Nancy's bookshelf: all en-US Wed, 02 Apr 2025 08:17:04 -0700 60 Nancy's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[Pickleball Mindset: The Blueprint for Peak Performance]]> 211143350 play pickleball, Pickleball Mindset dives deep into how to think on the court. Coauthored by Dayne Gingrich, top senior professional pickleball player and renowned mental performance coach; and Jill Martin, an attorney turned personal trainer and pickleball fanatic, the book follows their year-long coaching relationship in which Jill seeks to become mentally dominant on and off the court. In each chapter, Dayne explores the what, why, and how of mental performance strategies he has used in his athletic and coaching career. Jill then shares her real-time bumps, bruises, and celebrations as she works to incorporate each strategy into both her game and life.

In Pickleball Mindset, you’ll learn mindset-expanding strategies, including how toExcel in the make-or-break momentsBuild unbreakable self-beliefFind and become the best partnerOptimize your tournament preparation and performanceMore than a lecture between coach and athlete, Pickleball Mindset is a conversation about how to grow and nourish a confident mindset through the turbulent journey we all encounter as athletes and humans.]]> 264 Dayne Gingrich Nancy 5 4.31 Pickleball Mindset: The Blueprint for Peak Performance
author: Dayne Gingrich
name: Nancy
average rating: 4.31
book published:
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2025/04/02
shelves:
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]]> <![CDATA[Rembrandt is in the Wind: Learning to Love Art through the Eyes of Faith]]> 58429156 Rembrandt is in the Wind, by Russ Ramsey, is an invitation to discover some of the world's most celebrated artists and works, through which we can witness the gospel of Christ in a way that speaks to the struggles and longings common to the human experience.

This book is part art history, part biblical study, part philosophy, and part analysis of the human experience—but it's all story. The lives of the artists in this book illustrate the struggle of living in this world and point to the beauty of the redemption available to us in Christ. Each story is different. Some conclude with resounding triumph, while others end in struggle. But all of them raise important questions about humanity's hunger and capacity for glory, and they all teach us to see and love beauty.]]> 256 Russ Ramsey 0310129729 Nancy 5 4.51 2022 Rembrandt is in the Wind: Learning to Love Art through the Eyes of Faith
author: Russ Ramsey
name: Nancy
average rating: 4.51
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/02
date added: 2025/04/02
shelves:
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]]> Lonesome Dove, Part 1 of 3 34857 0 Larry McMurtry 0736605827 Nancy 5
I'd never intentionally pick up a book filled with cowboys and Texas rangers, but I'm so glad I read this "Tolstoy of the west."

[Note: I attempted to watch the old series based on this book, starring Robert Duvall, Tommy Lee Jones, and Danny Glover. Though it is a relatively faithful adaptation, it seemed more "Hee Haw" than modern viewers are used to seeing and undermined the gravity of the literary themes.]

LOVED this book.]]> 4.66 Lonesome Dove, Part 1 of 3
author: Larry McMurtry
name: Nancy
average rating: 4.66
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2021/03/02
date added: 2024/12/22
shelves:
review:
I'm on a quest to read all of the Pulitzer Prize winning novels since I was born. This 1986 winner blew me away.

I'd never intentionally pick up a book filled with cowboys and Texas rangers, but I'm so glad I read this "Tolstoy of the west."

[Note: I attempted to watch the old series based on this book, starring Robert Duvall, Tommy Lee Jones, and Danny Glover. Though it is a relatively faithful adaptation, it seemed more "Hee Haw" than modern viewers are used to seeing and undermined the gravity of the literary themes.]

LOVED this book.
]]> <![CDATA[The Challenge of Acts: Rediscovering What the Church Was and Is]]> 216052790 176 N.T. Wright 031016799X Nancy 0 currently-reading 4.51 The Challenge of Acts: Rediscovering What the Church Was and Is
author: N.T. Wright
name: Nancy
average rating: 4.51
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/28
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Sequel (The Book Series, #2)]]> 203578763 The Afterword. After all, how hard can it really be to write a universally lauded bestseller?

But when Anna publishes her book and indulges in her own literary acclaim, she begins to receive excerpts of a novel she never expected to see again, a novel that should no longer exist. Something has gone wrong, and someone out there knows far too much about her late brother, her late husband, and possibly about Anna herself. What does this person want, and what are they prepared to do? She has come too far and worked too hard to lose what she values most: the sole and uncontested right to her own story—and she is, by any standard, a master storyteller.]]> 304 Jean Hanff Korelitz 1250875471 Nancy 4
Korelitz is a master of dialogue and I really enjoy her writing.]]> 3.59 2024 The Sequel (The Book Series, #2)
author: Jean Hanff Korelitz
name: Nancy
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/28
date added: 2024/10/28
shelves:
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A good follow on to The Plot, but it had been a minute since I'd read the first book and was fuzzy on the details.

