t make the longlist. Is this the female equivalent to Percival Everetts “James”? Ishmaelle, a young woman from…

If you’re looking to substitute the traditional Thanksgiving for a T.Hanksgiving (for whatever reason) – here are 24 movies with food options for an entertaining last Thursday in November. Here This is a new movie and it looks pretty epic, and there’s a chance not many have seen it yet. There are three eating scenes in the movie, a picnic, a lunch and a holiday dinner including roasted turkey,…

Kevin Federline has been publicly berated, ridiculed and shamed, but has stayed admiringly silent – until now. In his new tell all book K-Fed messes with the timeline, get’s his facts wrong and puts his finger on the scale to get his point across, but the only thing he proves is that he’s one of the guys stating the divorce “came out of nowhere” when even us readers can read between the coke…

Laura Blacklock is a journalist on a boat, the similarities end there. The book opens with our protagonist being robbed in her own home, thus causing her to loose sleep, take anti-anxiety medications and just generally be on the edge. Understandably so, but she also ends up drinking heavily and her status as unreliable narrator is really driven home and walked through the door. In the movie…