Las Cruces can fly under the radar sometimes, but it’s a beautiful place well deserving of your travel time, whether it’s a quick weekend destination or a stop on a longer road trip. Tucked in the scenic Mesilla Valley and bounded by the impressive Organ Mountains, Las Cruces offers great…
When Sabrina first brought up her idea for her “Is Anyone Out There? How Literature Reaches Across Space and Time” article, she presented it to me initially as a musing on literature as communication across time. Me being me, my brain took it down a similar but different path than…
There is something deeply human about seeing a horizon and wanting to go beyond it. We are curious creatures. We want to know what’s out there. Our fingers are always itching toward the blank edges of the map. And when we can’t go there ourselves, there are other ways to…
As someone who is a mood reader and slightly obsessive with books, I find myself falling into slumps periodically. There are numerous methods out there to get out of a reading slump, but a particularly fun one is to try a reading challenge! As I am currently in a bit…
It is currently halfway through October, making it prime Spooky Season in my eyes. I haven’t read as many seasonally appropriate books as I’d like, though. The books listed in “20+ Books That Are Perfect for Autumn: 2025 Edition” are only a tiny fraction of the fall books on my…
There is a special place in my heart for books that open my eyes to perspectives I’ve never seen before and make me think deeper. Without a doubt, this book is one of those. Having grown up in the Southern US and gone to public school, I was taught the…
Road trips were a staple of my childhood, with annual (at least) 12-hour drives to visit family. We listened to a lot of music — I still remember the first few songs of my dad’s favorite road trip playlist — but we also listened to audiobooks. And by “we,” I…
Merriam-Webster defines perfectionism as “a disposition to regard anything short of perfection as unacceptable.”1 The expression of that can vary depending on the individual. I have been a self-diagnosed perfectionist for as long as I can remember, and it has showed itself in various areas of my life. With reading,…
I’ve been reading for as long as I can remember. My parents still love to tell the story of when they got a call from my concerned kindergarten teacher because, instead of playing with the other children, I would spend recess sitting against the fence and reading every day. As…
About five years ago, I was leaving a local coffee shop and saw what looked to be a large birdhouse with a glass door, filled with books. I saw a plaque that said it was a Little Free Library and told me to “Take a book. Leave a book.” I…