Categories
Interesting

LOVE WANTS US TO WIN

It’s the start of the hockey season in October 1992, and Georgina “Georgie” Law is preparing to spend all her free time at the Gardens, cheering on her beloved Toronto Maple Leafs. Georgie is a high school history teacher who inherited season tickets—and an all-consuming love for the team—from her late father. The Leafs, along […]

Categories
Interesting

WHOSE HOUSE IS THIS?

Each dwelling is a distinctive, unexpected shape. At Lucy’s, there’s a cat silhouetted in one of the round, eyelike windows. “Does [the house] have…ears?” Not only do the attic dormers look just like cat ears, but the lunette over the door evokes a nose and the mailbox has feline features. A cross section shows Peter […]

Categories
Interesting

ANONYMITY

The “Farm” is a former elementary school converted to the campus of a Baptist women’s recovery program. The author, who is Jewish, arrived there when her financial and social support networks disintegrated and she had lost custody of her children. Through flashbacks, Stone reveals that her once-happy life, full of middle-class creature comforts (“soft bed […]

Categories
Interesting

CALIFORNIA INSIDE OUT

Award-winning naturalist, poet, and painter Kaufmann (The California Field Atlas, 2017, etc.) invites readers to redefine stewardship of the earth, by uniting “ecological science, ethical responsibility, and the needs of the human community” with the needs and intelligences of the non-human community. Ethical responsibility is central to an “ecological philosophy” that may lead to “people […]

Categories
Interesting

MINI-MONSTERS IN YOUR BACKYARD

“Kids: Don’t try this at home” warns McGee, depicting earwig hatchlings preparing to chow down on their mom. Matriophagy, though, is just one of the gruesome practices highlighted in this rousing grossfest as the author describes with exaggerated relish how assassin bugs inject their prey with an innards-dissolving poison (“Yum! Cockroach smoothie!”), depicts with crunchy […]

Categories
Interesting

A SERIES OF OPINIONATED ANIMALS

These animals include Monster, a neurologically impaired squirrel who liked to have his best friend, a rabbit, sit on him, to a “militant chicken” named Stephanie who demanded and received obeisance from a German shepherd and a male cat; they also include dogs ranging upward of 75 pounds each who packed into a Toyota Corolla […]

Categories
Interesting

YOU DON’T NEED A SMARTPHONE

Lamm was a young artist, posting her drawings for 200,000 followers on Instagram and successfully monetizing her artwork through brand endorsements and magazine assignments, when she accidentally typed the wrong password and was locked out of her account for several months. That’s when she realized that her career, as she writes in this accessible manifesto, […]

Categories
Interesting

FALLING LIKE SNOW

This stand-alone follow-up to Falling Like Leaves (2025), which centered on Ellis, follows Sloane, who loves wintertime but tries to avoid painful memories of her late father, who shared her enthusiasm for Christmas. Sloane’s mom, the mayor of Bramble Falls, surprises everyone by deciding to capitalize on the town’s popularity—videos of the Falling Leaves Festival […]

Categories
Interesting

REGINA

Historian Williams examines the role of sexism in a thorough look at 3,000 years of female rulers whose power, she writes, is often “erased, compromised and twisted by words and images.” Royal women are either “feted beyond measure as warrior queens, saints or fairy princesses or castigated as monsters, sexual obsessives, feminine failures.” Williams considers […]

Categories
Interesting

BAREFOOT BOOKS SO MANY THINGS

The title says it all: Several hundreds of things are on display here, divided into 17 categories, among them “School Time,” “Sports and Recreation,” and “Household Items.” Each section of this Chilean import contains 30 to 40 items over one or two double-page spreads. Hanisch’s mixed-media depictions are clear, simple, and immensely appealing, each object […]