Something to talk about

Novelist Meg Wolitzer has a thoughtful essay in yesterday’s New York Times Book Review about women’s literary fiction and how it often is unjustly  relegated to “the second shelf” below books by men. She notes, however, that she is using the term “women’s fiction” to discuss “literature that happens to be written by women,” and not ”a certain [...]

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Destination reading

Sorry I’ve been away so long. The last week or so I’ve been happily hibernating from the heat, eating lemonade bars and getting lost in books.  I motored through Maine and then went south to Folly Beach. Destination reading, so to speak. (I also solved quite a few mysteries along the way, but that’s a future post). J. Courtney Sullivan [...]

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Summer fun fare

Chill out with your favorite cool beverage and a new novel. It’s summer, and hey, readers wanna  have fun. So do the three women in Mary Kay  Andrews’ breezy Summer Rental, who used to channel Cyndi Lauper’s peppy anthem as Catholic schoolgirls in the 1980s. Now Ellis, Julia and Dorie have planned a reunion on  North [...]

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Reading lite

Toss these two novels in the beach bag to share with your mom, sisters, daughters, gal pals. Easy reading that still illuminates the ties of family and friendship. Best-selling romance writer Debbie Macomber’s eighth entry in her Blossom Street series, A Turn in the Road, takes three generations of women from Seattle to Florida on [...]

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Yes to the dress

I’d like to think of my clothes as vintage chic, but, really, they’re just old ordinary. I do have a hat that belonged to my grandmother, its wide brim now more yellow than the original cream. Also a darling if impractical little black Kate Spade purse I discovered on a junking expedition with Cousin Gail. My best find ever is a [...]

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Easy, breezy summertime

Hollywood calls them rom-coms, as in romantic comedies. Publishers label them chick-lit. I’ve always thought of them as beach books, even if I’m reading them in winter. They make me think of sun and porches and peaches and girl-talk. But now it really is summer, and I’ve been downing them like pink lemonade. Jill Murray, the likeable heroine [...]

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Before Sex and the City

Even back when she is a 17-year-old senior at a Connecticut high school circa 1980, Carrie Bradshaw is a budding fashionista, hoping clothes will help define her. “But who am I?” she asks herself as she packs for her college interview at Brown: a beaded ’50s sweater, a plaid skirt, a wide belt, and a [...]

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