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Andrea Kay's Bookshelf
Consumer Behavior Essentials You Always Wanted To Know
Pablo Ibarreche
Vibrant Publishers
https://www.vibrantpublishers.com
9781636513263, $49.99, PB, 279pp
https://www.amazon.com/Consumer-Behavior-Essentials-Self-Learning-Management/dp/1636513263
Synopsis: In a rapidly evolving marketing landscape, understanding consumer behavior is crucial for any business's success. "Consumer Behavior Essentials You Always Wanted To Know" by Pablo Ibarreche serves as a compass, guiding readers through the intricacies of customer preferences. It decodes consumer tribes and offers a fresh perspective on marketing, revealing how to connect with specific consumer segments (or "tribes") to create lasting relationships.
Whether you're a seasoned marketer or just starting out, "Consumer Behavior Essentials" provides actionable strategies to help you connect with your audience and achieve your business goals.
With "Consumer Behavior Essentials" the reader will learn how to:
Discover how to identify and analyze key consumer tribes: Understand the unique characteristics, preferences, and behaviors of different consumer groups.
Learn how to tailor your marketing messages to resonate with specific tribes: Craft targeted campaigns that speak directly to the needs and desires of each tribe.
Understand how to build strong brand loyalty through targeted campaigns: Foster deep connections with your audience by offering products and services that align with their values and aspirations
Leverage consumer insights for sustainable growth: Use data-driven insights to optimize your marketing strategies and drive long-term business success.
"Consumer Behavior Essentials offers a wealth of real-world business examples to help explain theoretical concepts. It also comes with chapter-wise quiz questions and practical templates for students and professionals in the field.
Critique: Thoroughly 'reader friendly' in organization and presentation, comprehensive and an ideal introduction to the study of consumer behavior, "Consumer Behavior Essentials You Always Wanted To Know" by experienced corporate executive Pablo Ibarreche will prove a welcome and high value addition to personal, professional, community, corporate, business school, and college/university library Business Management collections and supplementnal MBA curriculum studies lists. It should be noted that this paperback edition of "Consumer Behavior Essentials You Always Wanted To Know" from Vibrant Publishers is also available in hardcover ($69.99) and in a digital book format (Kindle, $9.99).
Editorial Note: Pablo Ibarreche is an executive with 25 years of marketing and management experience in Latin America and Europe. He began in sports retail at Sporting in Argentina and later held brand management roles at P&G, Citibank, and AIG. After consulting in Europe, he returned to Argentina as President of Alsa Commercial Real Estate and Chief Revenue Manager for Reforest Latam. He teaches international marketing and serves on the MBA thesis board at Universidad Siglo XXI.
Python Essentials You Always Wanted to Know
Shawn Peters
Vibrant Publishers
https://www.vibrantpublishers.com
9781636512938, $49.99, PB, 268pp.
https://www.amazon.com/Python-Essentials-Always-Self-Learning-Management/dp/1636512933
Synopsis: For those who are interested in learning programming but not sure where to start, "Python Essentials You Always Wanted to Know" is your ideal DIY guide to learning Python -- one of the most versatile and beginner-friendly programming languages.
This complete course of instruction is specially designed with absolute beginners in mind, focusing on clear explanations and practical examples rather than technical jargon. Regardless of skill level, there's something here for everyone, from the basics of programming logic to more advanced topics like object-oriented programming and error handling. Whether you're a student, a professional transitioning into tech, or simply curious about coding, this book will help you to think like a programmer and enhance your programming skills.
"Python Essentials" also includes a chapter dedicated to case studies, giving you the opportunity to practice and apply the discussed concepts. Additionally, you will gain exclusive access to an online glossary of functions and methods mentioned throughout the book to help you retain and understand crucial programming terms.
After reading "Python Essentials, you will be able to:
Understand programming fundamentals and Python syntax
Apply data structures, functions, and modular programming
Implement object-oriented principles in your projects
Leverage Python for data analysis and business insights
Part of Vibrant Publishers' Self-Learning Management Series, "Python Essentials" aptly serves as a valuable guide for developing programming skills to complement your existing expertise and advance your career.
Critique: This paperback edition of "Python Essentials You Always Wanted to Know" from Vibrant Publishers provides throughly 'reader friendly' and comprehensive coverage of Python basics that is perfect for the novice and as a part of a career change with its 'real-world' applications and case studies. Of special note is the informative inclusion of numerous practical examples and quizzes. While also available from Vibrant Publishers in a hardcover edition ($69.99) and in a digital book format (Kindle, $9.99), "Python Essentials You Always Wanted to Know" is an ideal textbook for college/university Computer Science curriculums, as well as personal, professional, and community library Computer Science/Python collections and studies lists.
Editorial Note: Shawn Peters has 19 years of teaching experience, is certified in Python Programming Teaching from the College of the North Atlantic, and also specializes in JavaScript and Java. (www.vibrantpublishers.com/pages/press-release-python-essentials)
Blockchain Essentials You Always Wanted To Know
Abhilash Kancharla
Vibrant Publishers
https://www.vibrantpublishers.com
9781636513003, PB, $49.99, 214pp
https://www.amazon.com/Blockchain-Essentials-Always-Self-Learning-Management/dp/163651300X
Based in Broomfield, Colorado, Vibrant Publishers is a publishing house with a spcific focus on producing high-quality books for entrepreneurs, professionals, and students. Vibrant Publishers has redefined how rich content is made available to today's fast-paced generation. They have three series of books with content that is both concise and approachable: Self-Learning Management, Job Interview Questions, and Test Prep. Three of their newest titles are part of their 'You Always Wanted to Know' series:
Synopsis: "Blockchain Essentials You Always Wanted To Know" brings a lucid approach to learning the fundamentals of blockchain technology. "Blockchain Essentials" covers the fundamentals of blockchain from a technical standpoint in an easy-to-understand language that allows anyone to grasp its intricacies.
"Blockchain Essentials" begins by explaining the central concept of blockchain technology - the decentralization system - and dives deeper into concepts like cryptography, Merkle trees, mining, cryptocurrency, and consensus algorithms which form the core of blockchain technology. The book contains a dedicated chapter on creating a smart contract using the Truffle and Ganache software. The necessary steps to be taken to adapt blockchain into a project are also discussed in detail.
"Blockchain Essentials" also includes quizzes, fun facts, and real-life case studies to make your self-learning process smoother! In addition, you can access pre-made smart contract programs from the online resources of this book.
It should be noted that "Blockchain Essentials does not cover topics such as cryptocurrency investment strategies, timing the market, or how to profit from Bitcoin.
Critique: A part of Vibrant Publishers' Self-Learning Management series, "Blockchain Essentials You Always Wanted To Know" by Dr. Abhilash Kancharla is an ideal DIY introductory textbook for readers with an interest in the technological basics of blockchains and the projected future of this new technology. "Blockchain Essentials You Always Wanted To Know" is thoroughly 'reader friendly' in organization and presentation, making it especially and unreservedly recommended for personal, professional, community, and college/university library collections. It should be noted that this paperback edition of "Blockchain Essentials You Always Wanted To Know" is also available from Vibrant Publishers in hardcover ($69.99) and in a digital book format (Kindle, $9.99).
Editorial Note: Dr. Abhilash Kancharla is an Assistant Teaching Professor, Computer Science, University of Tampa. (https://www.ut.edu/directory/kancharla-abhilash)
Andrea Kay
Reviewer
Andy Jordan's Bookshelf
The Adventures of Periwinkle Fae
Donald Firesmith & Claude Sonnet AI
https://donaldfiresmith.com
Magic Wand Press
9798311858632, $25.99, HC, 141pp
9798310693807, $14.99, PB / $2.99 Kindle
https://www.amazon.com/Adventures-Periwinkle-Fae-Magical-Bedtime-ebook/dp/B0DX68JML6
Synopsis: Nestled in the vibrant Enchanted Forest, far from the reach of noisy humans, Periwinkle is a fae (pixie) who embarks on delightful adventures that highlight the beauty of nature, the power of friendship, and the joy of helping others.
From organizing a dazzling firefly light show to rescuing a butterfly with a broken wing, Periwinkle's entertaining tales are filled with whimsy, wonder, and valuable life lessons. Whether she's racing through moonlit meadows, solving the mystery of a magical dewdrop, or teaching a shy lizard how to dance, each story showcases her creativity, kindness, and determination.
Perfect for bedtime reading, "The Adventures of Periwinkle Fae: 26 Magical Bedtime Stories" is a simply enchanting book that is packed from cover to cover with tales demonstrating empathy, teamwork, and self-discovery. Beautifully woven narratives and vivid descriptions of the forest's magical creatures make this a must-have for young readers and their families with its underlying message that even the smallest pixie can make a big difference in the world!
Critique: Original, clever, entertaining, memorable, "The Adventures of Periwinkle Fae: 26 Magical Bedtime Stories" showcases author Donald Firesmith's exceptional talents as a skillful, imaginative, and narrative-driven storyteller who can draw out the maximum potential from the generative tool that is Claude Sonnet AI. A fun read from start (The Midnight Firefly Dance) to finish (The Secret of the Whispering Tree), "The Adventures of Periwinkle Fae" from Magic Wand Press is especially and unreservedly recommended for family, daycare center, preschool, elementary school, and community library Fantasy/Fairytale collections for children ages 4-9. Of special note for parents, caregivers, and teachers is the inclusion of A Thank You To My Readers, Valuable Story Lessons, On Using AI, and a listing of other books by Donald Firesmith. It should be noted for personal reading lists that this hardcover edition of "The Adventures of Periwinkle Fae: 26 Magical Bedtime Stories" from Magic Wand Press is also available in paperback (9798310693807, $14.99) and in a digital book format (Kindle, $2.99).
Editorial Note: Donald Firesmith (https://donaldfiresmith.com) is a multi-award-winning author of speculative fiction, including science fiction, fantasy, paranormal horror, and modern urban paranormal novels and collections of short stories. Because of his strong background in software/system engineering and science, his science fiction is well researched, and he relies on numerous science, technology, and military technical advisors to ensure that the non-speculative aspects of his stories are realistic and believable.
Andy Jordan
Reviewer
Ann Skea's Bookshelf
Orbital: A Novel
Samantha Harvey
Atlantic Monthly Press
c/o Grove Atlantic
https://groveatlantic.com
9780802161543, $24.00 hc, 142pp.
9780802163622, $17.00 pbk / $8.67 Kindle
https://www.amazon.com/Orbital-Samantha-Harvey/dp/0802163629
'Six of them in a great H of metal hanging above the earth. They turn head on heel, four astronauts (American, Japanese, British, Italian) and two cosmonauts (Russian, Russian); two women, four men, one space station made up of seventeen connecting modules.'
Orbital is a slim book but it s full of detail, full of beauty, and full of life.
What is it like to experience sixteen sunrises and sixteen sunsets in twenty-four hours; to 'circle the earth sixteen times at seventeen and a half thousand miles an hour', and to watch from above the earth as clouds begin to 'congregate' near the Marshall Islands; then, orbit by orbit, see them 'curdle' into a super-typhoon that as it hits land looks like 'a thick white mass sheened with moonlight?
'Up here in microgravity you're a seabird on a warm day drifting, just drifting. What use are biceps, calves, strong shin-bones; what use muscle mass? Legs are a thing of the past.'
Chie looks from her lab window and sees her country, Japan, looking like 'a dream she remembers once having. It lies slantwise and slight'.
English Nell remembers her space walk. 'Don't look down, you're told - focus on your hands, on your task, until you've adjusted'. She remembers 'hanging to the rig', grappling with tools and looking back at the space station which 'in this moment' 'feels like home'.
Roman, one of the Russians who has already completed three different mission, counts everything on this mission. Days, nights, hours of exercise, meetings with ground crew, changes of T-shirts, underwear and socks, how much toothpaste he has swallowed. He 'keeps his tally on a piece of paper in his crew quarters'.
Shaun, the American who believes in a Creationist God (the crew suggest he is 'there to convince them all that they have souls'), remembers an art teacher telling his class about the puzzles in Velazquez's painting, Las Meninas. He and the girl next to him were not impressed, but he has a postcard of the painting with him that his wife sent him many years later to remind him 'of their first real exchange'.
The crew like the metaphor of Shaun as the soul of the spaceship; meticulous philosophical Pietro (Italian) its mind; Anton, (the emotional Russian) its heart; dexterous Roman, its hands; undefinable Chie, its conscience; and Nell ('with her eight-litre diving lungs') its breath. Each of them will spend about nine months on this space-station.
Samantha Harvey tracks each of their lives for the duration of one earth day and night - sixteen orbits of the earth. Their days are ordered by routine - breakfast, two hours of exercise in the gym (cycling, treadmill, bench press), contact with ground control, reading e-mails from family, performing their various tasks, recording and reporting weather patterns on earth, eating together and relaxing before climbing into their tethered sleeping bags and hanging 'like bats' until their next day.
A daily task for each of them, too,
'is the rigorous documenting of their own selves, the appetite reports, the mood monitoring, the pulse measuring, the urine sampling. They each extract blood for the flight surgeon to analyse....
Shaun thinks of them all as 'lab-rats', 'specimens', 'objects of research who've forged the way for their own surpassing'.
They swim in microgravity like little watched fish. The heart cells they culture will one day be used to replace those of the slingshotting astronauts bound for the Moon.'
In Orbital, however, they are individuals, each coping with this isolating time in space in their own way. But there are boundaries between nations, too. There is a Russian WC and a US WC, each labeled. The crew regard this idea of national toilets as a joke. 'I'm just going to take a national pee', Shaun will say. Mission control, via on-board cameras, watches the crew disregard the rules and concludes that trying to control astronauts and cosmonauts is a waste of time - like attempting to herd cats.
Through each of her characters, Samantha Harvey manages to convey what it feels like to live in space, the routine of it, the enclosed space and the lack of privacy, the isolation from family and friends and from normal earth life. At the start of this day, Chie hears that her mother has died and knows that she cannot get back for the traditional funeral rites. Anton decides that his marriage is a sham. Pierto, dreams of decking the spaceship out like an old-fashioned farmhouse, 'with flowery wallpaper and oak beams'. Ramon conducts an odd 'conversation' by two-way radio with a stranger on earth. They identify countries and land formations on earth as each orbit tracks over them, moving further east with each circuit of the globe.
'From the space station's distance mankind is a creature that comes out only at night. Mankind is the light of cities and the illuminated filament of roads. By day it's gone. It hides in plain sight.'
On Orbit 13, Harvey constructs the 'cosmic calendar of the universe and life', adding the changes month-by-month to the cosmic year, from the moment of the Big Bang on January 1st, fourteen billion years ago until on New Year's Eve 0.23 billion years ago the first 'crafty' humans arrived to change their environment.
There is beauty in space, too. Not just the glorious masses of stars, but, as the orbit tracks across the Antarctic Circle, Roman sees
'the flexing, morphing green and red of the auroras which snake around the inside of the atmosphere fretful and magnificent like something trapped.
Nell, he says, come quick...
The airglow is dusty greenish yellow. Beneath it in the gap between atmosphere and earth is a fuzz of neon which starts to stir. It ripples, spills, it's smoke that pours across the face of the planet; the ice is green, the underside of the spacecraft an alien pall.'
The whole crew come to watch this, 'the six of them, drawn moth-like'. And each vows to remember it.
But there are man-made horrors, too: space debris, 'two hundred million flung-out things' - satellites, bits of rockets, exhaust particles, dropped tools and more. The space-station is 'daily pelted and barraged and pitted with dents', and today the crew have watched fellow space travelers in a lunar spaceship negotiate this on its way to the moon.
Travelling through so many time zones - so many days and nights - in the course of their one day orbiting the earth is disorientating. The crew feel it, so does the reader at times when trying to imagine the course of the space-station and see the way night and day happen so often, yet the typhoon, for example, is watched as it grows over the course of a single earth day. Each chapter of the book represents a single orbit of the space station around the earth, and a chart at the front of the book shows its path as it moves from East to West.
As Shaun rightly thinks 'Everything, everything is turning and passing.' Nine months is a long time to be there and he ponders the meaning of it all and, at times, wonders what he is doing there, 'A tinned man in a tin can'. His wife's response to his thoughts about extinction is not especially comforting.
Chie when she is anxious makes lists. And she talks to her experimental mice, encouraging them to let go of the bars of their cages and learn to fly.
