Books « CoffeeJitters

Who in this room

by Judy Schwartz Haley

I went straight to the bookstore after I got the “I’m sorry it’s cancer” phone call; surely amongst all the wisdom coded into letters and words, pressed to paper, and bound to books, would be some little snippet that would tell me how to move forward.

Since that day I’ve read a lot of books [...]

Book Review: A Good Hard Look by Ann Napolitano

by Judy Schwartz Haley

Flannery O’Connor was not kind to the characters she created for her stories; they were deeply flawed, and in need of redemption. Ann Napolitano does not spare Flannery of those characteristics in her own novel, A Good Hard Look.

It takes a certain level of confidence to fictionalize the last months of a famous American novelist’s life. [...]

Why Mommy can’t read

by Judy Schwartz Haley

My father built floor to ceiling cupboards along the walls when he closed in the garage of my childhood home. The top shelf of these storage units was four feet from the ceiling, just enough space for a fourth grader to comfortably nest. I would climb to that top shelf with a blanket, [...]

Banned Books Week

by Judy Schwartz Haley

When thinking of banned and contested books, it’s easy to conjure up images of the repression that existed in America during the 1950s. Sure, we’ve all heard of the book burning parties, and we all know that Diary of Anne Frank and Of Mice and Men were banned back in the day.

But [...]