May 2025 - Alison Ver Halen

How to Build a Boat

When your community rejects you, you build your own community.

Is it possible to feel embarrassed at an awkward encounter even after you’ve lost the last shred of your dignity?

I love a romance novel that addresses how awful dating can be, even as it provides a reason to keep doing it.

When someone keeps appearing and disappearing, does that mean there’s something prompting those corporeal changes?

This book is about the best and worst of human relationships and I adored every minute of it.

Worst case, I could get food someone else had thrown away. Best case, I could get someone to help me out.

This book is fine as a brief history of Silicon Valley and Swisher’s career, but I wouldn’t call it a must-read.

A cheap, plastic toy hardly seems like adequate thanks for a blanket, but sometimes it’s enough to give what you can.

What sells books? Sex and violence! Also diplomacy, riches, more sex, and more violence.