Love and War Rage in Testament of Youth
“Inspirational stories for the damned” is the label given by one blinded soldier to survival tales like his in Testament of Youth — it’s also an apt description of this rousing, robust adaptation of Vera Brittain’s landmark First World War memoir. Previously adapted by the BBC as a television serial in 1979, Brittain’s 1933 tome has taken decades to …
Read MoreBest-Seller Mysteries for Your Summer Reading
It’s time to gather up mystery fare for the long, lazy days of summer. If you are a fan of Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl, you’ll like two new best sellers. For those attracted to mean-girl protagonists, try Jessica Knoll’s The Luckiest Girl Alive. Ani FaNelli has reinvented herself as a New York magazine writer, boasting a wealthy fiancé and a …
Read MoreJust in Time for Wedding Fever – Five Romantic Proposals
From Amazon.com and Kindle Blog Writers: Just in time for June weddings, Debbie Mason asked five New York Times bestselling contemporary romance writers how their husbands popped the question: Robyn Carr, author of Never Too Late My boyfriend took me on a little canoe outing down a river in Minnesota, in which the mosquito is the state bird. The river was speckled …
Read MoreIf It Was Easy: The Misfires of Marriage
When you said “I do,” you promised you’d stick it out no matter how sick, poor or miserable you got. Now you realize till death do us part is a really long time. Happily ever after? Perhaps a slight exaggeration. Honeymoon is for the roughly half of us still hanging in there, mostly happily. Author Jenna McCarthy presents an uproarious but insightful …
Read More300 Sandwiches Launch a Love Story & Cookbook
“Make me a sandwich!” It’s not the most romantic line a boyfriend can utter to his girlfriend, but that simple “command” sparked a new blog with a very interesting story. Stephanie Smith is a Midwestern girl living in New York City and working as a writer for the New York Post. Not one to back down from a challenge, …
Read More5 Crazy to Cool Gadgets for the Temporarily Single
“Forever alone” is such a daunting phrase, isn’t it? Sure, it’s thrown around occasionally as a joke (because everyone knows you’ll find someone eventually, right?) but it can quickly send you into a frenzy to find “The One.” We all know that process just can’t be rushed (otherwise you might settle for a d-bag), so here is a list …
Read MoreTV’s Bachelor Host Writes The Perfect Letter
It must be those countless number of men and women searching for true love who inspired Chris Harrison to write The Perfect Letter. Harrison has been the host of ABC’s The Bachelor and The Bachelorette since 2003 and has seen his fair share of true love and heartache. A romantic through and through, Harrison decided to create his own version …
Read MorePut Biographies on Your Summer Reading List
By Katherine Sharma I’m a fan of fiction, but I also love biographies and memoirs–from weighty tomes like Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson to slim books heavy with inspiration like I Am Malala by the youngest Nobel Peace Prize-winner Malala Yousafzai, from souffles like Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert to the hard-to-swallow agonies of Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand, from …
Read MoreIn Fiction AND Real Life, Looks Can Thrill
By Katherine Sharma Whether to describe, how to describe and when to describe a character’s physical traits are among the conundrums of fiction writers. Many great writers have provided only minimal clues to a protagonist’s appearance and thus freed the imaginations of readers–who are more interested in a character’s, well, character than eye and hair color–to conjure up images that …
Read More5 Ways to Get Back Out There
By Brianna Porter So you’ve loved and you’ve lost. Or you’ve hated and that’s why you’ve lost, but either way, who is to say you won’t love again? Nobody. (Nobody also says you won’t hate again, but let’s face it, the world is full of schmucks. But I digress.) The thing is, the first thing a friend will tell …
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