Pietro believes philosophically that we 'matter greatly and not at all'; 'Life is everywhere, everywhere.' And Roman and Anton, contemplating the long list of bodily changes body that their space sojourn will cause and that will age them five or ten years more than if they stayed on earth, agree that they never worry about this: 'Never'.
Nell just enjoys being weightless and busy - no aches and pains, no decisions to make. Maybe you are trapped, going nowhere, but 'This isn't a complaint. God, no, this isn't a complaint.'
Orbital, in a way, is like being in the space station with these people. We get to know them, like them, see what they see and become part of their lives. And we still have time to contemplate some of strangeness of what makes humans want to explore space and what they will endure to do so. Our shared journey also conjures thoughts about the earth, its smallness, its fragility, its beauty, the power of nature and the insignificance of mankind in the vastness of the universe. In Orbit 9, there is a list of the things we recorded on the golden discs we sent out into space on Voyager 1 and Voyager 2. What chance is there that some life form will discover them and will be able to retrieve all that information and decode it? 'Not a chance' is the conclusion, but the discs will go on travelling in the Milky Way long after our earth is dead.
Samantha Harvey has not been into space, but she really does seem to know what it is like to be there, and she has created an extraordinary picture of what life might be like for us if we ventured to go there. This is a fascinating, enjoyable, unusual and beautifully written book, and well deserved winner of the 2024 Booker Prize.
The Dream of a Tree
Maja Lunde, author
Diane Oatley, translator
Scribner UK
c/o Simon & Schuster UK
https://www.simonandschuster.co.uk
9781471185328, $23.21 PB, 475pp.
https://www.amazon.com/Dream-Tree-Maja-Lunde/dp/1471185311
https://www.simonandschuster.co.uk/books/The-Dream-of-a-Tree/Maja-Lunde/9781471185311
The year was 2097 and Tommy was five years old. He was playing on the beach of the abandoned container harbour in Longyearbyen on the Norwegian island of Svalbard, when he found the washed-up ash tree. The first thing he noticed was green leaves. The whole tree was there, a large bushy crown, long trunk and roots, but most amazing were the live branches and green leaves. He had never seen or touched a tree before.
'He thought he should find Grandmother, because when something important happened in Svalbard, Grandmother was the one who knew best what to do.'
It was his tree. He had lain down and clasped the trunk, but Rakel, who was the same age as him, had turned up and had been scornful and teasing, and they had fought until Grandmother came and separated them.
Years later, Tommy remembers this tree - his tree - and how the local people had flocked to see it and had taken it over, cut it up, and made use of every part of it. He had 'cried himself to sleep two nights in a row', but Grandmother had saved seeds from the tree and together they had planted them in the Four Seasons room of the greenhouse.
It is not these seeds that lie at the heart of Maja Lunde's book, but the vast collection of seeds from around the world which are (in our own time) stored in the Global Seed Vault at Longyearbyen. Initially they were housed in the abandoned coal mines that run deep into the permafrost of Svalbard on the Norwegian archipelago that lies closest to the North Pole. In 2008, they were moved to the specially constructed vault at Longyearbyen, where they are kept as security against the loss of diversity in traditional gene banks.
By 2110, when we meet Tommy again, a global 'Collapse' (the details of which are not spelled out) has occurred and these seeds have become so important that a ship has come from China to collect them. But it has come, too, to rescue Tommy, his younger brothers Hilmar and Henry, and Rakel and her sister Runa, who are the only people left alive in the world's most northern settlement.
But the ship sails away without Tommy and Rakel, and Tommy, in the opening chapters, is desperate for it to turn back and bring his brothers back to him.
''No! Stop!'
The ship is on a steady course headed west, towards the ocean. It is in the middle of the fjord, no larger than a toy boat against the backdrop of the mountains...
'Please! Henry! Hilmar!'
But the ship moves steadily onwards and he would be but a tiny speck against the black beach. Even if he waves, jumps and screams, they will never notice him.'
Then he remembers SvalSat, the satellite station on the mountain that had once communicated with the world. Now, 'the remains resemble semi-mangled skeletons surrounding huge antenna discs' but in the main building the micro power plant is still working and the radio equipment still functions. Tommy runs and climbs to SvalSat. He finds an open book about short-wave radio equipment that Rakel must have used to call for someone to rescue them, and he dons the headset:
''Tao!' he screams into the microphone before he has even got around to pushing the button 'Tao please, you have to turn around! You must come back!''
But there is only silence, and when he looks outside again the ship is gone.
Tommy tries again and again. Eventually, after repeatedly using the international distress call 'Mayday, mayday, mayday', he gets a faint response from Tao, but she tells him that the ship's captain, Mei Ling, is afraid of being trapped by the winter ice and of the ship being damaged by ice floes, so she refuses to turn back.
This is a dramatic start to the book and the following chapters alternate between Tommy and Tao.
Tommy distracts himself from his grief at being separated from Henry and Hilmar by immersing himself in the rich memories he has of growing up in Longyearbyen: of his mother and father, and of Grandmother, and of the thriving community that had chosen to live cut off from the world in this harsh place of landslides, avalanches and polar days and nights. It becomes clear that something terrible has happened to Rakel and that Tommy blames himself for it. He remembers her as a burden when Grandmother insisted that she and her sister should live with them; then as a skilled hunter able to creep up on and shoot the deer they come to rely on for meat; then his mixed feelings as they become teenagers sharing a small house; and her unhappiness at their isolation and fears of what the future might hold for them. Only at the end of the book can he allow the memories of what happened to Rakel to surface. Through all this, he is alone.
Tao, on the ship, is drawn to young Henry. He reminds her of her son Wei-Wei who was just three-and-a half when he died from a bee sting. Henry resists her overtures of friendship and grieves for Tommy, as does Hilmar, who becomes silent and withdrawn.
In Tao's home in Sichuan, Wei-Wei has been adopted by the Chinese authorities as a symbol of renewal that began with the return of the bees that had been 'declared extinct for decades'. He was 'the child who changed everything', 'the beginning of a new era' - celebrated in posters, placards and brochures. In the twelve years since his death:
'...she has been the Mother incarnate. The woman who lost the Child - her son, her boy. They call him that often: the Boy. In the beginning she tried to say Wei-Wei, he has a name. But eventually she started calling him that also, just the Boy. It was simpler.'
Tao has become numb with grief and is glad to focus on the mission given her by the leader, Li Chiara. 'The seed is the core of hope,' Li Chiara tells her, 'And you Tao are the living carrier of our hope.' She had hardly thought about the children who had summoned them but now she is responsible for them. And her efforts to obtain the seeds from the vault in Longyearbyen have failed.
Tommy and Rakel had led them to the seed vault but they had found it empty. They had searched everywhere for the seeds for six days but with winter closing in they had to leave without them. Tao is sure Tommy or Rakel know where they are, and once she has contact with Tommy she keeps asking him about them and asking to speak to Rakel. Tommy always makes excuses for Rakel's absence. Eventually, he cuts off communication altogether.
The Dream of the Tree relies mostly on Tommy's memories, which bring to life the land and its people, and the struggles he and they endure living in a place where half the year is spent in darkness, and landslides and avalanches are a constant threat. The Svalbard people are proud of their self-sufficiency and the community they have established. They have learned to use, repair and recycle everything, to rely on coal, wind and solar power, and to use the wild animals and the vast greenhouse sustainably for food. As Grandmother tells Tommy (and she frequently irritates him, and possibly the reader, by giving him lectures on history, money, genetics, politics and more), they live as people should always have lived. One lecture that did spark a deep interest in Tommy was about the Russian scientist Nikolai Vavilov, 'the father of modern-day seed collections'. After the ship has left without him, Tommy spends a lot of time in the library devouring books about the life and death of this remarkable man.
Among Tommy's memories, too, is the reason that the six children have become the only humans left on Svalbard. It is grim, and it has disturbing relevance to the world we live in. As does Tao's anger, directed at those who lived before them, when, back in Sichuan, she sees:
'...the fields crack open and the soil turn to dust. When the colour of small green shoots fades into dullness and they wither, are torn out of the earth and are blown away by the wind. When the children go hungry to bed.'
In spite of these strong messages about what we humans are doing to our world, this book does end on a note of hope.
Dr Ann Skea, Reviewer
https://ann.skea.com/THHome.htm
Arthur Turfa's Bookshelf
Bachelor Holiday
William Huhn
BlazeVOX
https://www.blazevox.org
9781609644680, $20.00
https://www.amazon.com/Bachelor-Holiday-William-Huhn/dp/1609644689
In his first poetry collection, essayist, fiddler, and scientist offers poems in several styles and on a wide variety of topics. He takes the reader to ancient Babylon, Herculaneum, the American Southwest, and the time of the Sun King. To my thinking these poems have an Al Stewart vibe, since the history is engagingly retold in a verse form (minus the instrumental music, obviously). A section of Notes at the end of the books offers explanations to those who need it.
There also are poems with a minimalist structure. Some are too staccato, but in others, the form works well and fashions strong images. "Bye Love You" opens the first of the four sections in the book, and it is an excellent choice.
I shall mention three other poems that stand out to me. the first is "Expedition", which at first read sounds like social Darwinism but actually transcends that. "Blue Corn Pancakes" brings a New Mexican dish to a wintry Vermont snow day: something exotic mingled with the quotidian. Finally, "A'Shiwwi" talks about the Zuni nation's respect for their ancestors.
In sum, this is an impressive debut of a seasoned writer, who hopefully is working on a second volume of verse.
Self-Geofferential
Geoffrey Gatza
BlazeVOX
https://www.blazevox.org
9781609644826, $22.00
https://www.amazon.com/Self-Geofferential-Geoffrey-Gatza/dp/1609644824
The poems are interspersed by vivid, colorful artwork; or is it the other way around? Not that it really matters, since this volume of verse and art is simply something to enjoy, And that really is all that matters.
The poems range from whimsical views of the world or a situation or poignant remembrances of people no longer with us but never forgotten, to backyard cats hunting birds to looking for the sun in each person
One of the concluding poems, America, literally jumped out from the page. "America is in decline again, but you cannot see it from here... to see America, you must leave you home, no longer write poetry, and live." Is the reader to physically leave the country, or to go around America to observe? Does the situation stifle poetry and artistic expression? And to live? Perhaps that is for the reader to decide.
Bequeath: Essays
Melora Wolff
LSU Press
https://lsupress.org
9780807182772, $24.95
https://www.amazon.com/Bequeath-Essays-Melora-Wolff/dp/080718277X
What makes this memoir stand out is the essay format. Rather than having the reader to wade through a traditional chronological format, Wolff instead has opted to compose ten essays on growing up in and around New York City in the 1970s, the decade which saw her leave childhood and enter adolescence. By doing so, she focuses the reader on certain aspects of her past.
Wolff includes the Zeitgeist as well. These essays are not exclusively focused on her and/or her family. One gets a good sense of the metropolitan area, especially of the people who were there at the time. This volume has a double value because of this. Anyone who remembers that era, even if they do not remember the place, will find pleasure in reading these essays. For those who cannot share in the remembrance, nonetheless they can share in learn about the time and place in a pleasurable way. The title is apt.
Ischia
Gisela Heffes
Deep Vellum Publishing
https://www.deepvellum.org
9781646052141, $16.95
https://www.amazon.com/Ischia-Gisela-Heffes/dp/1646052145
An anonymous young woman in Buenos Aires waits for a ride to the airport. In chapter-long paragraphs (with some breaks here and there) there is a stream-of consciousness narrative that may or may not be true. There are elements of Magical Realism, time is bent, references made to contemporary culture and literature.
As a short story or novella, this might have been an easier read. For just over 200 pages of text it is not easy. I found myself wishing the narrator would get to the airport so we could see what was really going to happen.
The Visit
Ana T. Kralj
BlazeVOX
https://www.blazevox.org
9781609644697, $22.00
https://www.amazon.com/Visit-Ana-T-Kralj/dp/1609644697
In this impressive first novel, Kralj alternates between prose and poetry as a young Slovenian student named Luna While Yugoslavia has dissolved into a brutal war between the former republics, Slovenia is rather calm. However, landscape and memories literally brim with memories of previous wars and upheavals.
Readers unfamiliar with this part of the world need to realize that the further east one goes in Europe, the past is never really dead, to quote Faulkner. What happened centuries ago is as vivid as last week's events. Luna is by no means alone in this way; time is blurred here in parts of the novel,. Luna's response is unique to her.
The prose contains great details. The camp in Finland where Luna spends part of her summer, the family home, the city of Ljubljana, Luna's descriptions of the university and her solitary walks. Almost in contrast, the poetry is almost laconic and focuses on interior feelings. the paring works extremely well. This is more than a coming-of-age novel. It is the story of a young woman trying to find her way in the world which itself is rapidly-changing and in constant upheaval, just like her emotions.
Arthur Turfa
Reviewer
Carl Logan's Bookshelf
Embrace Your Freedom
Philip A. Glotzbach
Post Hill Press
www.posthillpress.com
9798888454367, $18.99, PB, 336pp
https://www.amazon.com/Embrace-Your-Freedom-Winning-Strategies/dp/B0CSBTPFWX
Synopsis: With the publication of "Embrace Your Freedom: Winning Strategies to Succeed in College and in Life", academician Philip A. Glotzbach cuts through the contemporary fog of misinformation about going to college. He speaks directly to new students about what a college education is for... and how not to mess it up. This information is enormously useful for parents, as well by helping them understand what their child will encounter and how best to support them on this transformative journey.
Drawing on decades of experience in higher education, including the presidency of Skidmore College, Professor Glotzbach invites students to approach their college years with soaring expectations and effectively pursue their aspirations, from the very first day!
Written in a conversational tone and illustrated with authentic student stories, "Embrace Your Freedom" offers practical, down-to-earth guidance about the decisions and actions that enable students to complete their college career with satisfaction and pride. It also addresses the vital issues of student mental health, novel drug threats, generative AI, cyberbullying, gun-related campus violence, contested speech, and many others.
"Embrace Your Freedom" highlights the skills students need to thrive in the 21st century work-world. It also challenges them to understand and embrace their new level of freedom, take charge of their well-being, to balance work and play, take good risks, learn from failure, and prepare to claim their place as informed and responsible citizens in our democratic republic.
Although these goals can feel overwhelming for any student, achieving them establishes core values that define a purposeful and powerful undergraduate experience -- one that leads to the accomplishments that ultimately make a college degree worth the time, effort, and expense it involves.
Critique: Exceptionally informative and thoroughly 'reader friendly' in organization and presentation, "Embrace Your Freedom: Winning Strategies to Succeed in College and in Life" by Dr. Philip A. Glotzbach is exceptionally and unreservedly recommended for family, highschool, highschool counselor, community, and college/university library Teen/YA Higher Education instructional reference collections. It is also ideal and 'real world practical' reading for college and university freshmen. It should be noted for the personal reading lists of students considering a college education or starting on one that this paperback edition of "Embrace Your Freedom: Winning Strategies to Succeed in College and in Life" from Post Hill Press is also available in a digital book format (Kindle, $9.99).
Editorial Note: Dr. Philip A. Glotzbach (www.philipglotzbach.com) served as president of Skidmore College for seventeen years. During that time, he led initiatives to enhance its academic offerings, student body diversity, finances and financial aid, infrastructure and physical landscape, and national reputation. Prior to arriving at Skidmore, Glotzbach served as dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and then vice president for Academic Affairs at the University of Redlands. He began his career in the Department of Philosophy at Denison University, where he taught for fifteen years. Across his academic career, he has written, spoken, and consulted on a broad range of topics. He is well-known as a commentator and outspoken champion of American higher education.
Carl Logan
Reviewer
Clint Travis' Bookshelf
The Sideways Life of Denny Voss
Holly Kennedy
Lake Union Publishing
c/o Amazon Publishing
9781662525926, $16.99, PB, 335pp
https://www.amazon.com/Sideways-Life-Denny-Voss-Novel/dp/1662525923
Synopsis: On the surface, Denny Voss's life in rural Minnesota is a quiet one. At thirty years old, he lives at home with his elderly mother and his beloved blind and deaf Saint Bernard, George. He cleans up roadkill to help pay the bills. Though his prospects are limited by a developmental delay (the result of an accident at birth) Denny has always felt that he has "a good life."
