It’s always frustrated me it took women so long to gain the vote. More than a dozen countries gave us the right to vote before the United States; that’s mind-boggling to me. I’d like to think I would have been a suffragist back in the day, but I’m a sissy. The leaders of the movement—including Alice Paul, Maud Malone, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Lucy Burns, and Jane Adams—risked life and limb to secure passage of the 19th Amendment to the US Constitution. I was excited to read this novel and learn more about the women’s suffrage movement in the United States, but what I got was a boring book by an […]
Read more...Category Archives: Book Reviews
Songs in Ursa Major Book Review
The year is 1969, and the Bayleen Island Folk Fest is abuzz with one name: Jesse Reid. He is poised to tip from fame to legend with this one headlining performance until his motorcycle crashes on the way to the show. Jane Quinn is a Bayleen Island local whose music flows as naturally as her long blond hair. When she and her bandmates are asked to play in Jesse Reid’s place at the festival, it almost doesn’t seem real. But she plants her bare feet on the Main Stage and delivers the performance of a lifetime. A star is born. Jesse stays on the island to recover from his near-fatal […]
Read more...
The Collective – A Dark Thriller by Alison Gaylin
If there ever comes a day when we can’t be together, keep me in your heart. I’ll stay there forever. ~ Alison Gaylin, The Collective Camille Gardner is a grieving—and angry—mother who, five years after her daughter’s death, is still obsessed with the privileged young man she believes to be responsible. When her rash actions attract the attention of a secret group of women—the collective— Camille is drawn into a dark web where these mothers share their desire for justice in a world where privilege denies accountability and perpetrators emerge unscathed. Fueled by mutual rage, these women orchestrate their own brand of justice through precise, anonymous, complexly plotted and perfectly […]
Read more...
Creatures of Habit
“So how do you know if you are self-centered? Ask yourself if these things are true in your life: Do you often become defensive? Do you blame everyone else for your problems? Do you have a hard time cooperating with others at work? Are your conversations usually about yourself?” ~ Steve Poe, Creatures of Habit. In Creatures of Habit, Pastor Steve Poe helps Christians identify and break free from the destructive patterns that are keeping them from the joy-filled, flourishing life Jesus promised. True transformation is God’s work—our job is to listen, obey, and put into practice what he’s already directing us to do. Steve Poe has been a pastor […]
Read more...
All That We Carried
“Always being on guard against what might happen to you seems like kind of an exhausting way to live. When you block out the possibility of bad surprises, don’t you lose the possibility of good surprises too?” ~ Erin Bartels, All That We Carried Ten years ago, sisters Olivia and Melanie Greene were on a backcountry hiking trip when their parents were killed in a car accident. Over the years, they grew apart, each coping with the loss in her own way. Olivia plunged herself into law school, work, and an atomistic view of the world—what you see is what you get, and that’s all you get. Melanie dropped out […]
Read more...
J. P. Morgan’s Personal Librarian
In her twenties, Belle da Costa Greene is hired by J. P. Morgan to curate a collection of rare manuscripts, books, and artwork for his newly built Pierpont Morgan Library. Belle becomes a fixture on the New York society scene and one of the most powerful people in the art and book world, known for her impeccable taste and shrewd negotiating for critical works as she helps build a world-class collection. But Belle has a secret, one she must protect at all costs. She was born not Belle da Costa Greene but Belle Marion Greener. She is the daughter of Richard Greener, the first Black graduate of Harvard and a […]
Read more...
Not for the Faint of Heart
Leigh Coulton has worked hard to build what looks like a normal life. She has a good job as a defense attorney, a daughter doing well in school, and even her divorce is relatively civilized – her life is just as unremarkable as she’d always hoped it would be. Then a case lands on her desk – defending a wealthy man accused of rape. It’s the highest profile case she’s ever been given – a case which could transform her career if she wins. But when she meets the accused, she realizes it’s no coincidence that he’s chosen her as his attorney. She knows him. And he knows her. More […]
Read more...
Your Mind is a Palace
The best memoir I have ever read is Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1997. When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I managed to survive at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood. So begins the luminous memoir of Frank McCourt, born in Depression-era Brooklyn to recent Irish immigrants and raised in the slums of Limerick, Ireland. Frank’s mother, Angela, has no money to feed the children since Frank’s father, […]
Read more...
The Night Watchman
The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich “Patrice had come to think that humans treated the concept of God, or Gizhe Manidoo, or the Holy Ghost, in a childish way. She was pretty sure that the rules and trappings of ritual had nothing to do with God, that they were ways for people to imagine they were doing things right in order to escape from punishment, or harm, like children. She had felt the movement of something vaster, impersonal yet personal in her life. She thought that maybe people in contact with that nameless greatness had a way of catching at the edges, a way of being pulled along or even […]
Read more...
October Reads: a Little Bit of Everything
The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich “Patrice had come to think that humans treated the concept of God, or Gizhe Manidoo, or the Holy Ghost, in a childish way. She was pretty sure that the rules and trappings of ritual had nothing to do with God, that they were ways for people to imagine they were doing things right in order to escape from punishment, or harm, like children. She had felt the movement of something vaster, impersonal yet personal in her life. She thought that maybe people in contact with that nameless greatness had a way of catching at the edges, a way of being pulled along or even entering […]
Read more...