The Overbooked Bibliophile

Rating:  3.5⭐️ “Firing pottery is like lighting a fire in your heart. There might be something inside that you’re trying your best to ignore, but it’s only by turning your gaze toward it that you can see it clearly.” The Healing Season of Pottery   by  Yeon Somin   (translated by  Clare Richards ) revolves around Jungmin, a young woman on the cusp of thirty who shuts herself away from the rest of the world after she quits her job as a broadcast writer after her disillusionment with her job and work pressure culminate in an emotional breakdown in her workplace. Living alone in a small apartment in Chestnut Burr Village, Jungmin struggles with depression and rarely ventures outside her home. On one of her rare outings, she discovers a pottery studio and gradually, as she begins to connect with the clay she is molding and the other members of the community among whom is an old friend with whom she shares a traumatic history, she also reconnects with herself. “Sometimes it’s the things we

Rating: 4.5⭐️ In  Night Magic: Adventures Among Glowworms, Moon Gardens, and Other Marvels of the Dark, author   Leigh Ann Henion combines scientific facts with her own life experiences, ‘lore and much more as she takes us across the landscape of Appalachia exploring the magical beauty of the nocturnal world and the living creatures that thrive after the sun sets. “Darkness turns familiar landscapes strange, evoking awe by its very nature, in ways that meet people wherever they stand. In Appalachia, as everywhere, night offers a chance to explore a parallel universe that we can readily access, to varying degrees. Nocturnal beauty can be found not only by stargazing into the distant cosmos or diving into the depths of oceans, but by exploring everyday realms of the planet we inhabit.” The author writes beautifully with a reverent appreciation for nature in all its wonder. A running theme in this stressing how artificial light pollution and the use of blue light technology are negativel

  Rating:⭐⭐⭐⭐ A new installment in author  Steve Cavanagh ’s  Eddie Flynn  series is always among my most anticipated reads, so much so that I don’t mind ordering a copy from the UK so as not to wait for the book to become available in the US ( Thank you, Blackwell’s for the getting the book to me a day before UK publication day!). I’ve enjoyed (to varying degrees) all the previous books (including one short story and one novella) in this series and I’m glad to say that the latest installment  Witness 8  is a worthy addition to the lot! Ruby Johnson, a young woman in her twenties, works as a maid and nanny in several houses in an affluent New York neighborhood. Once a resident of the same neighborhood, she is haunted by the events that caused her family’s downfall. She is cunning and perceptive and one night, after witnessing the murder of the wealthy socialite, she decides to use this information and manipulate the truth to further her own agenda. The narrative follows Eddie Flynn and

Rating:⭐⭐⭐⭐ Dan Curran, a rookie journalist at the Castlebridge Gazette, is glad to have been assigned his first investigative piece on Castlebridge Council’s last-minute decision to back out of the sale of a council-owned piece of land known as Abbot’s Meadow to local land developer – a sale that would have been beneficial to the council and the community. As Dan tries to find out the reason behind the committee's decision to not go forward with the sale, he meets with some unexpected obstacles – reports on council meetings that should have been available to the public but access to which has been restricted, a local landscaping company whose interest in the land isn’t above suspicion and certain important people aren’t too happy that Dan is looking into the issue. Aiding Den is his boss, experienced journalist Jack Marston, who sees potential in Dan and Jenny Swan, an accountant who works for the Council and who shares Dan’s suspicions about the committee’s decision. Dan and Jenn

  Rating:  4.5⭐️ I’ve never had the privilege of watching the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, but the 1965 movie based on the same has been a favorite of mine ever since I watched it for the first time at the age of seven. Though I was too young to appreciate the more serious themes, I adored Maria and her dynamic with the Trapp children and loved the music. My father, amused by my enthusiastic renditions of the songs ( I can’t sing to save my life, but when has that ever stopped me?), gifted me a copy of the movie (a VHS tape - this was the 1980’s!) - which became one of my most cherished possessions. As I grew older, and rewatched the movie with friends and family more times than I can remember, I began to appreciate the story, (the knowledge that it was inspired by true events rendered the movie even more special), the characters and the themes addressed in the movie more. I remember a discussion I had with a colleague in the early 2000s that prompted me to read up on the true stor