So how did he wind up being charged with the murder of a mayoral candidate -- after crashing a sled full of guns into a tree?
As Denny awaits trial, his court-appointed therapist walks him through the events of the past year. Denny's had other scuffles with the law, the first for kidnapping a neighbor's cantankerous goose. And then there was the time he accidentally assisted in a bank robbery. It seems like whenever Denny tries to do the right thing, chaos ensues.
Untangling the events around the murder reveals even more painful truths about his family's past. He's always been surrounded by people who love him, but now it's up to Denny to set his life on a new course.
Critique: Of special interest to readers of complicated suspense thrillers laced with humor and observations of the human condition, "The Sideways Life of Denny Voss" is a fun and fascinating read from cover to cover. Original, deftly crafted, and told with author Holly Kennedy's distinctive and narrative driven storytelling style, "The Sideways Life of Denny Voss" is unreservedly recommended for personal reading lists and community library Contemporary General Fiction collections. It should be noted that this paperback edition of "The Sideways Life of Denny Voss" from Lake Union is also readily available in a digital book format (Kindle, $3.99).
Editorial Note: Holly Kennedy (www.hollykennedy.com) is the author of four novels, and her books have been translated into multiple languages.
Serial Killer Support Group
Saratoga Schaefer
Crooked Lane Books
www.crookedlanebooks.com
9798892420778, $29.99, HC, 320pp
https://www.amazon.com/Serial-Killer-Support-Group-Novel/dp/B0D7GKW8LD
Synopsis: When Cyra Griffin's younger sister is murdered by a serial killer, Cyra knows better than to expect justice from the hands of the police department. With the investigation already dying its own slow death, Cyra follows the blood trail and finds her own way forward.
Using insider information (don't ask), Cyra infiltrates a support group for serial killers by pretending to be one herself in the hopes of finding the person who ended her sister's life. Proving herself to them comes at a cost, but it's one Cyra is willing to pay in the name of revenge.
But the dangerous men in the group aren't the only obstacle in Cyra's path for vengeance, and the further Cyra descends into the deadly world of serial killers, the harder it becomes to hold on to her own humanity.
Critique: All the more impressive when considering that this dark and witty novel, "Serial Killer Support Group" is author Saratoga Schaefer's debut as a novelist. A deftly crafted, impressively original, and cunning story of serial killers and a woman's revenge quest is a simply riveting and memorable read from start to finish. While "Serial Killer Support Group" is a solid pick for community library Contemporary Mystery Suspense/Thriller collections, it should be noted that this hardcover edition of "Serial Killer Support Group" from Crooked Lane Books is also available for personal reading lists in paperback (9798892422307, $17.99) and in a digital book format (Kindle, $14.99).
Editorial Note: Saratoga Schaefer (https://saratogaschaefer.com) has a background in marketing, content creation, film, and art and has been writing stories about murder for as long as they can remember. In addition to telling stories and acting as an alcohol-free ambassador, Saratoga climbs rocks, teaches yoga, and hikes mountains. Originally from Brooklyn, Saratoga now lives in upstate NY with an anxious dog and a very possessive cat.
Clint Travis
Reviewer
David Jaggart's Bookshelf
Joan of Miami: a Novel of Greed and Hope, from Miami to Manhattan
Andy Parrish, author
Pam Murtaugh, author
Independently Published
9798334171237, $19.95, HC, 434pp
9798334163393, $16.00 PB, $9.95 Kindle
https://www.amazon.com/Joan-Miami-Parrish/dp/B0DBVY9BPQ
Joan of Miami by A. Parrish is the inspiring story of 20-year-old Jean Molk, a young woman who wants to shape a better world. Most people are unaware that Jean receives divine visions that direct her moral approach to life. This mysterious gift (along with the loss of her parents) is at the forefront of her compelling journey. During the story, Jean is crassly fired by her boss, Solomon Paye, for undermining his relationship with his top client, Milo Chernak. Surprisingly, Milo offers her a job at his advertising firm after she demonstrates her astute mediation skills during a notorious case. Like most high-profile workspaces, Jean's role in his company is met by various highs and lows. Chernak Advertising proves to be a cutthroat work environment, but Jean manages to hold her own. After her first successful campaign, she is dubbed the modern-day Jean d'Arc by the Manhattan Business Journal. As her profound journey continues to unfold, will she stay true to her beliefs? Or will she become another shark in the corporate world?
Joan of Miami is a moving tale of the protagonist's attempt to navigate her way through the numerous challenges she faces in a modern capitalist world. Jean's character, in particular, is well-defined and fully actualized. Throughout the story, she wrestles with her self-identity and purpose. Jean's memories of her parents are the perfect touch to her profound tale. Each memory is carefully interwoven into her persona and her present-day dilemmas. Each intriguing flashback paints a portrait of who she is as the spokesperson of her own spectacular life. I loved every intimate conversation between Jean and Susan. Through these heartfelt mother-daughter moments, it became strikingly evident who Jean inherited her inner strength from. Most of all, I enjoyed the intense and thought-provoking conversations between Jean and Milo regarding topics like money, power, influence, altruism, and belief. Jean and Milo's conversations are highly existential, prompting readers to examine their own life paths. Overall, Jean's well-crafted journey is an ode to life, vulnerability, and deep human connections. Readers of character-driven stories will take pleasure in this novel. I highly recommend it!
David Jaggart, Reviewer
Reader's Favorite
https://readersfavorite.com
Debra Gaynor's Bookshelf
Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea
Jessica Guerrieri
Harper Muse
c/o HarperCollins
https://www.harpercollins.com
9781400345953, $18.99 Paperback, $9.99 Ebook
https://www.amazon.com/Between-Devil-Deep-Blue-Sea/dp/1400345952
List of characters:
Leah O'Connor: mother of Joni, Dottie, and Reid, an artist.
Lucas O'Connor: Father of Joni, Dottie, and Reid
Paul: Lucas brother in law
Christine O'Connor: Matriarch of the family, Leah's mother-in-law.
3 stars
Leah was an artist. Her life was carefree, interesting, and fulfilling. She met Lucas and they bonded. Her life was happy until she discovered she was pregnant. Ten years later Leah is deeply depressed. She feels unfulfilled, stressed, bored, and unhappy. Lucas' appeal has faded. She turned to wine and alcohol to get through each day. The O'Connor family was close, tight knit very different from Leah's family. Leah feels stuck in a boring life and yearns for a carefree life. She is resentful and feels unfulfilled. Leah is resentful, her dependency on alcohol increases with her resentment.
Leah doesn't trust her mother-in-law, Christine. As a mother, Christine is altruistic and appears to be the perfect mother. Leah compares herself to Christine and feels she falls short. Leah's behavior is erratic and irrational affecting her whole family. The relationship between Leah and Christine was complex. I have mixed feelings concerning their relationship. Leah did not give Christine the credit she deserved. I agree that Christine was domineering but Christine saw Leah's mental state.
Being a mother is not always fun and games, neither is it always easy. A mother must learn to balance her husband, children, career and herself
This is not an easy tale to read; it is dark, and heavy. This tale deals with trials we prefer not to discuss and even go so far as to hide them. Author Jessica Guerrieri shares this tale with compassion but also realism. Leah demonstrates the difference between handling and relying, showing the need for seeking help.
The Keeper: A Murphy Shepherd Novel (#4)
Charles Martin
Thomas Nelson
https://www.thomasnelson.com
c/o HarperCollins
https://www.harpercollins.com
9780840722478, $29.99 Hardback, $14.99 Kindle
https://www.amazon.com/Keeper-Murphy-Shepherd-Novel/dp/0840722478
3 stars
Is one individual's needs more important than the needs of many?
I have not read the previous books in this series.
The Vice President's daughters have been kidnapped. There are no clues. The VP is the lead candidate in the next election. Whoever is responsible for the kidnappings must be someone at the highest level. Murphy and his crew are called upon to find the girls and return them. One of their team members, Bones, is deceased; the team is still mourning their loss.
There are a lot of flashbacks in this, the last book in the series. The main character, Murphy Shepherd, is well developed. The pace is slower than I expected. There is a strong Christian theme in this tale. This book is very intuitive.
Ambush: A Sanctuary Novel
Colleen Coble
Thomas Nelson
https://www.thomasnelson.com
c/o HarperCollins
https://www.harpercollins.com
9780840714350, $32.99 Hardback
9780840714220 $18.99 Paperback
B0D8VLDMX7, $12.99 Kindle
https://www.amazon.com/Ambush-Sanctuary-Novel-Colleen-Coble/dp/084071422X
This is the first book in Colleen Coble's new series. The focus of this series is second chance relationships and returning to the past out of fear and anxiety. The main character in this tale is Veterinarian Paradise Alden.
Life has not always been kind to Paradise; she grew up in Pelican Bay, Alabama. Her home life was destroyed by her parents' murder. She was sent to Foster Care where she was abused, she was betrayed by her best friend and first love, Blake Lawson. She left Pelican Bay 15 years ago and never intended to return but when she was offered the position of veterinarian for an exotic animal/wildlife refuge. Paradise accepted the position because she needed the money, and she needs to heal both physically and emotionally. The Sanctuary was run by Blake, his mother, Jenna, and two young brothers. On the day she arrived at The Sanctuary a body was found. Odd, dangerous things begin happening at The Sanctuary, placing her life in danger and the lives of the people she comes to think of as family. Blake Lawson was Paradise's first love, and she still loves him despite his betrayal. A deputy in the sheriff's office is determined to pin the crimes on Blake.
Author Colleen Coble does it again. Her books are beautifully written, they are clean romance and she subtlety adds faith and Christianity. In Ambush our heroine is Paradise. She is a strong female lead, one that has been through a lot in her short life. Paradise is a courageous young woman although she doesn't realize how strong and courageous she is.
There are three points I would be remiss if I did not mention them:
The Bible is our North Star; it helps us navigate life.
We cannot control what happens to us, but we can control how we respond.
God never moves - we do.
I eagerly await the next book in this series.
Our Perfect Family
Nicola Marsh
https://www.nicolamarsh.com
Dreamscape
https://www.dreamscapepublishing.com
$25.99 CD (Amazon) / $TBA digital audiobook
https://www.dreamscapepublishing.com/single-audiobook/?titleid=25115
https://www.amazon.com/Audible-Our-Perfect-Family/dp/B0DTZJ4JQW
Families may look perfect from the outside, but all families have problems, some worse than others.
Mia Yates is devasted when an intimate photo goes viral. Her parents Austin and Kate are shocked and worried. Like most fathers Austin is determined to protect his family. People are cruel and always ready to condemn, gossip, and embellish what they have heard. Something from Austin's past comes back to haunt him. Their love and devotion to each other is tested. Will their family survive.
It is sad but this tale could be real. There have always been bullies but social media has made it ten times worse. The author Nicola Marsh writing is superb. She brings this drama to life. The story is told from three points of view, Mia, Austin, and Kate. The characters were well developed. My heart went out to Mia, Austin and Kate for the pain each one faced. There is a dual timeline, the story flows smoothly between past and present.
Tales from the Otherworlds: A Middle Grade Fantasy Anthology
Antoine Bandele, K.R.S. McEntire, Jessica Cage
https://www.antoinebandele.com
Bandele Books
9781951905262, $34.99 Hardcover
9781951905279, $19.99 Paperback / $3.99 Ebook
https://www.amazon.com/Tales-Otherworlds-Antoine-Bandele/dp/1951905261
This book contains eleven tales by various authors. The tales contain mythical creatures in lands of magic. The stories were well written with imagery. The authors dig deep into their imaginations. Some tales were inspired by folklore, mythology and history. My favorite tale was the one with warm, delicious food coming from the basement but upon investigation the basement is empty without a kitchen or a cook.
The tales are short and diverse. They were written for middle school age children. These tales will encourage readers to use their imagination. The tales are just long enough to entice and introduce readers to fantasy fiction.
I suspect the stories are from a longer article for none of them felt complete.
Countdown (Mirrin Bank Trilogy #1)
Johan Ottosen, author
Sinead Quirke Kongerskov, translator
https://johanottosen.com/en
Forkbeard Publishing
9788794013321, $19.95 Paperback / $3.95 Kindle
https://www.amazon.com/Countdown-Conspiracy-History-Suspense-Trilogy/dp/8794013322
The setting is Denmark Copenhagen. Readers be prepared for a fast-paced exciting tale. The main characters are Soren Storm, an intelligence officer and Kurt Ostergaard a journalist. While the citizens of Denmark are eagerly awaiting the Queen's Jubilee there is evil at work in the background.
Kurt's stepfather went to a park, sat on a bench next to a nursing mother, pulled out a gun and shot himself. Why? That's the question Kurt wants to answer. As a journalist it is impossible for him to let it go. In his search for an answer, he stumbles upon a strange message from his stepfather. The message leads to a conspiracy with roots in the high levels of power and an ancient calendar marking the end of the world. Soren Storm and Birgitte are called to investigate the strange death of a criminal receiving radiation treatment for cancer.
This book is being compared to "The DaVinci Code" by Dan Brown, it is easy to see why however the two books are different. There are a lot of characters in this tale, not all were necessary several were red herrings. The chapters are short. The author Johan Ottosen provides vivid descriptions; I felt as if I was walking the streets of Copenhagen and the forests of Greenland. Ottosen provides a QR code at the beginning of each chapter. The links are GPS locations. One of my favorite parts concerned organ donations. Ottosen successfully combines Norse myths and mysteries of the Mayas.
This is the first book in a series. It was originally published in print in 2012, it has now been released as an audiobook.
The Deathly Grimm
Kathryn Purdie
https://kathrynpurdie.com
Wednesday Books
https://wednesdaybooks.com
9781250873026, $24.00 Hardback
9781250372598, $14.00 Paperback
B0D1PGGY6L, $9.99 Kindle
https://www.amazon.com/Deathly-Grimm-Forest-duology/dp/1250372593
This is the second book in The Forest Grimm Duology. In Book 1 The Forest Grimm we met seventeen-year-old Clara. She ignored her grandmother's instructions and entered the dangerous forest to retrieve Sortes Fortunae, an enchanted book with the power to life the curse plaguing her village and maybe even save her mother. For years the villagers used the Sortes Fortunae to obtain their deepest desires---until someone used it to kill. In book 1 we are inspired by Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty among others.
The Deathly Grimm (The Forest Grimm duology Book 2). Clara and Axel have no choice; they must return to the forest and its monsters if they have any hope of finally breaking the curse on their village. When Clar and Axel escaped the forest, they returned to their village. They thought they would finally be safe. There is a page missing from Sortes Fortunae, the Book of Fortunes. The forest begins luring villagers into the dark forest. There was a deeper, darker and more dangerous presence lurking there. Clara and Axel must once again face an evil in the forest. This evil is different than the one they faced previously, this was a greater evil.
In book 2 we are inspired by Jack and the Bean Stalk, Rumpelstiltskin, Snow White and the Princess and the Frog. I enjoyed this book; I'm a great fan of fairy tales especially when told from a different point of view.
Fake It Like You Mean It
Megan Murphy
Alcove Press
https://alcovepress.com
9798892422291, $29.99 Hardback
9798892420648, $19.99 Paperback
B0D7GHQ7YZ, $14.99 Kindle
https://www.amazon.com/Fake-Like-You-Mean-Novel/dp/B0D7GW8DD7
Ellie's parents died in a car accident when she was three. Her grandmother, Lovie, raised her. Lovie had a lot of rules and Ellie cherished each one. "If you want to take the scenic route, make sure your destination will still be open when you get there." "Sweeping something under the rug does not make it go away; it just puts your dirt in another place."
When Ellie realizes Lovie's mind is fading fast, she leaves Chicago to spend time with her. She arrives at her childhood home late one night only to find a man sleeping in her bed. Adam Wheeler works for AngelCare and is the live-in nurse taking care of Lovie. Ellie resents Adam and the way he always knows what Lovie needs. The tension between the two is thick. Lovie believes Ellie is Lovie and Adam is Bobby and that they are in love. The two must pretend to be who Lovie thinks they are. Ellie finds herself attracted to Adam, but she certainly isn't going to admit it.
Ellie is a podcaster with a large following. As she deals with the pain of her grandmother not recognizing her and often abusing her, Ellie decides to start an additional podcast dealing with Alzheimer's.
