Reading, Writing, and Me

Conversations on Love  by Natasha Lunn Overview: Natasha Lunn explores every avenue she can think of where love comes into the picture. There are essays on dating, on being single, on being in bad relationships that you deeply wish were good. There are essays on marriage and partnership and standing by someone through massive life changes and grief. There are essays on the power of parental love and sibling love and an appreciation of family, if you were lucky enough to be blessed with a good one. There are essays on friendships, why they're so undervalued in society, and how we change that. And she does address the parts of love that we don't often talk about – how having loved usually means enduring pain or grief or loss. There are essays about losing parents and siblings and partners. She delves into the multifaceted loves that unfold parallel and the love that sometimes blossoms during grief. Lunn investigates grief in a deep, thorough manner that makes you think about the ...

Ellipses  by Vanessa Lawrence  Overview: Lily is working at a glossy magazine at the fever pitch of print capitulating to digital and influencers filling a hole journalists once held. All she ever wanted was to be a writer, but as her dream job gets less and less dreamy, she starts looking for other avenues. A chance meeting with a beauty mogul offers an exciting mentee opportunity for Lily, but her relationship with the eccentric Billie might actually do more harm than good. Overall: 4 Characters: 4 I like Lily and her girlfriend and friends that fill out her world. It's hard not to like Lily, though, as we don't actually know all that much about her. We mostly follow her career struggles as a hardworking but unappreciated writer. She struggles with self-confidence and taking the reins of her life, and she's at a career juncture that's hard to work through. There's a reason that Billie's decisive soundbites of advice are so appealing to Lily, a woman who seemin...

This anniversary always creeps up on me, but Google Domains was kind enough to remind me that today was the day in 2017 that I purchased the domain name to make my blog official. I'm pretty sure I started with a .blogspot URL that I kept for a few days before making the switch, but, in my head, March 18th is the day this blog was born. While my parents thought it was great that I was entertained over spring break week and that it might look good on a college application down the line (I was an 8th grader at the time), no one expected me to stick with it much past the original break. I'm a quitter. I fully acknowledge that. I'll stand behind the merits of trying and quitting until the day I die, but Reading, Writing, and Me is something I've never quit and honestly can't imagine giving up. Sure, we've had our extended breaks, but I've never retired it for good or even come close. And I'm so glad I still have it today. In three years, I'll be celebrati...