Once upon a time, about 100 years ago, a 27-year-old woman was the wealthiest woman in the nation. In The Magnificent Lives of Marjorie Post, bestselling author Allison Pataki has crafted an intimate portrait of a woman who lived and loved on a grand scale, yet proves that money cannot buy happiness. Marjorie Merriweather Post’s journey began gluing cereal boxes in her father’s barn near Battle Creek, Michigan and learning the business from the man who, at the turn of the 20th century, made a fortune by producing healthy and quick foods like Grape-Nuts. When her parents divorced, Marjorie was rudderless. Then in 1914, C. W. Post died by suicide and his […]
Read more...Category Archives: Reading
January 2023 Picks and Pans
I don’t know what I’d do without books. They keep me company when I am lonely, they fill long quiet nights of insomnia, they bring me to locales all over the world, and introduce me to extraordinary people. For those of you who love books, too, here are the ones I read in January. With suspense, thrillers, mysteries, devotionals, historical fiction, classics, and contemporary fiction, there’s something here for every taste. Enjoy! Good Enough: 40ish Devotionals for a Life of Imperfection By Kate Bowler, Jessica Richie “Blessed are you who realize there is simply not enough—time, money, resources. Blessed are you who are tired of pretending that raw effort […]
Read more...
Good Enough
“Blessed are you who realize there is simply not enough—time, money, resources. Blessed are you who are tired of pretending that raw effort is the secret to perfection. It’s not. And you know that now. Blessed are you who need a gentle reminder that even now, even today, God is here, and somehow, that is good enough,”—Kate Bowler and Jessica Richier, Good Enough. In their illuminating book Good Enough, authors Kate Bowler and Jessica Richie present a series of insightful spiritual reflections designed to guide readers through the intricate maze of modern life. A New York Times bestseller, it shatters the persistent myth of relentless self-improvement, instead framing life as […]
Read more...
Jacqueline in Paris
Ann Mah’s novel is a portrayal of Jacqueline Bouvier’s transformative year abroad in postwar Paris. As a junior at Vassar College, Bouvier spent the year 1949/1950 studying at the University of Grenoble and the Sorbonne in Paris. The journey begins with Bouvier boarding an ocean liner, embarking on an experience that will change her life. As the only Vassar student, she finds herself with a group of lively Smith students with whom she will later study. This voyage marks the start of Jackie’s immersion into an exhilarating world brimming with champagne, châteaux, theater, art, jazz clubs, and quaint cafés. She lives with a host family, headed by Comtesse de […]
Read more...
The Bullet That Missed
The Bullet that Missed, the third book in the Thursday Murder Club series, is deserving of its nomination for Best Mystery & Thriller in the 2022 Goodreads Choice Awards. Set in Coopers Chase, an English retirement community as lively as a frat house, four sharp-as-tacks septuagenarians—Elizabeth, Ibrahim, Ron, and Joyce—spend their golden years solving crimes that leave the local police scratching their heads. In this installment, our geriatric sleuths delve into the decade-old disappearance of a TV journalist, Bethany Waites, who vanished while sniffing around a money-laundering scheme. It’s not long before our heroes find themselves tangled in a web of two murders separated by a decade. To thicken […]
Read more...
The Night Ship
“As is the way with souls confined, tempers fray and flare, ill-spoken words fester, coincidences become intrigues. Minds seethe with resentment and revenge like the worms in the water barrels. As the ship spoils, so does the air between the people.”― Jess Kidd, The Night Ship. 1629: nine-year-old Mayken leaves the Netherlands with her nursemaid to join the merchant father she’s never met across the globe in the Dutch East Indies on the Batavia, one of the greatest ships of the Dutch Golden Age. Curious and mischievous, Mayken begins a secret, second life as the cabin boy Obbe, befriending a soldier, a sailor, a kitchen boy, and the ship’s barber-surgeon while trying […]
Read more...
All Her Little Secrets
“Every lie you tell, every secret you keep, is a fragile little thing that must be protected and accounted for…”—Wanda M. Morris, All Her Little Secrets Ellice Littlejohn has been hoarding a cache of secrets from her friends and coworkers. Not only did she grow up poor and Black in rural Georgia, she had with an alcoholic mother and a sexually abusive stepfather and her kid brother is an ex-con. She’ll do anything to stay out of the spotlight. Now she has it all: an Ivy League law degree, a well-paying job as a corporate attorney in midtown Atlanta, great friends, and a long-term affair with a rich executive—her White boss, […]
Read more...
Haven
What, then, consoles us in this human society full of calamities, but the unfeigned faith and mutual love of true and good friends?—Augustine, City of God, AD 426. Emma Donoghue’s (ROOM) latest novel is set in seventh-century Ireland in Cluain Mhic Nóis, a monastery in County Offaly on the River Shannon. A scholar and priest named Artt has a dream telling him to leave the sinful world behind and found an isolated monastery. With two monks, young Trian and elderly Cormac, he sets out on a pilgrimage in a small boat with only faith to guide them. Drifting out into the Atlantic, the three men find a steep, craggy […]
Read more...
Shogun
“Leave the problems of God to God and karma to karma. Today you’re here and nothing you can do will change that. Today you’re alive and here and honored, and blessed with good fortune. Look at this sunset, it’s beautiful, neh? This sunset exists. Tomorrow does not exist. There is only now. Please look. It is so beautiful and it will never happen ever again, never, not this sunset, never in all infinity.”—James Clavell, Shōgun. Shōgun by James Clavell is a sweeping historical saga of feudal Japan. A bold English adventurer; an invincible Japanese warlord; a beautiful woman torn between two ways of life, all brought together in an extraordinary saga of a time and a […]
Read more...
The Measure
“The great American writer Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, ‘It is not the length of life, but the depth of life.’ You don’t need a long lifetime to make an impact on this world. You just need the will to do so.”―Nikki Erlick, The Measure. If you could discover the time of your death, would you? This is the question at the heart of Nikki Erlick’s debut novel, The Measure, and it left me conflicted. I was swept up in the lives of the eight ordinary people who were faced with this tough choice, and I couldn’t help but wonder what I would do in their shoes. It seems like any […]
Read more...