This story touched my heart. I have known more than one person with this terrible disease and the author accurately describes it. When there are lucid days loved ones cherish them. Being a caregiver is stressful and very difficult. I enjoyed the romance between Adam and Ellie. It was obvious they were deeply in love long before they realized it. I love Lovie's rules. I wish I could remember them all.
Montana Abduction Rescue (Mountain Country K-9 Unit #5)
Jodie Bailey
Love Inspired Suspense
c/o Harlequin
https://www.harlequin.com
9781335483768, $15.99 trade paperback
B0CLN38WCD $7.99 EBook / $10.91 AudioBook
https://www.amazon.com/Montana-Abduction-Rescue-Mountain-Country/dp/1335980016
This is the 5th book in the Mountain Country K-9 Unit series however, this tale easily stands alone. This is a Christian Inspirational tale.
Our main characters are Ian and Meadow. Ian Carpenter is a former undercover law enforcement officer who was wounded in the line of duty. It left him with PTSD. He went into the witness protection program after helping put a crime boss behind bars. U.S. Marshal Meadow Ames works with Grace, her K-9 partner.
Ian left the witness protection program after the death of the criminal he put behind bars. However, the criminals had escaped and were lying in wait for him, as he drove the winding back road near Glacier National Park; they wanted revenge. Ian called U.S. Marshal Meadow and Grace rushed to assist him. Meadow and Officer Rocco were working on the Henry Mulder murder case when she received the call from Ian. Ian had been on his way to meet his cousin Brooke when he was ambushed. He and Meadow barely escape with their life. Brooke is the one member of Ian's family who cares for him, and she has been kidnapped. There are several young women missing can Ian and Meadow find them before it is too late.
This is a suspense/romance tale. There was an equal balance between suspense and romance. I really enjoyed it except for the narrator; her voice distracted from the tale. The plot is face paced. The dogs were wonderful and won my heart quickly. I was rooting for Ian and Meadow's relationship. They were so obviously in love. There is a focus on Christianity in this book; I thought it was well handled. Kudos to author Jodie Bailey.
Fake It 'Til You Feel It: A (Not So) Smooth-Sailing Office Romance, extended edition
Chaos and Chemistry Book 1
Fortuna Lux, author
BDA Publishing
B0DXY39ZKF, $3.99 EBook
https://www.amazon.com/Fake-Til-You-Feel-Smooth-Sailing-ebook/dp/B0DXY39ZKF
CEO Nathan Clarke is obnoxious, arrogant, demanding and oh so tempting. Dana is his personal assistant. Nathan needs to impress a potential client at a meeting that weekend. He asks Dana to go with him as his pretend girlfriend. Dana agrees to go; with one stipulation they must keep things professional; that's hard to do when they each have hidden feelings for the other. Before the weekend is over, they realize they are attracted to each other.
This is a fast-paced tale. The characters are likeable. The plot is funny. There are a couple of spicy scenes but nothing too racy. My only complaint is this tale is too short; it left me wanting more. There could have been more information concerning their background. There were a lot of cliches in this tale. The story is told from two points of view. I laughed at some of the antics.
Kingdom of the Two Moons
Alexandra Thomashoff
https://www.alexandrathomashoff.com
Last Unicorn Press
9783950576924, $18.99 paperback
B0DV5HT24L, $2.99 Kindle
https://www.amazon.com/Kingdom-Two-Moons-Alexandra-Thomashoff/dp/3950576924
Half-human Melody has been held captive her whole life, she has never known freedom. She has rare gifts, but they are being drained by a magic harvester. She had little hope of ever escaping until one night when she did.
Melody doesn't know freedom long; Riven, a young fae, makes her his prisoner. He forces her to enter the court of the Two Moon, ruled by evil Dark Lord Caryan is a fallen angel and masks himself in a reputation of ruthlessness. Melody finds herself drawn to both Riven and Caryan. She finds the foretelling that links her to the destiny of the dominion.
This tale has great potential; however, it needs a little tweaking.1. There is a lot of repetitiveness. 2. The plot is so slow. 3. There was a lot of filler. 4. The romance lacked romance. The two male main characters never showed real romance. 5. There is a lot to take in. While the world building is fantastic it is also complicated. 6. It took a while to understand the relationships.
Things that worked: 1. The author did a great job of world building and giving readers minute details. There is a glossary. The world building is sophisticated and inspired. 2. I so was immersed in this tale that I couldn't lay it down. I kept think I most chapter. 3. The characters each are multifaceted; they have distinct personalities. The characters are not perfect, there are flaws that make them endearing. 3. The Magic system was uniquely planned. 4. The mythical creatures are well done. The creatures include: angels, elves, witches, demons, oracles, and fauns. The writing style is well done. 5. This tale is told from both first person and third person point of view; it worked.
I struggled with a star rating. There is so much well done and yet there were a few things I thought would improve this tale. I wish I could give a 4.5.
Thank you NetGalley for the ARC in return for a fair, unbiased review.
Meet Me At Midnight
Max Monroe
https://www.authormaxmonroe.com
Privately Published
9798991843508, $18.99 Paperback
Dreamscape
https://www.dreamscapepublishing.com
B0DYQDPFM1, $TBA audiobook
https://www.amazon.com/Meet-Me-Midnight-Max-Monroe/dp/B0DM1WDG4V
Avery has been Juniper Perry's best friend since kindergarten. Juniper's parents never seem to have time for her. She was practically raised by her Avery's parents; they loved her and were good to her. Juniper and Avery are working at the same company and rent a condo together. The drawback of being raised with your best friend is you become part of the family. Juniper is head over heels in love with Beau Banks, Avery's older brother, but he thinks of her as his little sister.
Juniper is a marketing intern in the Banks family business, where Beau is an executive. Beau has moved into the apartment next door to Juniper. Oh the temptation. No one knows Juniper is struck on Beau; she's managed to keep it secret for years; afraid she would lose her best friend. He has dark honey-colored eyes and adorable dimples.
Juniper is rocking it as an intern at Banks and McKenzie Marketing. Neil Banks is her new boss. The company is testing a new app called Midnight. Users can chat with other members using a screen name. Beau goes by Thunderstruck and Juniper by ElizaBeth. They cannot use screenshots or save messages. Beau and Juniper are testing the app and start communicating with each other. Juniper knows she is chatting with Beau but he doesn't know he is talking to Juniper. They chat for several weeks before deciding to meet at the condo's gym.
Juniper and Beau are adorable characters. Juniper is so nice with strong work ethics and reliable. Beau has a wonderful personality, he's sweet and so sexy. However, I did not like Avery; she is self-absorbed, no work ethic, and is spoiled rotten. This tale is hilarious.
My Big Fat Fake Marriage
Charlotte Stein
St. Martin's Griffin
c/o Macmillan
https://us.macmillan.com/st-martins-griffin
9781250867971, $18.00 Paperback
B0D1P5SHTJ, $12.99 Kindle
https://www.amazon.com/My-Big-Fat-Fake-Marriage/dp/1250867975
Connie has little trust in men; the nice guys aren't really nice; they have hidden secrets. Henry Samuel Beckett lives in the apartment across from Connie and he really is a nice guy; he's an editor, loves to wear bowties. He's charming, smiles a lot and is cheerful but Connie doesn't trust him... no one is really that nice.
Beck does have a secret hidden underneath his sunny personality. He's never been married but he told everyone at the publishing house that's he's married. Connie finds herself not only defending him but pretending to be his wife. They attend a writing conference, and the people there doubt they are married. Things change when they spend their nights sleeping side by side. The tension between them grows until it finally explodes.
I like this book, its cute and its funny but the whole premise is rather silly. The characters are sweet and funny. Beck is in his 30s and yet he's never kissed... that' a little strange. Connie is down on love. She's been hurt before and determined to protect herself. The writing was inconsistent and the pacing was s..l..o..w. The banter was fun. The secondary characters lacked depth. All in all this was a fun read.
The Prophecy: Saga of the Chosen, Book 1
Petra Landon
Independently Published
9781542863216 $11.99 Paperback / $4.99 AudioBook / $2.99 Kindle
https://www.amazon.com/Prophecy-Saga-Chosen-1/dp/154286321X
The setting is San Francisco. There are two main characters in this delightful tale. Tasia Armstrong is a Wizard with great powers, but her father warned her to never let any of the Chosen know how powerful she is. She disguises herself as a L2 Wizard. Raoul is the Alpha Protector. He is young, ominous and mysterious with golden eyes. There are several secondary characters that have a great impact on the story. Hawk is a young shifter devoted to Tasia after she saved his life. He has a twin sister, Sara. Duncan is a mature Alpha and mentor to Raoul.
When Tasia was hired to clean up a mess made by 3 rogue shifters, she reads the residue of magic in the room and realizes they have a captive. She finds the shifter in a cage with silver bars; she releases him, saving his life. Someone is searching for a young woman who is a powerful wizard; they hired 3 rogue shifters to find her. The rogue shifters hired Leeches to hold her captive and to destroy her.
When Hawk tells his Alpha about the young Wizard that saved his life, Raoul agrees to offer her the protection of the pack. Raoul hates wizards but he's drawn to Tasia. Their relationship is tumultuous. Living with a Shifter Pack isn't easy, they have a strange culture with odd rules and habits such as food or drink, if you share with another it is considered dating or in a relationship. Leeches (vampires) capture her, the Alpha could have left her there, but he rushed to protect her.
The pack is asked to investigate a mystery from 25 years ago. Danger surrounds Tasia: Raoul has promised to protect her but she must be honest with him. Is withholding information the same as lying?
I love this book. I had already read half of it but couldn't wait any longer! I stayed up all night reading it. Do not expect all the answers to be tied up in a neat bow at the end of this book instead you get a cliff hanger. This is the first book in a 4 book series.
The Rainmaker: Saga of the Chosen, Book 2
Petra Landon
Independently Published
9781986541008, $16.99 Paperback / $2.99 Kindle
https://www.amazon.com/Rainmaker-Saga-Chosen-Book-ebook/dp/B07BBNBP3S
The Rainmaker begins when The Prophecy drops off. Tasia is living at the Lair under the protection of the Alpha. After living there several months Tasia has made a lot of friends in the pack however, there are those she isn't truly comfortable with. Elisabetta always has a sharp remark and watches Tasia closely. Could it be that Elisabetta is jealous or is it something more serious? Tasia doesn't trust Simonov. There is something about him that seems untrustworthy.
Tasia's is growing more self-confident. Alpha is strongly attracted to her and makes it clear that he wants a relationship with her, but she is afraid. She has more secrets that she cannot share without placing her world endanger.
Sister number 1 has been found, Sienna. Sister number 2 has been found, Nandini. Where is sister number 3? Lady Bethesda is power hungry. There was a prophecy saying 3 sisters of different fathers would in some way change the Chosen's world.
Sienna has dreams or visions in which she sees Tasia addressing the Chosen. Tasis has nightmares where she struggles to hold back her beast. Are the visions a look at the future or is she seeing someone's past.
Guardian Anderson is back again. You would think after Alpha punished him in the last book, he's have learned his lesson but not Anderson! He comes after Alpha and Tasia again.
Author Petra Landon has woven a tale that is fascinating. The characters are well developed and interesting. The original characters are growing in depth, maturing and showing their skills, secrets and truths. The new characters are adding to the drama. The plot is well done, interesting, delightful and kept me on the edge of my seat. The romance between the alpha and the witchling is what kept me up reading half the night. There are twists and turns that add to the tale. Each character in this 4-book peseries has a backstory; there are clues hidden throughout this tale that shares the background of the characters you may only get a tidbit here and one there but if you read carefully you will find the clues that share that characters past.
The Siren: Saga of the Chosen, Book 3
Petra Landon
Independently Published
9798621533267, $10.99 Paperback
B0855K7T9Z, $2.99 Kindle
https://www.amazon.com/Siren-Saga-Chosen-Book-ebook/dp/B0855K7T9Z
This is the third book of the Saga of the Chosen #3.
"What had been set in motion could not be stopped anymore. Coaxed open, Pandora's Box could not be closed anew. The future had changed but there was no way to predict how it might affect the Chosen... A tempest gathered over the horizon to bide its time. When the gale winds gained strength, it would rampage ferociously through her world and damage the invisible threads that bound the Chosen together. "
The Pack has come to admire Tasia; she has contributed to their investigation. But her secrets have also come to light because of her contributions. Lady Bethesda continues to manipulate those around her. The Prophecy continues to be revealed a piece at a time.
Temi has been introduced as the third daughter. She has escaped the Vampires, but they are still a danger. They will not let her go that easily. The origin of the nightmares is confirmed.
The action never stops with this series. Like a whirl wind the action swirls around Tasia. This is the first time I have disliked Alpha. His reaction is inconsistent.
I strongly recommend reading the whole series. Each book builds upon the last. I have read The Prophecy, book 1, The Rainmaker, book2 and The Siren, book 3; I am eager to read the last book in this series however, I must say that I was disappointed in book 3. It felt like filler. Things seemed to go in circles until the last few pages, which really made my heart drop. This is a fantastic series; fans of fantasy will love it.
Our Dear Miss H. is on the Case
Violet Marsh
Forever
c/o Hachette
https://www.hachettebookgroup.com
9781538739631, $17.99 Paperback
B0DFW9QW6L, $11.99 Kindle
https://www.amazon.com/Our-Dear-Miss-H-Case/dp/1538739631
This is the second book in this series.
Georgina Harrigton lives in an era where women are not taken seriously. She survived a few social seasons which she believes were a waste of her time. She is a brilliant archaeologist; she inherited her love of excavating from her father. She has written several articles and found several artifacts but is unable to ask for credit for her accomplishments. She turns to her cousin Percy to present and take credit for her work. She should not have trusted him. The world knows him as a talented archaeologist (which is a real joke). When Percy disappears, Georgina knows he is in danger. She turns to Alexander Lovett, Percy's best friend, for assistance in finding him.
Georgina's brother is attempting to marry her off. He has arranged a marriage to a man she has never met and doesn't want to meet. Alexander has similar feelings he has no desire for an arranged marriage. However, he finds himself falling for Georgina; he likes that she is brilliant, a free thinker, and willing to take chances. Georgina is attracted to Alexander. What she doesn't realize is he is the man her brother wants her to marry.
I like the main characters. Alexander was born with a club foot. He was forced to have surgery after surgery, but the results were minimal to non-existent. His father wanted a perfect son. He was bullied at school. Alexander has learned how to smile and be pleasant even when belittled and mistreated.
Debra Gaynor, Reviewer
www.facebook.com/bookreviewsbydebra
www.hancockclarion.com
Fred Siegmund's Bookshelf
Ours Was the Shining Future: The Story of the American Dream
David Leonhardt
Random House Trade Paperbacks
https://www.randomhousebooks.com
9780812983333, $32.00, 395 pages
https://www.amazon.com/Ours-Was-Shining-Future-American/dp/0812983335
In his new book New York Times journalist David Leonhardt gives readers the origin of the term "American Dream." It derives from an 1880's book of history by an author I have never heard of named James Truslow Adams. A lengthy quote from the book, titled The Epic of America, describes the better, richer and happier life future progress will bring to Americans. As you might guess the Leonardt book writes about the disappearing American Dream.
The book has an Introduction, a Part I entitled "The Rise" with four chapters and a Part II entitled "The Fall" with six chapters, followed by a Conclusion of 26 pages. For no obvious reason the Introduction is numbered in roman numerals, ix- xxxiv, which often signals something readers might skip over. Here though the Introduction should be read as part of the book.
Halfway into the introduction Leonhardt explains "For almost forty years now, the United States has been doing a worse job than any similar country of keeping its citizens healthy and alive." How true, but he does not blame our failure on capitalism. Instead, he writes "My central argument is that capitalism remains the best system for delivering rising living standards to the greatest number of people - but only a certain type of capitalism." He fills in this argument by defining three forces he argues generate the rise and fall of Democratic Capitalism as practiced in the United States. He gives brief discussion of Power, Culture, Investment.
