I was 23 years old when Margaret Atwood first published The Handmaid’s Tale. I assumed then it was an historical fiction novel set in Puritan New England. Interested, I put it on a long and growing list of books-to-read-once-I-finished-college-got-married-raised-kids-started-a-teaching-career . . . Thirty-plus years later, I’m finally getting to it. Turning the first page, I […]
Here, hold my coffee…. and watch me review 100 books in 6 months!
“Someone needs to tell those tales. When the battles are fought and won and lost, when the pirates find their treasures and the dragons eat their foes for breakfast with a nice cup of Lapsang souching, someone needs to tell their bits of overlapping narrative. There’s magic in that. It’s in the listener, and for […]
Mary Pipher is a clinical psychologist and cultural anthropologist. She is author of several reflective, insightful books and an activist for various causes, including the wellbeing, rights and health of women of all ages. In 1994, she wrote Reviving Ophilia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls, drawing on case studies from her own practice, examining the […]
Daisy Jones and the Six, by Taylor Jenkins Reid, is a 1970’s rock-and-roll print docudrama. It is written in interview format and follows the rise of rock band, The Six, and flower child, Daisy Jones. Predictably, there is an extensive supply of drugs, sex, and all manner of dysfunction to go along with what might […]
Anthony Peardew is The Keeper of Lost Things. Forty years ago, his fiancé, Theresa, gave him a token expressing her love, which Anthony loses on the very same day he loses her to an unfortunate accident. He vows to find this cherished token and, in the meantime, also vows to collect all the lost items […]
Kristin Hannah’s latest novel, The Great Alone (2/2018), is set in 1974 in one of the most beautiful yet dangerous states in the union, Alaska. Ernt Albright, a Vietnam veteran and former POW, returns from war with a severe case of PTSD. He drinks too much, can no longer hold a job, and suffers from […]
The Guestbook is a sweeping novel by Sarah Blake, spanning three generations of the affluent and privileged, east coast Milton family. The story begins just before WWII and ends sometime in the late ’80’s/early 90’s. At first, I struggled to follow the plot, as it hopscotched through characters, continents, and time before dramatically, if not […]