• Personal

    Houston Relief Effort

    Featured image: (Courtesy of National Geographic) The flooding of Houston after Hurricane Harvey. Photo by Marcus Yam of the Los Angeles Times.  As I’m sure you know, Houston, Texas was hit by Hurricane Harvey last week, and the devastation was astounding. The largest amount of destruction came from heavy, lasting rains leading to flooding in many areas, which in turn, has left many people stranded in shelters, homeless until further notice. As some of you may know, many members of my family live in Houston. Some of them were actually in Florida at the time, and they were unable to travel home until this week. Others were fortunate enough to…

  • Top 5 Wednesday

    Top 5 Wednesday: Character Tropes

    This weeks Top 5 Wednesday is all about character tropes, which are overused themes in books you can’t help but still love. Here we go! 1. Female protagonists. You have to admit, there are a lot of books, especially YA books, with female leads. And that’s great — I love them (hence why they are on this list) — but I understand how readers can get a little sick of reading about the dorky girl who got the guy. Books included in this: “Anna and the French Kiss”, “Divergent”, and anything by Sarah Dessen. 2. The human best friend to the superhuman/something other than human best friend. This is pretty typical is…