For no good reason, my habit is to create a summer TBR pile. Already being in possession of a TBR pile which I have zero chance of seeing the bottom of unless I live to be well past one hundred and I never buy a book again (the first condition is statistically unlikely and the second laughably impossible), I have no need of a summer TBR pile. Yet every summer, I create a new pile of books to read when I am outside. (I have written before about my love of reading outside. As I

I write the blog Floriography for the ecommerce site birthdayblossoms.com. It will not surprise you to know that the subject of most of my posts is flowers, and when it isn’t flowers specifically, it is generally botanical in nature. But I do manage to work in books, mostly because I can’t resist. I love literature too much to not talk about it, even when I am talking about flowers. June’s birth month flower is the rose, so that was the subject of my most recent post. I talk

Can a reader like a novel when he or she does not like the main characters or the plot? I was compelled to consider this question on completion of my book club’s April selection, The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai. The book came with the imprimatur of the literary community – shortlisted for the 2025 Booker Prize, fawning and starred reviews in major publications, respectable ratings on Good Reads and Amazon, and President Obama put it on his list of favorite b