Korelitz is a master of dialogue and I really enjoy her writing.
]]> <![CDATA[THE OUTLAWS OF CAVE-IN-ROCK Historical Accounts of the Famous Highwaymen and River Pirates upon the Ohio and Mississippi rivers and over the old Natchez Trace]]> 168280914 0 Otto Arthur Rothert Nancy 0 currently-reading 0.0 THE OUTLAWS OF CAVE-IN-ROCK Historical Accounts of the Famous Highwaymen and River Pirates upon the Ohio and Mississippi rivers and over the old Natchez Trace
author: Otto Arthur Rothert
name: Nancy
average rating: 0.0
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/10
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Cave-in-Rock Pirates and Outlaws]]> 43235682 128 Todd Carr 1467140481 Nancy 5
Todd Carr's excellent historical book describes the folklore, and then the probable truth of the matter at the end of each chapter. If you are interested in the old "wild west" (Yes, Illinois at one point was the "west") you will enjoy this well-written, deeply researched book.]]> 4.30 Cave-in-Rock Pirates and Outlaws
author: Todd Carr
name: Nancy
average rating: 4.30
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/10
date added: 2024/10/10
shelves:
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Cave-in-Rock, Illinois has a fascinating cave that used to be home of pirates.

Todd Carr's excellent historical book describes the folklore, and then the probable truth of the matter at the end of each chapter. If you are interested in the old "wild west" (Yes, Illinois at one point was the "west") you will enjoy this well-written, deeply researched book.
]]> <![CDATA[Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders]]> 105992 687 Vincent Bugliosi 0393322238 Nancy 5 4.05 1974 Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders
author: Vincent Bugliosi
name: Nancy
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1974
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/07
date added: 2024/10/07
shelves:
review:
Great book -- my first "true crime" -- from the fascinating perspective of the prosecutor. I knew almost nothing about Charles Manson before this, and the book was compelling and appropriate -- no extraneous details that are prurient in spite of the horrific crimes.
]]> <![CDATA[Estrogen Matters: Why Taking Hormones in Menopause Can Improve Women's Well-Being and Lengthen Their Lives -- Without Raising the Risk of Breast Cancer]]> 37946439
For years, hormone replacement therapy (HRT) was hailed as a miracle. Study after study showed that HRT, if initiated at the onset of menopause, could ease symptoms ranging from hot flashes to memory loss; reduce the risk of heart disease, Alzheimer's, osteoporosis, and some cancers; and even extend a woman's overall life expectancy. But when a large study by the Women's Health Initiative announced results showing an uptick in breast cancer among women taking HRT, the winds shifted abruptly, and HRT, officially deemed a carcinogen, was abandoned.

Now, sixteen years after HRT was left for dead, Dr. Bluming, a medical oncologist, and Dr. Tavris, a social psychologist, track its strange history and present a compelling case for its resurrection. They investigate what led the public -- and much of the medical establishment -- to accept the Women's Health Initiative's often exaggerated claims, while also providing a fuller picture of the science that supports HRT.

A sobering and revelatory read, Estrogen Matters sets the record straight on this beneficial treatment and provides an empowering path to wellness for women everywhere.]]> 310 Avrum Bluming 0316481203 Nancy 0 currently-reading 4.27 Estrogen Matters: Why Taking Hormones in Menopause Can Improve Women's Well-Being and Lengthen Their Lives -- Without Raising the Risk of Breast Cancer
author: Avrum Bluming
name: Nancy
average rating: 4.27
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/11
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The New Menopause: Navigating Your Path Through Hormonal Change with Purpose, Power, and Facts]]> 197516602 Filling a gaping hole in menopause care, everything a woman needs to know to thrive during her hormonal transition and beyond, as well as the tools to help her take charge of her health at this pivotal life stage--by the bestselling author of The Galveston Diet.