The four chapters of Part I, The Rise, offer quite disparate people and events intended to trace the rise of the American Dream. Discussion stays within the 1920's up to the early 1960's. The first chapter gives a sketch of depression era labor history and union organizing using the 1934 Minneapolis Teamsters strike as an example of working-class effort and success. In chapter two readers meet businessman Paul Hoffman and a selection of other businessmen including automobile executive and Michigan Governor George Romney as examples of people who worked as trustees of the common welfare. Leonhardt contrasts the career and sacrifice of George Romney, the father, with his son Mitt Romney who opted for money making at Bain Capital. Chapter three does much the same for another selection of people that stayed in long run careers. Include here Dwight Eisenhower, computer pioneer Grace Hopper and some discussion of the government's move to support long term research. Chapter 4 features the efforts of A. Philip Randolph of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and his early struggles for racial equality.
Next, begins the six chapters of Part II, the Fall, that starts with chapter five entitled "The Young Intelligentsia." Here readers meet C. Wright Mills, Tom Hayden, Betty Friedan, Raph Nader and follow their careers along with a supporting cast of people Leonhardt defines as New Left. He narrates their efforts and successes before shifting to the careers of people he defines as the old left, primarily four labor union leaders of the 1950's and 1960's: George Meany, Cesar Chavez, Walter Reuther and Jerry Wurf. Leonhardt takes six pages describing Meany's failure to expand the labor movement, and while more charitable with the others they too failed to unify the working class.
Chapter Six starts describing a few celebrated crimes of the 1960's and a plot of crime data that documents the increasing crime rate. There follows a discussion of the academic and political response to crime. Here Leonhardt provides the reaction to crime of Spiro Agnew, Richard Nixon, George Wallace and a much longer discussion of Robert Kennedy. Kennedy confronted the crime issue to unite the working class, something Democratic politicians have avoided ever since.
Chapter 7 and 8 develops the evolution of conservative ideology following Richard Nixon's election. Many are mentioned in this effort in Chapter 7 but it primarily follows the Chicago School and the efforts of Milton Friedman and Robert Bork. Chapter 8 follows with the October 1973 Middle East oil embargo, which Leonhardt treats as the beginning of an era that "Clears the Track for Business." Here Leonhardt follows the Ronald Reagan era and those in the anti-tax movement and the de-regulators like lobbyist Charls Walker, Congressman Jack Kemp, deregulator Ann Gorsuch and a little more of Robert Bork. The closing pages describe the Democrats response and evaluates the economic success of Republican "Neoliberals."
Chapter Nine, "This Little Village Called America," gives the historical background and politics of immigration. Narrative starts with 1924 and moves forward to Edward Kennedy and the 1965 immigration law, then onward to Congresswomen Barbara Jordan and the 1986 amendments and on to Bill Clinton, Bernie Sanders and the present immigration troubles. Chapter Ten, the last chapter before the conclusion, describes the decline in education spending, the rise of health care and income support subsidies and the failure to invest in the future or address inequality of income and wealth.
The designation of the first four chapters as Rise and the last six chapters as Fall feels out-of-place; all ten chapters feel like Fall. Possibly the editors at Random House wanted something that feels good to include, but I found that quite difficult to find. For example, the Rise chapters included the 1934 Minneapolis Teamsters strike where employers made public calls to organize a "citizen army" of vigilantes to end picketing as a first response. Continuing the strike required a dangerous, deadly and ferocious battle to fight the employer's organized violence until finally the intervention of Governor Olsen as impartial mediator got employers to the bargaining table. While the strike ended with some wage and labor gains, they amounted to a hiccup; I cannot find a consistent Rise through any periods in America's labor relations.
Think of the above as a minor criticism to an otherwise well written book of important economic and public policy subjects. The book makes a rough progression through time, where chapter narratives are primarily topical and treat the people and events in the narrative as evidence for drawing conclusions. Leonhardt offers censure across the political spectrum such as "What the New Left tried to do, it often succeeded at doing. Yet, the movement never made much of an attempt to improve pay, benefits, and job conditions of the working class, . . ." How true.
Before narrating the chapter 7-8 Nixon-Reagan era, Leonhardt suggests "By the late 1960's, millions of American workers had no political home." How true and a perfect introduction for describing the corporate agenda that leaves the working class with declining real wages and greater inequality by 2025. Be sure to read the immigration chapter carefully, it provides a thorough and excellent discussion of the evolving controversies of immigration law and policy, the best chapter in my opinion.
The Conclusion chapter returns to the American dream and the power, culture, investment forces that he mentioned at the beginning. He writes "If there is a central reason for the decline of the American dream over the past half century, it has been the lack of a strong political movement dedicated to protecting that dream." Lack of a strong political movement translates to a failure of the always-divided Democratic Party to be an opposition party and defend the working class.
The need for change and new direction dominates the conclusion narrative: "Think about how different American society might be if there were also strong movements to reduce corporate concentration, raise taxes on the wealthy, lower medical costs, create universal pre-K education and increase middle class pay." He advises progressives interested in building a movement for change needs to know it "requires making the left less upscale than it now is and more inclusive of people who are not white collar professionals" and he counsels for a reinvigorated labor movement and listening more to the working class. In the last two paragraphs of the book Leonhardt expresses outrage for the past up to the present but hope for the future. After finishing the narrative, I can agree America is not hopeless, but I found precious little hope for a shining future.
Fred Siegmund, Reviewer
www.Americanjobmarket.blogspot.com
Israel Drazin's Bookshelf
One Jewish State
David Friedman
Humanix Books
https://humanixbooks.com
9781630062941, $29.99 hc / $14.99 Kindle 304 pages
A solution to the Arab Israel conflict
Many politicians, including those who are well-meaning, suggest that the only practical solution to the long-standing strife between Palestinians and Jews is a "two-state solution," an idea developed with the Oslo Accords in 1994. They are wrong. It is a formula for a never-ending conflict.
David Friedman served as US ambassador to Israel from 2017 to 2021. He was intimately involved in Israel-Arab affairs, met and held talks with leaders of both sides, and was one of the architects of the Abraham Accords. He demonstrates in his brilliant 2024 book, "One Jewish State" why a two-state solution is based on flawed premises and will ultimately fail to solve anything. Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has praised the book, syndicated TV and radio host Mark Levin, U.S. Ambassador-designate Mike Huckabee, Pastor John Hagee, Professor Alan Dershowitz, and numerous other notable figures. The following are some of the many facts he reveals.
Definition
The two-state solution is, in essence, the idea to establish two states in the land of Israel, one for Jews and one for Arabs. The one-state solution suggests the creation of a single Jewish state, Israel, which would include all Arabs who desire to live in it.
Problems
As will be evident in the following discussion, this proposal has no chance of success. The Arabs have no historical reason for having possession of parts of Israel. Also, more significantly, since 1967, when Israel gave them control of the West Bank and Gaza, the Arab government has mismanaged the areas. They have not used what they governed to benefit its Arab population and have not spent funds given to the government to help its people. Instead of doing the basic requirements of a government, the Arab leaders taught the population hatred and the need to drive the Jews from Israel. They built tunnels, purchased arms, and trained soldiers to accomplish this mission.
The West Bank
Some people think that the "West Bank" has been a Palestinian state for more than a generation. This is wrong. Neither the name "West Bank" nor the idea that it is Palestinian is correct.
According to the Hebrew Bible, God promised the land of Israel to each of the three patriarchs - Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob - and their descendants on multiple occasions, as recorded in Genesis 13:15, 26:3, and 28:13. The biblical book of Joshua 15:47 indicates that the tribe of Judah was also given Gaza.
There is abundant evidence that Jews have lived in Israel since ancient times. For example, as I write this review, newspapers and TV have announced that a Ten Commandments tablet, dated between 300 and 800 CE, was found in 1913 near the site of an ancient synagogue, one of many proofs that Jews were present in Israel. During these years, as we will soon show, Palestinians did not even exist.
In Moses's time, the Jewish tribes were on both sides of the Jordan River. However, Jordan, not the Palestinians, received the eastern and western banks of the river after World War I.
The ancient names of the western areas are Judea and Samaria. The area was Jewish for nearly three thousand years, and two Jewish kingdoms existed there.
Judea was the kingdom of King David and Solomon, as well as their descendants, following the death of King Saul. Scholars date King Saul's reign as the first king of Israel between 1021 and 1000 BCE.
When Solomon died, ten of the twelve tribes rebelled against his son. They established a separate kingdom in Samaria, to the north of Solomon's son's kingdom, which was called Judea because it mainly comprised the tribe of Judah.
The Jewish people are called Jews today because they come from Judea. The Northern kingdom was named Israel. It was destroyed in 722 BCE. Judea lasted until 586 BCE when the Jewish first temple was destroyed. However, Jews had a reestablished kingdom in Israel after 586 BCE, from around 516 BCE, such as the kingdom of King Herod mentioned in the New Testament.
Samaria (Hebrew: Shomron) is mentioned in the Bible in 1 Kings 16:24. It is the name of the mountain on which Omri, the ruler of the northern Israelite kingdom in the 9th century BCE, built his capital and named it after himself. It is located in the central region of the biblical Land of Israel.
People called Judea and Shomron the "West Bank" because from when Israel was established in 1948 until Arab nations attacked Israel in 1967, when Israel won the war against these nations, the area of Judea and Shomron was under the control of and part of Jordan. It was the "west bank" of Jordan, a direction, not a Palestinian state.
While most nations incorporate captured territory into their land, especially in this case where the captured territory was the homeland of the kings of Judah and Israel and their people, the State of Israel did not do so. It has only kept Judea and Samaria under Israeli administration since capturing this land in 1967.
This was a well-meaning mistake, a hope that being kind to the Arabs would result in peaceful lives for Jews and Arabs. It did not work out as hoped. Neither did the similar error of giving up Gaza.
The Arab leaders of these areas pleaded with the world for financial aid for their citizens but provided little of what they received to the population. Instead, they enriched themselves, became multi-millionaires, bought weapons, and dug tunnels to attack and drive Jews from their homeland.
Judea, Samaria, and Gaza became hostile areas
There is every indication that a "Two-State Solution" would not alter the behavior of this leadership.
The areas continue to be economic failures. Besides the continual threat to Israel, there is no indication that the life of the Arab population in these areas would improve.
The GDP per capita of the Palestinian Authority is an abysmal $2,500. Other Muslim nations are about $4,000. In contrast, Israel's GDP per capita is approximately $5,400, ranking it among the top twenty nations. Few, if any, Israeli Arabs would want to live in a poor, corrupt autocracy with the goal of constant warfare.
Palestinians receive more foreign aid per capita than any other people on earth. Between 1994 and 2020, $40 billion was allocated. But little of this money reached the average Arab. However, Arab leaders reside in multi-million-dollar homes. The money is used to fight Israel, build tunnels, and buy weapons.
The name Palestine
The name "Palestine" dates back centuries before the arrival of the Arabs in Israel. In 135 CE, the territory was still referred to as Judea. The Romans, who had just defeated the army of Bar Kochba and wanted to destroy the Jewish people, destroyed much of the land, made it difficult for vegetation to grow, and even changed the country's name to "Syria Palistina."
Contrary to what many think, "Palistina" does not mean Palestine, but, Philistines." Rome chose the name to mock the Jews. They knew that the Philistines were the archenemies of the Jewish people in the time of the judges, prophets, and kings of Israel, so they said the land belonged to the Philistines. Modern Arabs have no connection to the Philistines.
Not only is the name Palestine an error, but no country ever existed called Palestine, Arabs never lived in any area called Palestine, and the Philistines do not apply to them. The letter P is not in their lexicon. They say instead, "Falistin."
History does not support the Palestinians
There is much more that negates the claims of Arabs.
It is significant that from 1917, when the world decided to give parts of Israel to the Jews in the Balfour Declaration, until 1948, there was no Palestinian party involved in this decision-making process regarding the division of the land of Israel.
It is also significant that from 1949 through 1967, Judah, Samaria, and the old city of Jerusalem were under the control of Jordan, and Jews were denied access to these holy sites. It was not until 1964 that the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was established.
Who are the Palestinians?
Arabs arrived in Israel only around 600 CE with the Muslim invasion. None were in Israel before this date.
In 1948, after Israel's War of Independence, about 156,000 Arabs lived in Israel. Today, about two million Arabs live in Israel as full citizens of the State. Millions live abroad with no desire to return home.
Approximately 150,000 Druze live in Israel. They are non-Muslims but speak Arabic. They support Israel and serve in its army.
Israel Arabs are attending Israeli universities in large numbers, thereby improving themselves and their living conditions. According to a recent count, 17% of students at Hebrew University in Jerusalem are Arab, 41% at Haifa University, 16% at Tel Aviv University, and 22% at the Technion. Christian Arabs constitute 2% of Israel's population but represent 17% of university students.
The country of Israel was in the top five this year in the "World Happiness Index." This statistic includes the two million Arabs living in Israel.
In short, not all Arabs desire a two-state solution. Non-Jews are treated very well in Israel, and with a one-state solution, this will continue, and all Arabs would be treated well.
Israel Drazin, Reviewer
www.booksnthoughts.com
Jack Mason's Bookshelf
Media Darling: Shine Through Every Interview
Joanne McCall
www.joannemccall.com
The Wright Publishing House
9781736095010, $24.95, HC, 196pp
https://www.amazon.com/Media-Darling-Shine-Through-Interview/dp/1736095013
Synopsis: With the publication of "Media Darling: Shine Through Every Interview", media insider, publicist, PR coach, and trainer Joanne McCall, shares her advice and insider secrets for building your audience and networks, and delivering impactful interviews on top-tier media outlets.
With so many channels and media opportunities available, NOT getting media trained can really hurt you, but sticker shock is real. "Media Darling: Shine Through Every Interview" packs on the actionable advice you need, and is the next best thing to expensive training.
"Media Darling" is a step-by-step DIY guide to becoming a Media Darling and contains the tools needed for success. This is about coming across as the amazing influencer you know you are (or could be) and doing it in such a way that those watching you know you are too.
In the pages of "Media Darling" you will learn how to:
Master getting noticed in an incredibly noisy world
Determine effective media messages that show your expertise
Know your key messages and why that is absolutely essential
Launch an interview so that the audience sticks around for the entire show
How to elegantly handle surprises while being interviewed
The top media No-Nos
Tips for on-camera interviews
Master the Inner and Outer games of media
And more...
Critique: "Media Darling: Shine Through Every Interview" should be considered required reading for authors, speakers, consultants, coaches, entrepreneurs, influencers, and thought leaders who want to look confident, poised, focused, and skilled anytime they are on-camera doing a media interview, creating a video, or doing their next "live" appearance on radio, television, or zoom interview. Comprehensive, reader friendly in organization and presentation, and an unreservedly recommended pick for personal, professional, community, and college/university library DIY Promotion/Publicity collections, it should be noted for personal reading lists and writer/business workshop curriculums that this hardcover edition of "Media Darling" from The Wright Publishing House is also readily available in paperback (9781736095003, $16.950) and in a digital book format (Kindle, $7.99).
Editorial Note: Joanne McCall (www.joannemccall.com) is a true media insider and a veteran publicist who for the past 20+ years has operated on a first-name basis with hundreds of top-tier producers, editors, and writers at such outlets as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, Today, CNN, NBC, PBS, NPR, Readers Digest, Guideposts, Sun Media, and many others. Through online programs and consultations, she trains entrepreneurs, coaches, and consultants on how to attract media, work with them once they land the interview, and finally helps them to deliver a fantastic interview. She also pitches and books her clients for countless media opportunities. McCall has a communications degree with a certificate in conflict resolution and business.
Jack Mason
Reviewer
John Burroughs' Bookshelf
Out of the Mouth of Babe
Kelly Bennett
Familius
www.familius.com
9781641705776, $16.99, HC, 200pp
https://www.amazon.com/Out-Mouth-Babe-Pitching-Striking/dp/1641705779
Synopsis: "Baseball is the greatest game in the world and deserves the best you can give it."
-Babe Ruth
With forewords by Tom Stevens, Babe Ruth's grandson, and Marty Appel, public relations director for the New York Yankees from 1973 to 1977, Out of the Mouth of Babe is a collection of over 85 quotes by the Great Bambino, paired with photographs of the King of Crash during his incredible baseball career. Curated by Kelly Bennett, author of The House that Ruth Built, and filled with facts about the game and the Colossus of Clout, this is the perfect gift for baseball lovers and history buffs!
