New England has no shortage of historical sites to visit, and if you’re like me, visiting historical homes is a favorite tourist pastime. I always try to scout out any old homes of famous writers, so I was pretty excited that Edith Wharton, one of my favorite authors, once lived in my home state. Located in the Berkshires in Lenox, Massachusetts, is the [...]
Some dogs do great when left alone, but others have a harder time being without their owner throughout the day. Cesar Millan, dog trainer extraordinaire, explains that the separation anxiety your pet feels often results in undesirable behavior. It can also cause your dog to feel depressed. As a solution, Millan created a line of audiobooks for dogs. The point of playing these audiobooks [...]
During my frequent trips to the Waltham Public Library, I noticed a plaque with the name Francis Buttrick on a wall of the brick building. Though I could safely assume that Francis Buttrick was a benefactor of the library, I was curious to learn more about him and the history of the building. Francis Buttrick came to Waltham in 1838 as a carpenter, [...]
I think one of the surest ways to find yourself in a disagreement with someone is by telling them a film adaptation is better than the original book. Of course, it is all a matter of personal opinion, but what films make that unpopular opinion true? Here are some films I feel succeeded the books. Girl, Interrupted: The book lacked so much detail that [...]
Halloween is over, and with it, the sense of mystery and spookiness, but that doesn’t mean we can’t submerge ourselves in a good mystery or crime book! Here are what some of us at PSG have to say about our favorite books and authors when we’re seeking suspense. Nora loves reading mystery novels from classic authors Agatha Christie and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, as [...]
A few weeks ago, I got to meet my favorite author—Patrick Rothfuss. He was doing a book tour to celebrate the release of the tenth anniversary edition of his fantasy novel The Name of the Wind, and made a stop at Brookline Booksmith to do a Q&A session in the store’s basement and a signing upstairs afterwards. I wasn’t able to secure a ticket for [...]
Fall is a great time to curl up with a good book, and it’s no surprise that we love to read at PSG! This week we asked our staff about nonfiction. Here are some of our favorite titles: Nora loves In Cold Blood by Truman Capote. The first nonfiction book that she read and loved, Nora says that the story was enveloping and chilling [...]
Binge-watching TV shows has become a popular hobby and it had me wondering if the same could be done with books. Not just reading one book after another, but reading books written by the same author. I have been reading a lot of work by Stephen King recently. This is partly due to taking a course about him for school, but also because [...]
While authors like Agatha Christie and Stephen King have published dozens of novels, others are known for their publication of a single novel. Emily Brontë, for example, only published Wuthering Heights, and it wasn’t well received until after her death. Critics either judged it very harshly or were unsure how to react to her dramatic romance. Whether Brontë ever intended to publish another [...]
Synesthesia is generally described as a neurological crossover of the senses. Essentially, the stimulation of one sense causes the experience of another. In his autobiography, author Vladimir Nabokov wrote that his synesthesia caused his brain to conjure colors when he heard different letters and sounds. In Nabokov’s Favorite Word is Mauve, data journalist Ben Blatt seeks to learn more about the Russian-American author, as [...]