Mikaela's Musings

           When I read Madeline Miller’s first book, The Song of Achilles, a few years ago, I realized I had discovered a skilled writer who was well-versed in one of my favorite topics: Greek mythology.  With this in mind, when I came acr...

            From the little my manager relayed about George Saunders’ Lincoln in the Bardo –that it was a book about the death of Lincoln’s son Willie and containedhistorical evidence about the Civil War and fictional narratives centered around Willie – I was intrigued...

             Tara Westover’s memoir, Educated, is the next book that everyone will be talking about – that is, unless they’re already talking about it. The memoir covers the trajectory of Westover’s own story, beginning with her...

             I discovered The Last Tudor by the British author, Philippa Gregory (author of The Other Boleyn Girl), in an airport bookstore in Spain.  It caught my attention as the most interesting looking book written in English...

            I’ve grown to love Fredrik Backman’s books.  Whether it’s the jaded Ove in A Man Called Ove or the creative and grammar-savvy Elsa in My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry, Backman’s characters always convey his seaml...

       On a break from reading memoirs, I came across John Grisham’s best-selling Camino Island.  Given that Grisham’s novel promised to deal with a daring heist of five original F. Scott Fitzgerald manuscripts from Princeton University, a charismatic bo...

Smile and sing in the morning; Enjoy now; You’re happy if you think you are; Be you.

            I picked up The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin at my public library.  One of my best friends knows me well, and she su...

        I started reading Hungry Heart: Adventures in Life, Love, and Writing by Jennifer Weiner because my mom suggested it.  According to her, the book had “something in it for everybody.”  At first I was skeptical.  How could Ms. Weiner have enough in...

1) Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë 

2) One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez

3) The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown

4) The Mask of Apollo by Mary Renault

5) Washington Square by Henry James

6) Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell

1) A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman (see also My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry)

2) All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

3) The Warrior Heir series by Cinda Williams Chima

4) The Little Paris Bookshop by Nina George

5) The Starcrossed books by Jo...