GREAT READS

Beautifully written and intricately layered, Russian Winter is the story of a woman who tries to forget her past, and the people who won't let her. A wonderful find for lovers of literary historical fiction, particularly people who enjoyed Kate Morto...

While many welcome Spring by cleaning closets and planting flowers, I have the peculiar habit of celebrating the season change by bringing out my blues collection. Winter is too gloomy for the honey-why-do-you-leave-me's and the one-shoe-blues, but S...

This movie makes me laugh every time I watch it. After a painfully long guitar solo and a failed stage dive, Dewey Finn (Jack Black) has been kicked out of his rock band, No Vacancy. With no aspirations other than being a rock god, Dewey resigns hims...

I've always felt like I might be a bit of a geek, but now I have objective evidence: I have read a 461-page reference book from cover to cover. In my defense, the book - Genealogy Online by Elizabeth Powell Crowe - is jam-packed with useful informati...

This film is beautiful. It's sweet, simple, whimsical, charming, creative, visually stunning, and quintessentially French.

Amélie Poulain leads a rich insular life. Her imagination is vivid, and her admiration of simple diversions carries her...

If you could erase painful memories from your brain, would you do it?

This is the premise of one of my absolute favorite films, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. After a terrible fight with her boyfriend Joel (Jim Carrey), Clementine (Kate Wins...

Simply, this cookbook rocks. If your crock pot is collecting dust, it's time to get it ready for some serious cooking.

When I get home from work, the last thing I want to think about is preparing dinner. I enjoy cooking when a) it can be accomplishe...

When I read or watch TV, I'm a quiet, calm person. You won't hear me yelling at the TV or breathing a sigh of relief when an ill-fated situation goes well. But this memoir was so shocking that my mouth was dry, so troubling that I audibly agonized ov...

Edgar Award-winning John Hart’s The Last Child is not your average thriller. It’s an atmospheric story of complex heroes, unusual events, and the strength and weakness of the human spirit, all told with an intriguing spiritual undercurren...

I'm not a historical fiction reader. The possibility of believing something that isn't quite true or learning about people that didn't exist irks me. But when I saw that Alison Weir -- the scholar responsible for several (factual) Tudor history books...

The predecessor to America's hit comedy of the same name, BBC's "The Office" is an inside look into Wernham Hogg, a fictional paper company in Slough, England. Filmed in mockumentary fashion, cameramen chronicle the daily dramas of a small office of ...

Forget what you think you know about Stephen King. I bet you've looked at his picture, his brooding, peculiar expression, and thought, "So this is what a disturbed man looks like. How does he come up with such twisted, horrifying plotlines?" Perhaps ...

What started as a casual I-can-take-it-or-leave-it interest in this show has turned into a full-blown obsession. It would be embarrassing for me to admit the length of marathons I've fit into my schedule to watch the adventures and misadventures of K...

If you had twenty minutes to come up with approximately $50,000 to save someone's life, could you do it?

This is the premise of German film Run Lola Run, winner of 26 awards. Lola receives a frantic phone call from her boyfriend Manni who has just l...

On the streets of West Germany, 15-year-old Michael Berg finds his life irrevocably changed. Hanna Schmitz, a 36-year-old tram conductor, discovers him doubled over in sickness in front of her apartment and decides to escort him home. After his healt...

My love affair with Chilean poet Pablo Neruda started right around the time I saw this film. I was in high school then, and I was just beginning to appreciate that artfully crafted poetry knows no cultural, language, or age boundaries. Neruda's was r...

Imagine a group of elderly men and women coming together to sing. What are they singing? Where are they singing? Yes, it's true; I am trying to trick you into creating a stereotype of a choir singing "Come Thou Fount" to pews of church-goers. But wha...

Coffee table book At Home with Books is for you if you meet one or more of the following criteria: you cannot find your coffee table because you have too many stacks of books; you find yourself buying books at grocery stores, thrift stores, bookstore...

Lenin once said that he could not listen to music because it moved him to be sweet and silly instead of mercilessly violent, a necessary trait to achieve a socialist state. So sets the tone for Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's remarkable film, The ...

Gorgeous and inspiring, Annie Dillard's The Writing Life is a memoir that hands the pen to the aspiring writer and whispers it into movement. Both story and instruction, Dillard encourages the reader-cum-writer with the same signature delicacy and po...

Fans of psychological thrillers and mysteries will love sinking their teeth into Patricia Highsmith's noir classic Strangers on a Train. At the top of his career and deeply in love with the woman of his dreams, Guy Haines is taking the train to reque...

Art Spiegelman's Maus: A Survivor's Tale is the only book in recent memory that had me up all night turning pages. This Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel masterfully captures both the devastation and the hope that characterized the pligh...