Menopause is inevitable, but suffering through it is not! This is the empowering approach to self-advocacy that pioneering women's health advocate Dr. Mary Claire Haver takes for women in the midst of hormonal change in The New Menopause. A comprehensive, authoritative book of science-backed information and lived experience, it covers every woman's needs:
- From changes in your appearance and sleep patterns to neurological, musculoskeletal, psychological, and sexual issues, a comprehensive A to Z toolkit of science-backed options for coping with symptoms.
- What to do to mediate the risks associated with your body's natural drop in estrogen production, including for diabetes, dementia, Alzheimer's, osteoporosis, cardiovascular disease, and weight gain.
- How to advocate and prepare for annual midlife wellness visits, including questions for your doctor and how to insist on whole life care.
- The very latest research on the benefits and side effects of hormone replacement therapy.
Arming women with the power to secure vibrant health and well-being for the rest of their lives, The New Menopause is sure to become the bible of midlife wellness for present and future generations.]]> 304 Mary Claire Haver 059379625X Nancy 5 4.26 The New Menopause: Navigating Your Path Through Hormonal Change with Purpose, Power, and Facts
author: Mary Claire Haver
name: Nancy
average rating: 4.26
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2024/09/11
date added: 2024/09/11
shelves:
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]]> The Scarlet Letter 12296 279 Nathaniel Hawthorne 0142437263 Nancy 0 3.43 1850 The Scarlet Letter
author: Nathaniel Hawthorne
name: Nancy
average rating: 3.43
book published: 1850
rating: 0
read at: 2024/08/05
date added: 2024/08/05
shelves:
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]]> <![CDATA[Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder]]> 199344846
On the morning of August 12, 2022, Salman Rushdie was standing onstage at the Chautauqua Institution, preparing to give a lecture on the importance of keeping writers safe from harm, when a man in black—black clothes, black mask—rushed down the aisle toward him, wielding a knife. His first thought: So it’s you. Here you are.

What followed was a horrific act of violence that shook the literary world and beyond. Now, for the first time, and in unforgettable detail, Rushdie relives the traumatic events of that day and its aftermath, as well as his journey toward physical recovery and the healing that was made possible by the love and support of his wife, Eliza, his family, his army of doctors and physical therapists, and his community of readers worldwide.

Knife is Rushdie at the peak of his powers, writing with urgency, with gravity, with unflinching honesty. It is also a deeply moving reminder of literature’s capacity to make sense of the unthinkable, an intimate and life-affirming meditation on life, loss, love, art—and finding the strength to stand up again.]]> 209 Salman Rushdie 0593730240 Nancy 4 3.99 2024 Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder
author: Salman Rushdie
name: Nancy
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/05
date added: 2024/08/05
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]]> The Cross and the Switchblade 772852 176 David Wilkerson 0515090255 Nancy 5
I re-read this book this week to remind myself of the founding of the church and Teen Challenge. What an interesting and significant story of God working in NYC!]]> 4.26 1963 The Cross and the Switchblade
author: David Wilkerson
name: Nancy
average rating: 4.26
book published: 1963
rating: 5
read at: 2024/06/16
date added: 2024/06/16
shelves:
review:
I attended Times Square Church in NYC in the 1990s and always try to go back when I'm in the city.

I re-read this book this week to remind myself of the founding of the church and Teen Challenge. What an interesting and significant story of God working in NYC!
]]> Hell 6354310 240 Robert Olen Butler 0802119018 Nancy 5
I didn’t want to read Robert Olen Butler’s novel Hell, and I certainly didn’t want to like it. First turned on to Butler’s writing when I was reading all the Pulitzers since I was born, I fell in love with his collection of short stories about Vietnam. When I went on to read his novel about the afterlife, I was immediately turned off by the premise: that a (now dead) television reporter named Hatcher McCord now is in hell and interviewing people for one story � over and over: “Why Do You Think You’re Here?�

Okay, this is a hilarious set up, but what annoyed me was that the anchorman of the Evening News from Hell, interviewed George Bush (both of them) and Dick Cheney in this fictitious book. Honestly I didn’t want to think about politics while I was reading for enjoyment. Also, I just am so tired of all the polarization. Can’t we disagree with each other without wishing them eternal damnation? (Plus, I love the Bushes!)

But I kept turning the pages. And then, JKF, Bill and Hillary Clinton, and Christopher Hitchens show up in Butler’s hell. Richard Nixon, Esau (from the Bible), and J. Edgar Hoover do too, as well as all most of the world’s religious leaders. Oh and Martin Scorsese. Butler was doing something different.

Everyone, turns out, is in hell, and no one understands why. Well, actually, some have a pretty good idea. What results is a fever dream of an eternal contemplation: what makes people “good� or “bad,� what “saves� you? Are we so bad that we’re beneath saving?

In the most hilarious scene of the book, Hatcher interviews Satan himself on why he thinks he was placed in hell.