Critique: A fun collection of baseball legend Babe Ruth quotes and 'words of wisdom' compiled by Babe Ruth expert and baseball historian Kelly Bennett (author of The House that Ruth Built), and in collaboration with Brent Stevens (Babe Ruth's great-grandson), and long-time friend of the Ruth-Stevens family Stu Dressler, "Out of the Mouth of Babe: Babe Ruth on Life: Pitching, Hitting, Striking Out, and Coming Back Swinging" is a fun and informative collection that is a 'must' for the legions of baseball enthusiasts in general and Babe Ruth fans in particular. Profusely illustrated throughout with historical photos and illustrations, "Babe Ruth on Life" will prove an immediately popular and enduringly welcome pick for personal, community, and college/university library Baseball History & Humor collections. It should be noted for personal reading lists that this hardcover edition of "Babe Ruth on Life" from Familius is also available in a digital book format (Kindle, $15.29).
Editorial Note: Kelly Bennett (www.kellybennett.com/blog/ )is a southpaw author of many award-winning books including The House That Ruth Built, a nonfiction picture book about the opening day game in the original Yankee Stadium, Babe Ruth and baseball! Kelly's a weed-picking, veggie-chopping, two-wheeling bleacher-warmer based in Westhampton Beach, NY, and Mimiville (which is anywhere her grandboys may be). For more about Kelly and her books, visit her website at www.kellybennett.com.
John Burroughs
Reviewer
Julie Summers' Bookshelf
Lines of Connection: Drawing and Printmaking, 1400-1850
Edina Adam, author
Jamie Gabbarelli, author
J. Paul Getty Museum
c/o Getty Publications
www.getty.edu/publications
9781606069653, $40.00, PB, 23pp
https://www.amazon.com/Lines-Connection-Drawing-Printmaking-1400-1850/dp/1606069659
Synopsis: "Lines of Connection: Drawing and Printmaking, 1400-1850", co-authored by Edina Adam and Jamie Gabbarelli is the first volume from Getty Publications (the publishing arm of the J. Paul Getty Museum) to chart the rich and reciprocal relationship between drawing and printmaking from the fifteenth to nineteenth centuries.
While often viewed and studied separately, drawings and prints have always been closely intertwined. They facilitated and generated the production of one another, and in some instances, clear distinctions between the two dissolved. Many artists created drawings specifically intended for translation into print, and an even greater number used prints as a training tool, copying from them to hone drawing skills. This reciprocal relationship goes even deeper, however, as innovative artists made fascinating hybrid works that blurred the boundaries between the two media, pushing against modern definitions and hierarchies.
"Lines of Connection" charts these historical and geographical continuities for the first time by bringing together works on paper of superb quality, foregrounding issues of artistic process and collaboration, technical innovation, and creative ingenuity. Featuring over 170 prints and drawings by such artists as Albrecht Durer, Parmigianino, Hendrick Goltzius, Maria Sibylla Merian, Rembrandt van Rijn, and William Blake, this catalogue is a rich narrative introduction to the compelling, yet understudied, relationship between drawing and printmaking.
This impressive volume is published to accompany an exhibition on view at The Art Institute of Chicago from March 15 to June 1, 2025 and at the J. Paul Getty Museum at the Getty Center from July 1 to September 14, 2025.
Critique: Beautifully and profusely illustrated throughout with beautifully presented examples of 450 years (1400 - 1850 CE) of drawings and printmaking from Peter Paul Rubens to William Blake, "Lines of Connection: Drawing and Printmaking, 1400-1850" is as informative as it is inherently fascinating. This large format (8.5 x 1 x 10.5 inches, 2.38 pounds) paperback edition from Getty Publications is exceptional in organization and presentation, making it an ideal pick for personal, professional, community, and college/university library Art History and Printing History collections and supplemental curriculum studies list. Enhanced for the reader's benefit with the inclusion of a seven page Illustrations list, a seven page Bibliography, and a six page Index, it should be noted for personal reading lists that "Lines of Connection: Drawing and Printmaking, 1400-1850" is also available in a digital book format (Kindle, $38.00).
Editorial Note #1: Edina Adam (https://metmuseum.academia.edu/EdinaAdam) is the Assistant Curator of Drawings at the J. Paul Getty Museum.
Editorial Note #2: Jamie Gabbarelli (www.artic.edu/authors/97/jamie-gabbarelli) is the Prince Trust Associate Curator of Prints and Drawings at the Art Institute of Chicago.
Sunday Morning Reflections: Solo Piano Music with Scripture Readings
Ina Allen
CD Baby
https://cdbaby.com
601968577537 (Nationwide Disc)
B0BMGSYLD1, $15.95 Audio CD, $9.49 MP3 CD
https://www.amazon.com/Sunday-Morning-Reflections-Scripture-Readings/dp/B0BMGSYLD1
Critique: Available in both CD and MP3-CD formats, "Sunday Morning Reflections: Solo Piano Music with Scripture Readings" by Ina Allen and featuring Glen Allen is comprised of twenty pieces and a total running time of 55 Minutes and includes:
The Ash Grove (Let All Things Now Living) 02:48
For the Beauty of the Earth 02:19
How Majestic Is Your Name 01:35
Agnus Dei 04:33
O Magnify the Lord 03:03
The Heart of Worship 02:52
Shout to the Lord 03:32
El Shaddai 03:06
Thy Word 03:08
Fairest Lord Jesus 02:38
His Eye Is on the Sparrow 03:22
God Will Make a Way 02:53
We Fall Down 02:23
Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus 02:52
Amazing Grace 02:13
Sweet Sweet Spirit 03:28
God of Grace, God of Glory 02:17
All Hail King Jesus 01:59
O Worship the King 02:10
Praise to the Lord, the Almighty 02:29
Critique: Comprised of twenty popular and traditional Christian pieces of piano music prefaced by Scripture readings reflecting the mood and the lyrics of the songs, "Sunday Morning Reflections" by Ina Allen is ideal for meditation, spiritual development, and Christian themed inspiration. Exceptional and flawless in production, both the CD and the MP3-CD edition of "Sunday Morning Reflections" are especially and unreservedly recommended for church, seminary, and personal collections for all members of the Christian community regardless of denominational affiliations.
Julie Summers
Reviewer
Margaret Lane's Bookshelf
Women's Crusader: Catharine Beecher's Untold Story
R. Lee Wilson
Glanderston House
9798991451505, $32.00, HC, 304pp
https://www.amazon.com/Womens-Crusader-Catharine-Beechers-Untold/dp/B0DTS8MJ4G
Synopsis: Catharine (Kate) Beecher was a crusader for women's education, a successful author, and a unique feminist thinker who lived and worked for women's rights in the nineteenth century. Yet many today have never even heard of her. Kate's fame was eclipsed by that of her younger sister, abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe. With the publication of "Women's Crusader: Catharine Beecher's Untold Story", biographer R. Lee Wilson reveals the untold tale of romance and grief that launched Kate on a new path as an advocate for American women.
To write her biography of Catharine Beecher, Lee Wilson combed through unpublished letters, manuscripts, and diary entries to discover the secrets of Kate and Alexander Fisher, an unlikely couple. Kate was a fun-loving extrovert, while Alexander was an introverted math prodigy and brilliant Yale professor. But they were brought together by a piece of her published poetry and their joint love for music.
After a tragic shipwreck tore them apart, Kate's life dramatically shifted focus. She waged a battle against misogyny to help provide women with the education they deserved. Compelling and meticulously researched, "Women's Crusader" is the inspiring turning-point story of an important yet little-known woman in US history.
Critique: Rescuing Katharine Beecher from an undeserved obscurity, "Women's Crusader: Catharine Beecher's Untold Story" by R. Lee Wilson reveals a life of love, loss, and dedication to fighting for women's education in a 19th Century male dominated America. Informatively enhanced for the reader's benefit, "Women's Crusader" includes a six page Bibliography, thirty-two pages of Notes, an eight page genealogical Appendix, and a ten page Index, "Women's Crusader" is a masterpiece of historical research and unreservedly recommended for community and college/university library collections and supplemental 19th Century American Women's History/Biography collections and supplemental curriculum studies lists. It should be noted for personal reading lists that this hardcover edition of "Women's Crusader" is also available from Glanderston House in paperback (9798991451512, $19.00), and in a digital book format (Kindle, $9.99).
Editorial Note: R. Lee Wilson (https://www.rleewilson.com/author) is a passionate historian, scholar, and former CEO. He is a retired Booz Allen partner, Harvard MBA, and Phi Beta Kappa graduate of DePauw University. He was an executive vice president at Chase and Equitable Life before finishing his career as CEO of First Capital.
Preserving Made Easy: Small Batches and Simple Techniques
Ellie Topp & Margaret Howard
Firefly Books Ltd.
www.fireflybooks.com
9781770850941, $9.99, PB, 288pp
https://www.amazon.com/Preserving-Made-Easy-Batches-Techniques/dp/1770850945
Synopsis: "Preserving Made Easy: Small Batches and Simple Techniques" by co-authors Ellie Topp and Margaret Howard is the ideal DIY instructional for today's busy cooks who still want to prepare and enjoy the homemade goodness of fresh fruits and vegetables from their gardens or farmer's markets. These recipes were selected for their delicious taste and because they are easy to prepare.
Thoroughly tested and perfected, each recipe offers something special -- a new twist on an old favorite, a new way to mix and match flavors and tips to make the whole process easier and more fun.
"Preserving Made Easy" lives up to its title offering delectable recipes for jams, jellies, conserves, pickles, relishes, chutneys, salsas, mustards, marinades, flavored oils and more. Everything you need to delight family and friends is here. Using "Preserving Made Easy" will ensure that your family has only the best and freshest ingredients carefully prepared for their needs.
"Preserving Made Easy" is particularly appropriate for first-time preservationists who will benefit from the step-by-step introductions, and of enduring value for the more experienced family cooks who are just looking for that extra twist that will make the batch memorable.
Critique: In a portable paperback (4.25 x 0.94 x 7 inches, 8.8 ounces) edition from Firefly Books, "Preserving Made Easy: Small Batches and Simple Techniques" is thoroughly 'user friendly' in organization and presentation -- making it especially and unreservedly recommended for personal, professional, and community library Canning & Food Preservation collections. It is a also perfect curriculum textbook for highschool HomeEc classes.
Editorial Note #1: Ellie Topp is a Professional Home Economist and a Certified Culinary Professional (CCP) by the International Association of Culinary Professionals. She holds a Bachelors degree in Home Economics from Northwestern University, a Masters degree in foods and nutrition from the University of Wisconsin and was a research associate in the Department of Food Research at the University of Illinois.
Editorial Note #2: Margaret Howard is a Registered Dietitian and a Professional Home Economist. She holds a Bachelor Degree in Science, with a specialty in Home Economics from University of Western Ontario and interned in dietetics at Toronto General Hospital. Margaret has authored 15 cookbooks including several for people with diabetes published in cooperation with the Canadian Diabetes Association.
Margaret Lane
Reviewer
Michael Carson's Bookshelf
London Calling New York New York: Two Songs, Two Cities
Peter Silverton
Trouser Press Books
https://www.trouserpressbooks.com
9798989828357, $20.00, PB, 214pp
https://www.amazon.com/London-Calling-New-York-Cities/dp/B0DVQ2K8F8
Synopsis: How's this for a surprising musical coincidence? Frank Sinatra cut his version of "New York, New York" within weeks of the Clash recording "London Calling." That nearly simultaneous expression of optimistic striving and dystopic despair is the jumping-off point for "London Calling New York New York", a tale of two cities and the songs that came to exemplify them by Peter Silverton.
Silverton was a veteran English journalist who died in 2023 not long after completing the manuscript, did numerous interviews and in-depth research to dig deep into the history and impact of the two songs on their respective cities.
Combining musical scholarship, cultural analysis and personal memoir, "London Calling New York New York" is rich with wit, fascinating digressions and scholarly insight.
Although "London Calling New York New York" is about two popular songs from two different cultures, Silverton also addresses nostalgia, mythmaking, family, crime, war, art, terrorism, politics, film, fidelity and propaganda. Salting the story with tales from his own colorful life, Silverton ranges back and forth across the Atlantic and over centuries, taking in the almost biological connection between the cities, the songs and their creators.
From the Great Fire of London to a White Castle in the Bronx, from the Thames to the Hudson, Joe Strummer to George Gershwin, Noel Coward to Jay-Z, Primrose Hill to Yankee Stadium, Maggie Thatcher to Fiorello La Guardia, Silverton marshals a wealth of connections and coincidences to illuminate the creative process and its enduring cultural impact.
Critique: A simply fascinating read from cover to cover, "London Calling New York New York: Two Songs, Two Cities" is an original and unique contribution to 20th century American/British music history and biography collections. Exceptionally well written, organized and presented, "London Calling New York New York: Two Songs, Two Cities" is especially and unreservedly recommended addition to community and college/university library Pop Music and Punk Rock Music & Musicians collections. It should be noted for personal reading lists that this paperback edition of "London Calling New York New York: Two Songs, Two Cities" from Trouser Press Books is also readily available in a digital book format (Kindle, $8.95, Amazon).
Editorial Note: A freelance writer, the late Peter Silverston was the author of Essential Elvis and a coauthor (with Glen Matlock) of I Was a Teenage Sex Pistol.
Michael J. Carson
Reviewer
Robin Friedman's Bookshelf
Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant
Anne Tyler
Vintage
https://knopfdoubleday.com/imprint/vintage
9780099916406, $13.99, paperback
https://www.amazon.com/Dinner-Homesick-Restaurant-Anne-Tyler/dp/0099916401
The Grayness Of Things
Near the end of Anne Tyler's ninth novel "Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant", (1982) Beck Tull, who had abandoned his wife and three young children years earlier, returns to his family at last on the occasion of his wife's funeral. Beck tries to explain to his now grown children the reason why he left years earlier: "what it was, I guess. was the grayness; grayness of things; half right and half wrongness of things. Everything tangled, mingled, not perfect anymore. I couldn't take that. Your mother could, but not me. Yes sir, I have to hand it to your mother."
Beck's reference to the "grayness", the ambiguity, of things, offers an insight into Tyler's novel and the fractured Tull family and its members. Besides the long gone Beck, the family included the mother, Pearl, and three children, Cody, Ezra, and Jenny, ages 14, 11, and 9 when their father leaves Pearl to raise them alone. Pearl's terminal illness and death both begins and ends the novel. The body of the novel recounts the story of the family as the children grow and assume their own lives. Tyler writes in the third person throughout with the story assuming the perspectives of the different characters. Most of the story is set in Tyler's beloved Baltimore.
The Tulls have a difficult time of it. Pearl is reluctant to admit to her children that their father is gone. The family struggles financially and Pearl is sometimes physically and verbally abusive to the children. The children too have their own mixed relationship to their mother and to one another. Cody, the oldest, is ambitious with a mean streak. He becomes a successful businessman and efficiency expert. Ezra is quiet and reserved. He ultimately becomes the owner and proprietor of a restaurant, the aptly named "Homesick Restaurant" where he strives to create a familial atmosphere and works to reunite the fractured Tull family at occasional and usually unsuccessful dinners. Jenny becomes a successful pediatrician while making unsuccessful marriages in the process. Cody and Ezra become rivals for the hand of a young woman, Ruth.
Tyler's writing is lucid and poignant as she develops her characters, for themselves and in their relations to others. Each of the characters has serious problems in their lives as the Tull family hobbles along, at best. The novel is full of local, particularized detail as the time shifts from Pearl's early days, when it appeared she would never marry, through the 1950s, 60s, and 70s. The Beatle's song "Let it Be" figures prominently at several moments of the story and, like Beck's "grayness of things" might serve as a motto. Cody, Ezra, and Jenny each are well into middle-age at the conclusion of the story.
"Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant" is a bittersweet work, full of humor and sadness. Tyler cares about, and made me care about, the family and its members. The story suggests an acceptance of life and its happenings. with its troubles and all. The tone is one of acceptance of ambiguity and of life's changes and difficulties and continuing on. The book is both realistically tough and also sweet and hopeful in an open-eyed way. The book has a proper sense of mystery and awe in understanding life and why people are the way they are.
In reading the book, I thought of current ideological divisiveness on broad issues as well as quarrels among people and families. With its lack of ideological posturing, its accepting of people as they are, and its focus on people, family, and place, Tyler's book shows a great deal of wisdom. I was moved to return to her writing, after some time away, in reading "Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant".
