#BookReview

galpod

Jul 27, 2020
3 min

Book Review - The Vanishing Half

Read this on galpod.com. TL;DR: read this book. Like, right now. I usually try to do a review without spoilers, but I think the great thing about this book is that it’s too rich for me to discuss the early parts alone. So if you haven’t read it, just go and read it. Because it’s probably the best thing I’ve read all year. Now, I’ll create some scrolling space for anyone who DOESN’T want spoilers. THERE ARE SPOILERS BELOW THE PICTURE. This book is ostensibly about a pair of tw

Book Review - Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine

galpod

Jan 13, 2020
2 min

Book Review - Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine

Read this on galpod.com. TL;DR: it's a great book, but be warned, it deals with some difficult issues. I'd finished reading this book early December but have been dithering about the review. On the one hand, the writing is superb. Eleanor's voice is clear and vivid, and she is a funny and relatable character (think Sheldon with an inferiority complex). The observations she makes about modern society are astute and hilarious. There are many times where she comes across as the

galpod

Jul 5, 2019
3 min

Book Review - The War of Art

Read this on galpod.com. I've wanted to read this book for a while now. People talk about how amazing it is and how it changed how they see their art, and so on. It sounded like it was right up my alley. Pressfield does give some fascinating insights. The main one is the idea of Resistance, which I wrote about before. The war of art, according to Pressfield, is fought in the artist's mind, between her internalised fear of change and her soul's need to create and, through crea

galpod

Jun 17, 2019
2 min

Book Review - The Silence of the Girls

Read this on galpod.com. Another book from our reading group, this one I managed to finish on time for last week's meeting. It's a retelling of Homer's Iliad from the point of view of Briseis, a Trojan princess who is taken captive by the Greek and given to Achilles. The book is written in modern language, which I like. English is difficult enough as it is, and reading old language is fine, but I need to know what I'm getting into. So I was glad to see this book didn't requir

galpod

Jun 7, 2019
2 min

Book Review - Inferior

Read this on galpod.com. It took me almost two months to finish this book by Angela Saini. Partly because I read super slow in English and partly because it's non-fiction and that usually takes a little longer. I enjoyed it. Otherwise, I wouldn't have continued reading it. But I felt a little like there's no coherent message. There wasn't a single topic this book was about. It starts with research on brain differences between men and women, moves on to the idea that women had

Book Review - The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock

galpod

May 8, 2019
2 min

Book Review - The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock

Read this on galpod.com. I enjoyed this book very much. I read it for my library reading group, and the discussion was great fun. It tells the story of two people in London in the late 18th century (1785-6, for those of you who, like me, find the century count confusing). The two people are Mr Jonah Hancock, a merchant, middle-class white man who stumbles upon a mermaid, and Angelica Neal, a high-class prostitute whose benefactor passed away and she must now re-establish hers

Book Review - The Creative Curse and The Unstoppable Creative

galpod

Mar 21, 2019
3 min

Book Review - The Creative Curse and The Unstoppable Creative

Read this on galpod.com. I'm reviewing both books together because I got them together through Todd's very generous deal. I also read them one after the other on purpose because I knew they were related. That said, there's no requirement to read them together or even to read both of them. I would say that if you only read one, read The Unstoppable Creative, as it's a more comprehensive and detailed version of The Creative Curse, at least in my opinion. Here's the thing. I thi

galpod

Mar 7, 2019
2 min

Book Review: Mr Loverman

Read this on galpod.com. I was excited when my reading group chose this book. It looked intriguing and different. First of all, a WOC author, which is always good. As Celeste Headlee says, if you want to know the truth, listen to women of colour. Second, it's about a 74-year-old Antiguan-born Brit's journey of revealing to his family (wife, daughters, and grandson) his same-sex 50-year-long affair with his childhood sweetheart. Right up my alley. I got my copy after we return

galpod

Jan 14, 2019
2 min

Book Review - Atomic Habits

Read this on galpod.com. I started reading James Clear's Atomic Habits before the Christmas break and finished it last week. It's possible that my feeling that this is a collection of blog posts held together by anecdotes stems from my intermittent (at best) reading of it. And I've read it during particularly difficult weeks, so I may have been less kind because of it. That doesn't negate the fact that you'd do well to just go onto James Clear's website instead of buying the

