Reading, Writing, and Me

This week I want to welcome author Claire Bartlett to the blog to talk about the fascinating history of fairy tales throughout culture and how they play a role in her new book, The Winter Duke  (out March 3). I've been a huge fan of fairy tales my entire life (I even wrote a giant paper on the Brothers Grimm for a school project once), so it was so much fun to read about the history of a couple tales that Claire uncovered in her research. If you missed the last time Claire was on the blog to promote her debut, you can find that post here . I always wanted to write a fairy tale retelling, and it only makes sense to me now that I'd combine fairy tale, history and fantasy to create  The Winter Duke.  Fairy tales have long been intertwined with history, and in fact it's now estimated that fairy tale tropes go back thousands of years, being retold and reworked to fit audiences. Many of them were somewhat cemented in the public mind after being written down by the Grimms,...

Reckless Daughter  by David Yaffe Overall: 3.5 I wasn't sure what to expect when I picked up this biography of famous musician, Joni Mitchell. I haven't heard a lot of her music, and I didn't know anything about her life story at the time. After reading Serving The Servant , though, I was inspired to read more biographies of musicians. Going in, I only knew that Taylor Swift had referenced Blue many times in her journals and Harry Styles had gone on a quest to find the woman who made Joni Mitchell's dulcimer so he could play one on his new song "Canyon Moon". I wanted to learn more about the person who made such an impact on two of my favorite artists. It's taken me a while to figure out how to write and frame this review since I finished the book with such mixed feelings. Tackling it from a purely writing prospective, I feel like the pacing and distribution of story could have been better. When I started it, I was hooked. I really enjoyed the writin...