I finished Theo of Golden late one night and did what you do when a book gets under your skin: I went looking for more of the man who wrote it. I found out Allen Levi had been a lawyer, then a judge, before laying it all down to write songs. So, I went hunting
What if the only way to set your daughter free was to pretend she was never your daughter at all? That’s the choice this book is built on, and the hardest part is that it’s real. In Afghanistan there’s an old custom – bacha posh – where a family with no sons can raise one
the pearl that broke its shell: a hundred years, two women, one unbreakable spirit Read More »
I finished this book angry. I am still angry. I think I am supposed to be. Virginia Roberts Giuffre died in April 2025, at forty-one, before this book was published. She left it behind and said, without any ambiguity, that she wanted it published anyway. So the voice speaking to you across every page is
The Voice that refused to be silent: a review of nobody’s girl by virginia giuffre Read More »
“I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice — not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother’s death, but because he is the reason I believe in God; I am a Christian because of Owen
The Kind of book that changes something in you: A Prayer for Owen Meany Read More »
I put off reading this book for an embarrassingly long time. Part of it was the Pulitzer Prize. I know that sounds backwards, but prize-winning novels have burned me before; I’ve picked up too many celebrated books that felt more like homework than reading, more like enduring than experiencing. Impressive sentences in service of nothing
All the Light We Cannot See Read More »
On Khaled Hosseini’s trilogy, the choices we can’t undo, and the uncomfortable truth that family is both the wound and the bandage. I’ve read all three of Khaled Hosseini’s books multiple times. The Kite Runner, A Thousand Splendid Suns, And the Mountains Echoed. I know how they end. I know which pages will wreck me.
The Books That Know What I’ve Done Read More »
Here are the shifts that transformed me from someone who read maybe 5 books a year to someone who now reads 50+: 1. Stop treating reading like homework. You see you’re allowed to DNF (did not finish) books. You’re allowed to skim the boring parts. You’re allowed to read the ending first if you want.
10 Reading Tips That Changed How I Read (And How Much I Read) Read More »
On loving The Alchemist at twenty-two, questioning it at thirty-eight, and learning that growth isn’t betrayal. I gave The Alchemist to someone I loved when I was twenty-two, convinced it would change their life the way I was certain it had changed mine. They handed it back three days later and said it felt like a greeting
We Don’t Owe Books Our Loyalty Read More »
The heartbreaking “Math” of ‘When Breath Becomes Air’ and why we should stop playing it safe. I find myself returning to this photograph again and again. Paul Kalanithi, forty pounds lighter than he was before cancer, skeletal and exhausted, cradling his newborn daughter in hands that once performed brain surgery. They are both breathing. One
Why Paul Kalanithi Chose Fatherhood While Facing Death Read More »
I bought Theo of Golden because one of my friends wouldn’t stop talking about it. She wasn’t recommending it exactly; that would have been easier to ignore. She just kept circling back to a character named Theo who’d made her reconsider what kindness actually costs. About how a book with almost no plot had somehow become one
Theo of Golden: The Quiet Revolution of Kindness in a Small Town Read More »