galpod

Nov 21, 2018
2 min

Book Review - The Gifts of Imperfection

Read this on galpod.com. I love Brené Brown. I do. I fell in love with her when I saw her first TED talk, in which she talks about being vulnerable and living and loving with your whole heart. The ideas in the book are pretty much the same; it's an expansion of this talk, really. The book had made me think about all kinds of stuff. Some I had already written about, some I'd like to write about, but I'm still trying to find the words. Generally, it's a good book. It's hard for

galpod

Nov 8, 2018
3 min

Book Review - A Gentleman in Moscow

Read this on galpod.com. As I mentioned before, my reading group convenes every month. For October we read A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles, a book that is definitely on the "literary" side. What does that mean? For me, it means that the use of language is a feature in its own right, including imaginative use of metaphors and a crafting of sentences that is often poetic. The book takes place almost exclusively in the Metropol hotel in Moscow and is told solely from the po

galpod

Nov 2, 2018
2 min

Book Review - Sisterland

Read this on galpod.com. My incredible reading group read this book in September. I'm telling you this because I don't think I would ever have picked this book up on my own. One of the ladies in the reading group recommended it and said that it spoke to her because she's a twin, so we decided to give it a go. Generally, it is an interesting book. I mean, I read all 400 pages of Sisterland in about two and a half weeks, so it definitely kept me engaged and interested. I connec

Book Review - A General Theory of Oblivion

galpod

Sep 27, 2018
3 min

Book Review - A General Theory of Oblivion

Read this on galpod.com. I joined a reading group at the local library. It runs every month on a Friday afternoon, and I bring the age average down significantly. That is to say, most people there are retirees, which makes sense because who else has time to go to a reading group that runs on Friday afternoons? Me. I have time. It's one of the perks of being a full-time #WriterMom. So, last month we read a book called A General Theory of Oblivion, which is ostensibly about a P

galpod

Aug 3, 2018
2 min

Book Review - Nomadland

Read this on galpod.com. I'll start from the end: if you are interested at all in contemporary culture in the US, you need to read this book. A couple of weeks ago, as you may remember, I had a breakthrough with the novel I'm currently working on. There's a character who was supposed to be a relatively minor character, but following my breakthrough, he's going to be a much more significant character. I wanted this character to be homeless, for all sorts of reasons, but that d

Book Review - Self-Editing for Fiction Writers

galpod

Jul 19, 2018
2 min

Book Review - Self-Editing for Fiction Writers

Read this on galpod.com. Unsurprisingly, I'm reading a lot of books about writing lately. I consider it to be an investment, and these books help me a lot. This book was no exception. It's useful and clear and gets the point across. It's a manual. Most of the advice in it I don't think should wait for editing. I know that when I write, I try to write well on the first go. Sure, there will be edits later, but I don't expect to have to re-write the majority of the book. So I co

Book Review - A Little History of Philosophy

galpod

Jul 6, 2018
2 min

Book Review - A Little History of Philosophy

Read this on galpod.com. When I was doing my PhD, reading a nonfiction book for fun was out of the question. I had to read so many academic articles that I had no brain power left to read at all, let alone contemplate complex ideas. Not that writing fiction and learning about writing doesn't require brain power, but it needs a lot less brain power than academic papers. So now, I get to read nonfiction for fun. This book is a brief history of philosophy. It contains 40 concise

galpod

Jun 29, 2018
3 min

Book Review - The Milestones

Read this on galpod.com. I read far quicker in Hebrew than I do in English. Hebrew is my first language, after all, and it's just much easier for me. So when my page count is down, I take a book in Hebrew to read in bed. I usually get in my 20 pages if I do that. The title of the book I read last week translates into "The Milestones". It sounds awkward in Hebrew as well. This book review is going to contain much of my translations from Hebrew to English, and I'm not a profess

galpod

Jun 3, 2018
2 min

Book Review - Zen in the Art of Writing

Read this on galpod.com. Ray Bradbury was first and foremost a poet. At least, that's my conclusion based on this book. In this book, he writes beautiful words, and he doesn't flinch from the truth. Which is the basic definition of a poet, right? There are some excellent quotes in this book. I already listed my favourites. Bradbury dispenses advice and talks about the process of writing. He talks about inspiration and where it comes from. He talks about the process he went th

galpod

May 18, 2018
2 min

Book Review - The Creative Habit

Hello! I'm experimenting with blogging every day. Because I'm very new to this, I need your help. Please take a minute to drop me a line and let me know what you think. I will post stories, thoughts, and possibly recipes (if I'm having an off day). Here's the post for today. As I mentioned a few times, I recently read The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp. It was highly recommended to me by several people online and using habits to advance my goals have worked well for me in the

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