I took my very first trip to England last summer to visit my longtime friend and pen pal, Alex. Since she and I have similar interests—reading, writing and pleasing aesthetics—it was only fitting that she would introduce me to the coolest bookstore I’ve ever been to: Barter Books. Located in Alnwick Station in Northumberland, Barter Books is a secondhand bookstore where over 350,000 books [...]
When it comes to popular TV, book adaptations are in the spotlight. So if you’re a bookworm like me, there’s a chance one of your literary favorites is headed for the small screen. Be on the lookout for these adaptations of well-loved books! The Handmaid’s Tale Margaret Atwood’s bestselling novel was turned into an award-winning TV series last year. It did so well with [...]
Growing up in the ’80s, I was a huge Celtics fan. With the (original) Big Three in their prime, the Celtics were perennial playoff contenders, winning three championships. But the end of that decade brought heartache for 13-year-old me when Red Auerbach traded my favorite player, Danny Ainge, in February 1989. Given to displays of teenage melodrama, I, along with my best friend, [...]
The holiday season may claim to be “the most wonderful time of the year,” but for me and many Bostonians, that distinction belongs to the first week in June. Since 1983, the Jimmy Fund has sponsored the Scooper Bowl® to raise money for cancer research and care. For three days from noon to eight o’clock, the fundraiser dishes out unlimited ice cream to visitors who [...]
When I think back to the most vivid food descriptions of my reading career, it doesn’t take long for Suzanne Collins’s Hunger Games trilogy to come to mind. As the title suggests, food plays a major role in the plot and is symbolic throughout the book. In the next installment of my literary recipes series, I cook up some Capitol-inspired cuisine! In one [...]
You’ve probably heard some of the popular US superstitions: don’t step on a crack or you’ll break your mother’s back, knock on wood, don’t walk under ladders and avoid broken mirrors. But across the world, there are some very different superstitions! In South Korea, it’s believed that sleeping with a fan on can kill you! This superstition is so ubiquitous that many Korean fans [...]
I’m always stunned when the actors who portray my favorite characters on screen are revealed as writers. We previously published a blog post about popular Hollywood actors turned poets and novelists, but the list is still growing—and fast! Here are some actors turned authors whose work I can’t wait to read. Seeing as B. J. Novak wrote for The Office as well as acted in it (and [...]
Laws are important and should always be followed, of course, but every US state has at least one law that at first reading you wouldn’t think was actually real. I gathered some of the craziest sounding laws in New England for a sampling. Republican Representative Max Abramson filed a repeal for this law after it won a contest for “New Hampshire’s Dumbest Law”—a 40-year-old ban [...]
What are you looking forward to this summer? The warmth? The sunshine? The beach? Of course all three, but you should also be looking forward to movies! I’ve assembled a list of this summer’s most anticipated movies. Avengers: Infinity War (April 27, 2018) Infinity War has outsold the previous seven Marvel movies combined in pre-sale tickets, making it by far the most anticipated superhero movie of all [...]
Ever since I purchased my first collection of Sylvia Plath poems in high school, I have been absolutely entranced by the lyrical prose and verses of New England native Sylvia Plath. My copy of her unabridged journals has been loved to near tatters, and I’ve even been known to pay casual visits to her childhood home whenever I find myself in the Jamaica [...]