Michael Arceneaux, author of I Can't Date Jesus: Love, Sex, Family, Race, and Other Reasons I've Put My Faith in Beyoncé, may be my spirit animal. I can't even tell you how many times I emphatically nodded and shouted "Hell, yeah!" as I read his candid and moving memoir. It's rare that I stumble across a writer whose wry sense of humor so closely matches my own -- or, at least, my own if I had the chutzpah to speak or write about things as...
"Maybe you should talk to someone." How many times have we heard those words, whether uttered jokingly or spoken with complete sincerity? Personally, I've said them lots of times to friends, family, and co-workers. Yeah, I'm that person. Which is why I was immediately intrigued by the title of this book. As a strong advocate of mental health awareness, I subscribe to the theory that everyone should see a therapist -- and, that those protesting...
Happy 2020, Tartlets! Yes, yes, I know that we’ve all been living in the new year for over a month now. Aaaaand that I did an impromptu post in January about my NYC food tour. BUT! This is my first scheduled post of 2020, which means a new year of book and food blogging has officially begun! I can think of no better way to kick off than with my book review of Finding the Gift: Daily Meditations for Mindfulness. It’s no secret that 2019 was...
You guys, I don't know how I'm going to write a concise book review of And Then We Grew Up. I wrote pages and pages of notes as I was reading this fantastic nonfiction book. PAGES, I tell you! Author Rachel Friedman spoke to the art monster within me, and I responded viscerally to everything she said. Friedman had dreams of being a professional violist, but she left them behind when she realized the punishing professional music scene wasn’t...
A little backstory before I get into my review for Smoke Gets In Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory: I actually read this book back in December. After moving three critically acclaimed and wildly anticipated novels into my DNF pile, I was desperate for a good read. So, I decided to go with the wild card and chose the book with "crematory" in the title. In December. At Christmas. After all those bestselling novels had failed me, I...
Are you a blogger? Then you should absolutely, positively, 100% read How to Blog for Profit (Without Selling Your Soul). My husband is wonderfully supportive of my blogging lifestyle, and he bought me this book for Christmas to encourage my dreams of becoming a full-time writer and blogger. After launching the Tart, I quickly learned that there is SO much to learn about the blogging world. Luckily, there are a lot of articles online to help you...
I think the hardest reviews to write are about the books I identify with most strongly. There’s so much to say! While I have all the room in the world to write my thoughts down (it is my blog), I know I have to reel it in so I don’t scare people away with a review that's almost as long as the book itself. However...this post is gonna be a long'un. #sorrynotsorry I usually don’t read nonfiction, apart from travel memoirs, but this “a year...
I hate not finishing a book.
Whenever I start a new book, it has 50 pages to get me hooked, or I put it down. This is my "50 page rule." While some books have come perilously close to the cutoff point, it’s rare that a book actually gets the dubious honor of being put on my Did Not Finish (DNF) list.
With great regret, I inform you that I must place The Road to Little Dribbling in this category.
Mind you, it’s not because the book is awful....
Since becoming homeowners, Husband and I have decided to try our hand at gardening. We have a not-small-and-not-big plot of land, with plenty of yard space on all sides of our house. We are lucky that our home came with beautiful landscaping; stone-lined flower beds abound, and we were excited to see azaleas, rhododendrons, tulips, and lilacs burst into bloom our first spring at the Cottage. As a girl who has been known to inadvertently kill...
