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Locals Only: California Skateboarding 1975-1978 – Book Review
The world of skateboarding is something that many kids from the late 1980’s and up until present day are at least some what associated with. Skating celebrities like Tony Hawk have mainstreamed the sport, turning it into video games and entertainment. However, skateboarding did not begin with the 80’s or even with the grunge movement…
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Biophilic Cities: Integrating Nature into Urban Design – A Review
The world unto itself is a work of art, with its natural beauty and majestic landscapes. Too often, modern society tends to forget the world we live in, failing to preserve the beauty that we were given from the beginning. Biophilic Cities explores the importance of incorporating wilderness and nature in our urban lives. City living makes…
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Book Review: The Swan Thieves
Elizabeth Kostova was first published in 2005 with her best-selling historical vampire thriller, The Historian. Today, there are more than 1.5 million copies in print and a Sony film adaptation is in the works. Much like that novel, Kostova sets up The Swan of Thieves. The Artist and the Academic Here, Kostova creates a central, academic hero that becomes…
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Book Review: The Botticelli Secret
Steeped in the turmoil of the non-unified Italy of the 1400’s, Marina Fiorato skillfully weaves a detailed and evasive mystery around one of Botticelli’s more famous paintings, Primavera or Allegory of Spring. The painting is packed with meaning alone, but Fiorato takes the painting to an entirely new level in her book, The Botticelli Secret. Primavera Painted in 1482, the Primavera was…
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Book Review: The Women
Many creative geniuses have a torrid past with the women that loved them. Pablo Picasso and Jackson Pollock are just two examples. However, in T.C. Boyle’s The Women, he focuses on the madness and the passion that engulfed much of famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright’s life. The Four Women T.C. Boyle brings to life Frank Lloyd…
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Book Review: The Sidewalk Artist
A blocked writer, unhappy with her life and relationship takes off for a Parisian vacation. It is there that Tulia Rose encounters beautiful chalk drawings of some of Raphael’s most beautiful and famous creations of cherubs and light. The chalk drawings’ artist Raffaello, intrigues Tulia. She quickly finds herself asking if she loves him? Or…
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The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton
Edging out the 9th spot on my 100 book challenge is Jessie Burton’s The Miniaturist. I bought this book at Heathrow airport to read in 2014 when we were headed home from our big Euro-trip. I wound up being allergic to the person in front of me on the plane. I seriously still would like to…
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Into the Wild & The Wild Truth
I found Into the Wild when I was going through the last breakup I would have before I would meet my future husband. The end of the that relationship was awful, but it also made me view a lot of what my dating life had been like up until that point. I loved toxic relationships, I…
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Stephen King’s IT
As a child of the 80’s and 90’s, I was pretty much like a lot of children of my generation– I grew up watching creepy dark comedies and shows like Are You Afraid of the Dark? Which at the time, were super scary to me and to this day, I can not forget the Melissa Joan Hart…
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100 Book Challenge
For lent, I decided that I want to do something that helps me grow rather than giving up diet coke for the umpteenth time. I decided to give up some of my lazy free time. I’ve set a goal of reading 100 books by January as my wish for lent. (300 pages will equal 1 book).…