Back when We were Grownups
Anne Tyler
Vintage
https://knopfdoubleday.com/imprint/vintage
9780345446862, $16.00, paperback
https://www.amazon.com/Back-When-Were-Grownups-Ballantine/dp/0345446860
Living In The Everyday
This book, Anne Tyler's 15th novel, takes place in an old rowhouse in Baltimore in 1999. Its hero is Rebecca Davitch, a 53 year-old widow and grandmother. She rents portions of the row house, which is known as the "Open Arms" out for large parties and catered affairs, a business she inherited from her husband and operates with his relatives. Rebecca is dissatisfied with the apparent clutter and confusion of her life as one of her stepdaughters prepares to be married. The reader embarks with Rebecca on her voyage of self-discovery, where she is, where she has been, where she wants to be. Perhaps it is important that the adjacent rowhouse to the Open Arms is a meditation center.
Rebecca had dumped her college and high school sweetheart, Will, and dropped out of college to marry Joe Davitch, 13 years her senior and the proprietor of the Open Arms. At the time of the marriage, Joe had three young daughters from a failed earlier marriage. Joe and Rebecca have a daughter of their own before Joe's untimely death leaves Rebecca to raise the three step-daughters and her own daughter.
The book shows the bric-a-brac of life in the old rowhouse and in the family which is Rebecca's. Each of the grown daughters and their sometimes multiple spouses or partners are highly eccentric, from their nicknames to their characters. The children are as well. The Davitch's are indeed blended in that the family and their spouses and others represent a variety of races, ethnic groups, religions, level of education, interests, what have you. They are an interesting but confusing group and their various peculiarities made the story difficult to follow at times.
Rebecca, is harried by the everydayness of her life. She remembers Will, the young man she dumped in college in favor of Joe, and is bothered by the possibility that she made the wrong choice. Much of the book describes how Rebecca makes contact with Will again. In one of the best, because one of the simplest and most obviously felt passages of the book, Will tells Rebecca upon their first new meeting that "you broke my heart." By finding Will again, and trying to see if a relationship with him is possible in mid-life, Rebecca comes to terms with her life.
There is the touch of family in this book with its estrangements, its clutter, its loves, and its daily tasks. Rebecca questions at times whether there is more to life. Her college hero was Robert E. Lee whom she sees, both in her college days and when we meet her, as a heroic figure who tried to act beyond the chores and trials of everyday to make a principled decision to stand with the South. Robert E. Lee is something of a foil to the actions in the book, (as is, in a different way, the meditation center next door.)
The book is effective as a whole because Anne Tyler has a light, deft touch and doesn't take herself too seriously. The book is funny and generally reads well. Unfortunately the book (and virtually every character) is far too mannered. The mannerisms and eccentricities pale quickly and they mask a certain sameness and triteness in the story. There is too much attention paid to the quirkiness of each character. This distracts from the story to me and makes Rebecca's search shallower than it should be. It adds undue sentimentality to the book.
Life is lived in moments and we need to cherish and understand the everyday. The sentimentality, the peeling plaster and spasmodic electricity in the rowhouse, the adventures and misadventures of Rebecca, her children and grandchildren all have a touch of the down-to-earth. It is not the sort of spiritual journey in which the protagonist seeks solitude or some inner source of wisdom. Think again of the kind of spirituality sought by those at the meditation center next door and of the ways in which it probably differs and probably resembles Rebecca's search. The book teaches a spirituality of the common life.
Redhead by the Side of the Road
Anne Tyler
Vintage
https://knopfdoubleday.com/imprint/vintage
9781529112450, $13.99, paperback
https://www.amazon.com/Redhead-Side-Road-Longlisted-Booker/dp/1529112451
The Tech Hermit
When I saw Anne Tyler's recent (2020) short novel on the library shelf, the title, "Redhead by the Side of the Road", reminded me of the title of a book in a seemingly different style and mood: David Goodis' bleak noir novel of 1954 with the evocative title, "The Blonde on the Street Corner". In both cases, with the seeming allurement of a dangerously inviting sexual encounter the titles suggest something different than they deliver. There are similarities. Goodis' novel is set among the poor and desperate in Depression-era Philadelphia. Tyler's story is set slightly later and to the south in contemporary Baltimore among people and places that are middle-class or lower middle-class. Goodis' noir novel is harsh and pessimistic while Tyler takes a realistically eyed but kinder view of the human condition. What both novels have in common is the focus on loneliness, as illustrated by the passing title figure of a love to be found in an unexpected place.
Tyler's novel tells the story of Micah Mortimer, 43, a crusty man set in his ways who works for himself fixing computers under the name of the "Tech Hermit" while moonlighting as the superintendent of a crumbling Baltimore apartment building where he lives for free in the basement. The Tech Hermit lives alone, and follows a strict routine which Tyler describes concretely in her story's opening pages. With her sharp-eyed description of places and character, Tyler soon gets to the point in commenting on the Tech Hermit:
"Does he ever stop to consider his life? The meaning of it, the point? Does it trouble him to think that he will probably spend his next thirty or forty years this way? Nobody knows. And it's almost certain nobody's ever asked him."
The novel follows the Tech Hermit through his routines and chores over a few pivotal days with flashbacks into his earlier life. Micah spends much time alone, and much of the book has an inward character, including a discussion of Micah's dreams and his hallucinations of the "Redhead". . Still, more of the story shows his relationship with others. As the story develops, it focuses on Micah's floundering relationship with his woman friend of about three years, Cass, who teaches fourth grade, and his odd relationship with a young man, Brink, a college student who randomly drops in one evening. Brink is the son of Micah's old college flame, Lorna. He hasn't seen much of Lorna in the long intervening years since college. She has become a public interest lawyer married to a corporate lawyer. The couple have three children and a comfortable home and life.
Tyler has a knack for endearing descriptions of her characters. She makes the reader understand the many people in this little story, their dreams, frustrations, and misunderstandings. She is a wonderfully observant writer and describes the buildings and streets of Baltimore and is a poet of that city, much as David Goodis is a noir poet of the underside of Philadelphia. She never loses her focus on Micah, the Tech Hermit. As the various stories work toward their denouement, there is a sense of hope for him as he learns to understand himself better and work to establish human connection and love in face of his ongoing loneliness which threatens to continue through old age.
"Redhead by the Side of the Road" is a lovely novel with writing both light and thoughtful. The story suggests that, unlike Goodis' vision of loneliness and loss in "The Blonde on the Street Corner" it is not too late for the solitary Tech Hermit to become a Micah with a meaningful connected human life. So may it be.
Breathing Lessons
Anne Tyler
Vintage
https://knopfdoubleday.com/imprint/vintage
9780345485571, $18.00, paperback
https://www.amazon.com/Breathing-Lessons-Novel-Anne-Tyler/dp/0345485572
"What Makes An Ideal Marriage?"
Early in Anne Tyler's "Breathing Lessons", the distracted main character, Maggie Moran, is listening to a morning talk show on Baltimore radio. The subject of the show for the day is "what makes an ideal marriage?". As is so often the case in this Pulitzer Prize winning novel (1989) this little scene functions on a variety of levels. Most simple are the human foibles displayed by the callers and their opinions. Most broadly, the question becomes a theme to be explored throughout the course of Tyler's novel Most immediately, the question precipitates a trip by Maggie and, reluctantly, by her husband Ira to visit their former daughter-in-law and their seven year old granddaughter Leroy after attending a funeral in rural Pennsylvania north of Baltimore for the husband of a long-time friend of Maggie's. The day-long trip including the funeral and two side adventures form the setting of Tyler's novel. The book is structured into three parts, with Maggie's perspective central to the first and third part and Ira's to the second.
The 28-year marriage between Maggie and Ira is at the center of the book as the couple fight and bicker with each other during much of the drive, the funeral, the trip to the former daughter-in -law, Fiona, and LeRoy. and an unplanned adventure in the middle of the story. In the process, the story of the marriage is told through reflections and through flashbacks. The couple have two children. The older, Jesse, dropped out of high school to pursue his will o' the wisp as a rock singer. He married Fiona when they were both 17 and Fiona was two months pregnant. The couple have been divorced for six years with Maggie having dreams of bringing them together. The younger child, Daisy, was a straight A student in high school and is leaving home on a full scholarship for college the day after the trip to pursue her dream of becoming a physicist. Maggie and Ira are of two different personality types, with Maggie outgoing and manipulative and Ira, sullen, withdrawn, and critical.
Other marriages explored in the tale include the relationship between Jesse and Fiona, between Maggie's friend Serena and her deceased husband Max, and between the elderly Daniel Otis and his wife of many years, Duluth, in the middle section of the book. These and other marriages are variations on the theme with the primary attention focused on Maggie and Ira.
The story is told with Tyler's gift for dialogue and for speech patterns and with her unerring sense of place. Tyler is a poet of lower-middle class Baltimore, but in this novel she expands her range northward to explore small towns, out of the way places, filling stations, and coffee shops in the drive to the country.
It is easy to become exasperated with the characters in this novel. Many of the scenes and incidents were painful and realistic in depicting a marriage with its compromises and difficulties. Tyler manages to be detached and funny as well as highly serious as she describes the eccentricities of her characters without losing her love for them or for the marriage. The characters muddle through which, the book suggests, is itself a gift of life.
"Breathing Lessons" is a deeply textured, thoughtful novel given in the context of a day trip. I was able to identify with the characters which did not always make for pleasant reading. But the book spoke truly to me of marriage and of carrying on with life.
Saint Maybe
Anne Tyler
Vintage
https://knopfdoubleday.com/imprint/vintage
9780449911600, $18.00, paperback
https://www.amazon.com/Saint-Maybe-Anne-Tyler/dp/0449911608
Saint Maybe
Late in Anne Tyler's novel, a young woman, Daphne, refers to her uncle and primary character in the story, Ian Bedloe, as "King Careful. Mr. Look-Both-Ways. Saint Maybe." Daphne's description helps the reader follow the course of Ian's complex character through the course of more than two decades.
The story is set in Tyler's Baltimore beginning in 1965 with the large and closely-knit Bedloe family in a Baltimore rowhouse. The two lengthy stage-setting opening chapters tells how one of the Bedloe children, Danny, falls in love with and marries a young divorcee with two children from a prior marriage to a mysterious, missing father. The pair soon have a child of their own, Daphne. One evening Ian, concerned about his older brother's marriage and with parentage, says harsh words to Danny who, with some beer in him, drives his car into a wall resulting in death. Ian blames himself. A few months thereafter, Danny's young widow dies from an overdose of sleeping pills.
Religion, guilt, and repentance play a large role in the story as Ian accidentally falls in with a small storefront church, the "Church of the Second Chance" led by one Reverend Emmett. Ian is convinced he must repent for the guilt he feels by helping to raise the three abandoned children which he does with the help of his parents. He drops out of college, loses his girlfriend, becomes attached to the Church of the Second Chance and also leads a celibate life. He becomes a carpenter and a maker of craft furniture to support himself.
Tyler follows the course of Ian, the three children, the Bedloe family, the Church of the Second Chance, Reverend Emmett, and several others over the course of the novel. The characters sometimes develop lineally over time but more often seem to have their courses impacted by chance events.
Tyler offers particularized and sharp depictions of places and people in her beloved city of Baltimore. The book emphasizes the nature of family life for ill but I think mostly for good. With its emphasis on the Church of the Second Chance and on the redoubtable Reverend Emmett, the book encourages reflection on religion and theology. For all the delights of Tyler's writing, the depth of the story with its religious issues makes it move slowly. It is less accessible than the other books of Anne Tyler I have read. It is a serious novel with much to be pondered.
I was interested in reviews of "Saint Maybe" by online readers and by others. In his August 25, 1991 "New York Times" review, Jay Parini wrote: "Anne Tyler likes to break America's heart, and she will do it again with 'Saint Maybe'". Parini finds the book "Anne Tyler's most sophisticated work, a realistic chronicle that celebrates family life without erasing the pain and boredom that families almost necessarily inflict upon their members. Ian Bedloe, for his part sits near the top of Ms. Tyler's fine list of heroes."
A "multifaith and interspiritual website" "Spirituality and Practice" also reviewed "Saint Maybe". The review by the founders of "Spirituality and Practice", Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat, emphasizes the spiritual themes of the novel as illustrated by Reverend Emmett's advice to Ian: "View your burden as a gift. It's the theme that has been given to you to work with. Accept that and lean into it." The review praises Tyler's novel as "an invigorating spiritual journey filled with revelations about the meaning of grace, giving yourself to God, forgiveness, and prayer."
Kirkus Reviews, to take a final example, said the book was "less accessible than some of Tyler's others, but on its own terms perfection." The review noted that "Tyler's people -- from powerless small children (whose 'every waking minute was scary') to the electric poignant Lucy to the crackly little church group -- are as intimately real and yet ultimately as unknowable as those who somehow have changed one's life."
Life is messy and ambiguous in terms of spirituality, individual growth, family and much more. Tyler encourages the reader to see and to reflect upon this messiness and ambiguity in this, her 12th novel, "Saint Maybe".
Robin Friedman
Reviewer
Roisin Smyth's Bookshelf
Fire Your Narrator!: A Storyteller's Guide to Getting Out of Your Head and into Your Life
Valerie Gordon
https://storytellingstrategist.com
Commander-in-She, LLC
9781737434504, $8.99
https://www.amazon.com/Fire-Your-Narrator-Storytellers-Getting-ebook/dp/B09GJMJK7G
Synopsis: In Fire Your Narrator!, award-winning producer and expert storyteller Valerie Gordon deals with the powerful stories we tell ourselves and how our subconscious narrator influences our actions and our chances for success and failure.
In a conversational tone, Gordon provides laughs, compassion, and practical tools to identify your own narrator and recast the role with a positive, more productive voice.
Critique: A very helpful book which recognizes that our worst enemy is often those negative voices in our head that hold us back from trying to progress in our lives. Valerie Gordon provides humor and insight in addressing how to isolate that negative voice and "squash" it without mercy.
Gordon's advice is of use to all - whether in your personal life or your professional career, no matter what age you are or what you are trying to accomplish in your life, Fire Your Narrator! has good advice for tackling the inner critics who can sabotage your path to a better life. She draws on experiences, wit, and wisdom, and relates these in an easy and direct manner. A useful self-help book for those who struggle with inner doubts.
Editorial Note: Valerie Gordon is a 10-time Emmy award-winning television producer with more than two decades in media creating and overseeing feature stories for top media outlets. She knows how to use the power of a meaningful, memorable story for impact and influence. As founder of Commander-in-She, LLC, a communications and career strategy firm, Valerie helps high-achieving women take command of the storytelling skills necessary to grow their careers and ascend the leadership ladder.
Roisin Smyth
Reviewer
Suanne Schafer's Bookshelf
Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s
Donald Worster
Oxford University Press
https://corp.oup.com
9780195174885, $24.95
https://www.amazon.com/Dust-Bowl-Southern-Plains-1930s/dp/0195174887
As someone whose ranching family lived through the Dust Bowl and its series of droughts to the point of nearly losing land that had been in the family since the 1870s, I found Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s fascinating.
Author Worster does a bang-up job showing how the odd combination of fundamental religion, nature, and Manifest Destiny combine to create one of the world's largest ecological disasters.
Folks started settling in the American High Plains in the late nineteenth century. From that time, the Dust Bowl took only fifty years to accomplish. Men plowed under a delicate ecosystem that had taken millennia to stabilize, disrupting the natural ecosystem. Men believe that where the plow went, rain would follow - it was their God-given duty not only to plow the land, but to dominate and exploit the land into higher and higher yields that in turn would permanently erode the ecosystem.
The fundamental belief that the Dust Bowl was God's wrath upon mankind for depravity, along with an eternal optimism that God would care for His people, left many who were suffering through the Dust Bowl and droughts to believe that nature alone had caused the catastrophe.
Aboriginal Americans left comparatively little mark on the landscape, but from the time White men arrived, they disregarded limits of the land and its ecology and were determined to exploit the country. This engendered a wealth in America that, in turn, created a desire for ever more wealth. This created "agribusiness" and further exploitation of natural resources, ad infinitum. In short, capitalism with its exploitative agricultural system and soil abuse, drove the Dust Bowl, augmented by natural droughts occurring roughly every twenty years.
Worster also writes of farm subsidies and how, rather than elevating the poorest farmers, were abused by large landowners, lifting their economic status and leaving poorer farmers no better or worse than before the subsidies.
