Natasha is running out of time. She’s trying to hold her family, and their life in the US, together, and she’s running out of time. Daniel is trying to keep his head down and be a dutiful son, easier said than done when you have the heart of a poet and the planned future of…
Category: 6.5
How Lucky
Daniel lives in Athens, Georgia. He works as a social media manager for a regional airline, mainly dealing with irate football fans on game weekends. He has a loving mother who gives him his space and a best friend who comes over daily. He’s also in a wheelchair. Daniel has a good routine going, a routine that…
The Last Thing He Told Me
Hannah Hall and Owen Michaels have been married one year. One year of love and bliss, in spite of his sixteen-year-old daughter, Bailey, being less than thrilled about her new step-mom. Then one day, Owen disappears and a note is dropped off at their door with three words: ‘keep her safe’. As Owen’s company is accused…
The Lions of Fifth Avenue
It’s 1913 and Laura Lyons, her husband, and their two children have an unusual living accommodation: an apartment cloistered in the newly opened New York Public Library. In 1993, Laura’s granddaughter Sadie Donovan is also at the New York Public Library, but working rather than living amongst the books. Their histories are connected when a series of thefts occur,…
The Jane Austen Society
Don’t let the floral, whimsical cover fool you. The Jane Austen Society handles grief and loss in the same stride that it revels in the work of Austen and marvels in the friendships that are forged around great literature. From an American film star to a taciturn farmer, the Society is comprised of people from…
Franny and Zooey
To get straight to the worst, what I’m about to offer isn’t really a short story at all but a sort of prose home movie, and those who have seen the footage have strongly advised me against nurturing any elaborate distribution plans for it. For anyone who, like me, thought that Franny and Zooey was…
A 2% Christmas
In the holiday spirit of giving, you get not one, but two reviews. So get your coco ready and let’s dive into our festive reads! A Highland Christmas Deep in the Scottish highlands, the people of Lochdubh do not believe in the fanfare and commercialism of Christmas. Police Constable Macbeth is stuck on duty while his…
Deep Work
Making history as the second non-fiction book in a row to grace the 2% newsletter, Deep Work challenges us to reconsider the way we organize our day, how we understand the concept of focus, and how we work. In order to understand how our brains focus and how we can manage time more efficiently, Cal Newport breaks down various…
The Four Winds
I struggle at times to identify the difference between the quality of a book and how I feel reading it, knowing that just because I might not like a topic does not discredit the content itself. The Four Winds epitomized this struggle for me as I try to decide whether or not I “like” a book that focuses…
Anna Karenina
Rather than attempt a comprehensive review of 867 pages in two minutes, my goal is to provide, what I would consider, an accurate and succinct representation of the novel. So for all of the people who think of Anna Karenina as a “Russian tragedy”- this is for you. Given the page length, it’s not surprising that the novel isn’t commonly…