In Dust Bowl, Worster gives a clear, coherent argument that only by discontinuing environmental damage and avoiding the constant repetition of these mistakes can mankind preclude a world doomsday.
This was fascinating reading, nonfiction that I could scarcely put down.
In the Country of Others
Leila Slimani
Penguin Books
https://www.penguin.com
9780143135982, $17.00
https://www.amazon.com/Country-Others-Novel-Leila-Slimani/dp/0143135988
In the Country of Others is about Mathilde, a young Catholic French woman, falls in love with Amine Belhaj, a Muslim Moroccan soldier who's fighting in France during World War II. She moves to Morocco when he is released from his military service. Briefly they live with his mother before moving to a desolate, isolated farm where his idealism tells him he can build a life and a living for them. The French colonists shun Mathilde because she married a Moroccan, and the locals regard her with suspicion because she is French. Amine becomes a different man in Morocco, a workaholic, neglecting her and his children, and even becomes abusive. The farm is so isolated and the work so hard that Mathilde must fight to keep her equilibrium.
The couple has two children. Aicha, a bright girl that Mathilde insists be educated at a Catholic school, hoping the girl will become something besides a secluded, submissive Muslim wife. Selim is not as well delineated as Aicha. Aicha herself is shunned because she is multiracial, though she's the brightest girl at the school and becomes a staunch Catholic under the tutelage of the nuns.
In the Country of Others is women's fiction at its best: emotional and lyrical. The novel is written from multiple points of view, set against Morocco's struggle to free itself from French colonizers. Slimani does a wonderful job capturing the heat and dust, the struggles, conflicts, and tensions between the couple, between the French and Moroccans, and between Muslims and Catholics. It is about being a woman, personal identity, religion, freedom on a national and personal level, miscegenation, cultural and racial conflicts. An outstanding read.
Tangles
Kay Smith-Blum
https://www.kaysmith-blum.com
Black Rose Writing
https://www.blackrosewriting.com
9781685135065, $21.95
https://www.amazon.com/Tangles-Cold-Love-Story-Mystery/dp/1685135064
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/tangles-kay-smith-blum/1146609742
I recently read The Bastard Brigade: The True Story of the Renegade Scientists and Spies Who Sabotaged the Nazi Atomic Bomb, a nonfiction that deals with America's part in the race towards atomic weaponry across the US and Europe but doesn't handle the human costs of that race. Tangles, a dual point-of-view story, does just that. It successfully combines what I'd call a "quiet thriller" and a star-crossed romance while looking at the horrific damage to the environment - and peoples' and animals' DNA - which the government covered up.
Mary, a secretary at a nuclear power plant, and Luke, her young next-door neighbor, uncover the government's role in allowing nuclear fallout to contaminate entire communities and its failure to ameliorate the destruction. The two fight the government, a force beyond their control, as they collect evidence to prove the fallout.
Smith-Blum's novel on the history of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation is well-researched. Her characters are well-developed, though the abusive husband seems a bit cardboard. I was both outraged (though goodness knows why, considering our government and its tendency toward clandestine activities) and haunted by the delicate love story that underlies the action.
I Got Abducted by Aliens and Now I'm Trapped in a Rom-Com
Kimberly Lemming
Berkley
c/o Penguin
https://www.penguin.com/publishers/berkley
9780593818633, $19.00
https://www.amazon.com/Got-Abducted-Aliens-Trapped-Rom-Com/dp/0593818636
I have to admit that I was sucked into this by the title alone: I Got Abducted by Aliens and Now I'm Trapped in a Rom-Com. I don't read much erotica because it tends to have what I've heard termed "IKEA sex" where one "inserts tab A into slot B" without much finesse or nuance. That is certainly true here, however the book does have a couple of selling points.
The heroine, Dorothy, struggles against her beauty-pageant mother's dreams by pursuing an actual career as a zoologist studying meerkats in Africa. While filming these animals, she is simultaneously attacked by a lion and abducted by bird-like aliens. She escapes from their space ship and lands on a planet populated by a pink mama T. Rex and various other dinosaurs as well as male hooved aliens with multi-purpose tails that can be inserted into various "slots." The attraction between Dorothy and the hooved aliens (Sol and Lok) is assured by the alien birds' use of a dart saturated with sex hormones. I have to question if consent is possible under the influence of artificially-induced hormones.
The setting is well delineated, and the prose quite humorous at times. This is, believe it or not, erotica with an underlying message about the incompetence of bureaucracy which I find particularly pertinent in current political times.
The Injustice of Valor (Valorie Dawes Thrillers Book 6)
Gary Corbin
https://garycorbinwriting.com
Double Diamond Publishing
9781734615296, $16.99 pbk
B0DXCJKHY9, $4.99 Kindle
https://www.amazon.com/Injustice-Valor-Valorie-Dawes-Thrillers-ebook/dp/B0DXCJKHY9
Valorie (Val) Dawes, a rookie cop, has been on duty less than two years and has already fired her weapon three times - with two fatalities. As a rookie, she faces the usual harassment of any younger cop by older policemen as well as the rampant sexism in her department, particularly by her nemesis, "Tackle Box" Simpson. Her fellow cops are reluctant to partner with her because so many of her partners have been injured while working with her.
In The Injustice of Valor (Valorie Dawes Thrillers Book 6), Val searches for a missing trans friend as the COVID-19 pandemic wreaks havoc upon the world and the health care system and her boyfriend, Gil, leaves her to visit his ex-girlfriend, making her question his feelings for her as well as his fidelity. Her past comes back to haunt her as Ben Peterson, who'd repeatedly tried to date her during their sojourn at the police academy, accuses her of sexual harassment.
Author Corbin tackles difficult subjects such as pedophilia, childhood sexual abuse, sexism, workplace harassment, and right wing politics against gay and trans people into a fast-paced police procedural, keeping the Valory Dawes series en pointe with current events. Corbin also does a good job getting into the head of Val, a sexually-abused young woman finding her way back to trusting men.
Saltwater
Katy Hays
Ballantine Books
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com
9780593875551, $30.00
https://www.amazon.com/Saltwater-Novel-Katy-Hays/dp/0593875559
Give me a good thriller or mystery, and I can generally just rip right through it. This started off so slowly that I had to drag myself to finish it. The characters, for the most part, were entirely despicable, spoiled and unrelatable. Helen, whose mother died when she was a child, is somewhat sympathetic because her rich family cordoned her off so thoroughly from reality, yet she doesn't really rebel. Her friend, Lorna, is hired as an administrative assistant, had a rough upbringing, and so she generates a bit of sympathy as well. Mostly this is simply rich people behaving poorly.
I didn't care for the style of the writing. The voices of the four main female characters were basically identical. Even with each chapter labeled with the character whose point of view it is in, I sometimes couldn't tell the POV had changed. The time frame bounces from past to present which usually is intriguing, but since the voices were so similar, it seemed pointless. The beginning was slow, then it ramped up quickly. The plot twists at the end seem just too far-fetched. Hays managed to capture some of the essence of Capri but missed the mark on Milano and Napoli.
On a Rift's Edge (Riftworld Book 2)
M.A. Guglielmo
https://maguglielmo.com
Merit Ptah Press
9798989771035, $14.99
https://www.amazon.com/Rifts-Edge-Riftworld-M-Guglielmo/dp/B0DTQ6HGQX
I have read the short story prequel ("Witch City Rift") and Rifted Hearts, the first installment of this fantasy/paranormal/LGBTQ romance, which helps clarify this book and introduces some of the characters, but On a Rift's Edge is easily read as a standalone novel. Guglielmo's depictions of M/M romances are tasteful and well-done.
I enjoy animal shape-shifting, and this series stands out by not limiting the shape-shifters to the usual wolves, bears, etc, but going way beyond that with dragons, jellyfish-type creatures, even frogs. Set on Moon Star Ranch, a dude ranch/animal shelter for creatures from the "Rift," where a series of doorways have opened between Earth and other worlds, bringing in bizarre creatures, some of whom are capable of interbreeding with humans. In fact, one of the male love interests, Lyall, is a hellhound and his partner, Katsuo Nakanura, is human. The Matchmaker has chosen the two as mates. Lyall can deal with it, but Kat is reluctant at best. He has fallen for bad guys and been hurt so often that he's wary of Lyall. The romance is cute, and the sex scenes are relatively understated.
Suanne Schafer, Reviewer
www.SuanneSchaferAuthor.com
Susan Bethany's Bookshelf
Choose You First
Michelle Bishop
Michelle Bishop Media, LLC
https://bishoplife.com
9798991712323, $17.99, HC, 299pp
https://www.amazon.com/Choose-You-First-Resilience-Hard-Won/dp/B0DQWVT282
Synopsis: As women, it's almost natural to forget about what we need and put everyone else first. It seems to be part of the mother/daughter/sister package that we are born with. But putting yourself last doesn't do anyone any good. It leaves you tired, drained, and fresh out of creative solutions to everyday problems.
This seemingly ingrained habit of putting yourself last doesn't come out of nowhere. How you were raised has an immense impact on how you are as an adult -- more than you can imagine. From self-worth to confidence to your ability to say no and set healthy boundaries. It's all influenced by those early years.
In Michelle Bishop's memoir, "Choose You First: One Woman's Journey Through Pain, Resilience and Hard-Won Healing. A Powerful Reminder That Your Story Is Far From Over, she opens her heart to share her deeply personal journey from chaos to self-love. Through candid stories of resilience, she takes you on a path from the struggles of her tumultuous childhood to the healing moments that reshaped her sense of worth.
With the publication of "Choose You First", Bishop shares with you the tools that she developed through her most difficult times to help you step further, deeper, and bigger into your own life. Whether you're seeking hope, healing, or inspiration, "Choose You First" provides the courage and wisdom to take that step into a future full of love and fulfillment.
As well as learning how to overcome personal trauma, develop inner strength, and choose yourself in a world that often asks you to do the opposite, "Choose You First" shows you:
The importance of self-love and why it is not selfish to put yourself first.
How to overcome personal trauma and use it as a foundation for growth.
Practical ways to set boundaries with others to protect your well-being.
The value of resilience and how to find inner strength even in the darkest times.
How to recognize and break free from destructive patterns learned in childhood.
Techniques for silencing self-doubt and building genuine self-worth.
Why forgiveness, especially of oneself, is a crucial part of healing.
How to find hope and light within, regardless of past experiences.
Critique: Part memoir, part self-help manual, "Choose You First: One Woman's Journey Through Pain, Resilience and Hard-Won Healing. A Powerful Reminder That Your Story Is Far From Over" by Michelle Bishop is an inherently fascinating, thought-provoking, deftly crafted, life-changing, life-enhancing read that is especially and unreservedly recommended for community and college/university library Self-Improvement/Personal Transformation collections. It should be noted for personal reading lists that this hardcover edition of "Choose You First" from Michelle Bishop Media is also readily available in paperback (9798991712309, $14.99) and in a digital book format (Kindle, $0.99, Amazon).
Editorial Note: Michelle Bishop has faced and conquered numerous challenges in life, making her a true survivor in every sense of the word. From a toxic upbringing and domestic violence to the heart-wrenching loss of her soulmate, battling COVID-19 during the height of the pandemic, and enduring body image struggles, weight loss challenges, and breast cancer, Michelle's journey has been one of resilience and strength. As a blogger, author and master-certified life coach by the International Coaching Federation, Michelle shares her wisdom and experiences to inspire audiences to turn their struggles into strength. In addition, she is a writer, public speaker, life coach, and social media motivator, dedicated to guiding others on their journeys of self-discovery and empowerment. (https://bishopmichelle.blogspot.com)
Whispers from Mother Earth
Maryam Khalifah
Fair Share Publishing
www.fairsharepublishing.com
9781963981049, $19.95, HC, 32pp
https://www.fairsharepublishing.com/shop/p/whispers-from-mother-earth-celebrate-the-skin-youre-in
Synopsis: "Whispers From Mother Earth; Celebrate the Skin You're In" is comprised of gentle letters from Mother Earth remind children that their skin (no matter the color, tint, or tone) is a beautiful reflection of the world's natural wonders.
This charmingly presented and beautifully illustrated story encourages young children to embrace their individuality, drawing parallels between the beauty of nature and their own unique identities. Of special note is that "Whispers from Mother Earth" is the debut picture book by talented author and illustrator Maryam Khalifah and features charmingly soft and delightfully joyful illustrations that add a warm, comforting touch, making this delicate message feel like a loving embrace from Mother Earth.
Critique: A fun and thoroughly 'kid friendly' picture book for start to finish, "Whispers From Mother Earth; Celebrate the Skin You're In" by author/illustrator Maryam Khalifah, with its important message promoting acceptance and diversity, is especially and unreservedly recommended for family, daycare center, preschool, elementary school, and community library Social Issues picture book collections for children ages 3-8.
Editorial Note #1: Maryam Khalifah (www.maryamartillustration.com) is a member of AOI and SCBWI and has a Bachelor of Arts with Honors in Illustration from Middlesex University, London, England. Maryam is a digital illustrator, specializing in children's picture books and cover art for chapter books. Maryam has completed picture book illustrations for several clients. Coming from a multiracial background, Maryam is a huge proponent of seeing those from minority backgrounds represented in picture books; as such, she loves illustrating diverse and multiracial characters such as herself.
Editorial Note #2 (from the Fair Share Publishing website): Children today often face challenges around self-acceptance, especially when it comes to their appearance. "Whispers From Mother Earth" provides young readers with a nurturing message about the beauty in diversity. With its gentle storytelling and vibrant illustrations, this book encourages children to see themselves as part of the natural world's tapestry, where every color, shape, and size has a place. It's an essential resource for fostering a sense of belonging and self-love, helping kids to recognize that their unique differences are what make them truly beautiful.
Susan Bethany
Reviewer
Willis Buhle's Bookshelf
The Healing Power of Praying the Rosary
Gary Jansen
Loyola Press
www.loyolapress.com
9780829459005, $14.99, PB, 144pp
https://www.amazon.com/Healing-Power-Praying-Rosary/dp/0829459006
Synopsis: The Rosary refers to a set of prayers used primarily in the Catholic Church, and to the physical string of knots or beads used to count the component prayers.
With the publication of "The Healing Power of Praying the Rosary", Catholic author Gary Jansen takes his readers on a transformative journey. This concise yet powerful guide offers a fresh perspective on the Rosary as both a spiritual practice and a healing tool for the body and mind.
Jansen demonstrates how using creative imagery as we pray the mysteries of the Rosary draws us ever-closer to Jesus, leading to a deeper relationship with Christ. Drawing upon evidence-based research and neuroscience, Jansen also reveals how the repetition of the Rosary prayers activates mechanisms of spiritual and physical healing, resulting in lowered stress, inner peace, and overall well-being.
With its blend of tradition and science, "The Healing Power of Praying the Rosary" is ideal for members of the Catholic community who welcome spiritual growth along with a practical way to establish balance in their everyday lives. Whether struggling with anxiety, carrying the burden of past trauma, or searching for a deeper connection to God, anyone seeking the grace and peace of this sacred devotion will appreciate "The Healing Power of Praying the Rosary".
Critique: Exceptionally well written and thoroughly 'reader friendly' in organization and presentation, "The Healing Power of Praying the Rosary" is especially and unreservedly recommended for personal, church and seminary library Catholic Devotional collections and the personal reading lists of Catholic priests, seminary students, and members of the Catholic community seeking spiritual growth and the use of the Rosary for prayer, meditation, and contemplation. It should be noted that this paperback edition of "The Healing Power of Praying the Rosary" from Loyola Press is also available in a digital book format (Kindle, $12.99).
Editorial Note: Gary Jansen (https://garyjansen.com) is the author of several books, including the multi-award-winning MicroShifts, The 15-Minute Prayer Solution, Station to Station, Life Everlasting, and the memoir Holy Ghosts. Jansen has appeared on A&E, the Sundance Channel, the Travel Channel, Coast to Coast AM, CNN.com, and NPR. His writing has been featured in the Chicago Sun-Times, USA Today, Huffington Post, Thrive Global, Angelus, and Religion Dispatches. Jansen worked at Penguin Random House for 25 years where he was the editor on several New York Times bestsellers. He is now the executive editor of acquisitions at Loyola Press.
Willis M. Buhle
Reviewer
James A. Cox
Editor-in-Chief
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