The book is funny, not a heavy philosophical treatise � the person who invented public bathroom hand dryers is in hell, naturally � and the main character falls in love with Anne Boleyn, who is headless in the afterlife. Bill Clinton waits endlessly in a hotel for women that never show up, Scorsese sees amazing things to film but has no camera, and Ike Turner has to listen to Nixon signing “Proud Mary� for an eternity.

In hell, no one can say � or even remember the concept of - love. Everyone wants this, but when they try to articulate it, the word leaves their head and they forget what they were longing for.

But then, Jesus arrives. This causes chaos in hell, because everyone is scrambling to plead their case, and Hatcher � not a believer � gets closer to him, feeling belief swell in his damned soul. So he approaches Jesus, and realizes he’s wearing a disguise. He’s not Jesus at all, he’s Binny Hinn � a disgraced televangelist who scammed people out of money on earth and spiritually manipulated millions.

Yes, Butler was doing something different � something beautiful and profound. He was grappling with the sinful and broken nature of the world in a way I’ll never forget. And ultimately, the novel encourages us that we disagree with each other without despising each other.]]> 3.40 2009 Hell
author: Robert Olen Butler
name: Nancy
average rating: 3.40
book published: 2009
rating: 5
read at: 2024/04/04
date added: 2024/04/04
shelves:
review:
SPOILERS:

I didn’t want to read Robert Olen Butler’s novel Hell, and I certainly didn’t want to like it. First turned on to Butler’s writing when I was reading all the Pulitzers since I was born, I fell in love with his collection of short stories about Vietnam. When I went on to read his novel about the afterlife, I was immediately turned off by the premise: that a (now dead) television reporter named Hatcher McCord now is in hell and interviewing people for one story � over and over: “Why Do You Think You’re Here?�

Okay, this is a hilarious set up, but what annoyed me was that the anchorman of the Evening News from Hell, interviewed George Bush (both of them) and Dick Cheney in this fictitious book. Honestly I didn’t want to think about politics while I was reading for enjoyment. Also, I just am so tired of all the polarization. Can’t we disagree with each other without wishing them eternal damnation? (Plus, I love the Bushes!)

But I kept turning the pages. And then, JKF, Bill and Hillary Clinton, and Christopher Hitchens show up in Butler’s hell. Richard Nixon, Esau (from the Bible), and J. Edgar Hoover do too, as well as all most of the world’s religious leaders. Oh and Martin Scorsese. Butler was doing something different.

Everyone, turns out, is in hell, and no one understands why. Well, actually, some have a pretty good idea. What results is a fever dream of an eternal contemplation: what makes people “good� or “bad,� what “saves� you? Are we so bad that we’re beneath saving?

In the most hilarious scene of the book, Hatcher interviews Satan himself on why he thinks he was placed in hell.

The book is funny, not a heavy philosophical treatise � the person who invented public bathroom hand dryers is in hell, naturally � and the main character falls in love with Anne Boleyn, who is headless in the afterlife. Bill Clinton waits endlessly in a hotel for women that never show up, Scorsese sees amazing things to film but has no camera, and Ike Turner has to listen to Nixon signing “Proud Mary� for an eternity.

In hell, no one can say � or even remember the concept of - love. Everyone wants this, but when they try to articulate it, the word leaves their head and they forget what they were longing for.

But then, Jesus arrives. This causes chaos in hell, because everyone is scrambling to plead their case, and Hatcher � not a believer � gets closer to him, feeling belief swell in his damned soul. So he approaches Jesus, and realizes he’s wearing a disguise. He’s not Jesus at all, he’s Binny Hinn � a disgraced televangelist who scammed people out of money on earth and spiritually manipulated millions.

Yes, Butler was doing something different � something beautiful and profound. He was grappling with the sinful and broken nature of the world in a way I’ll never forget. And ultimately, the novel encourages us that we disagree with each other without despising each other.
]]> The Remains of the Day 28921 Librarian's note: See alternate cover edition of ISBN 0571225381 here.

In the summer of 1956, Stevens, a long-serving butler at Darlington Hall, decides to take a motoring trip through the West Country. The six-day excursion becomes a journey into the past of Stevens and England, a past that takes in fascism, two world wars, and an unrealised love between the butler and his housekeeper.]]> 258 Kazuo Ishiguro Nancy 5 4.14 1989 The Remains of the Day
author: Kazuo Ishiguro
name: Nancy
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1989
rating: 5
read at: 2024/03/29
date added: 2024/03/29
shelves:
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]]> The End of the Affair 29641 "A story has no beginning or end: arbitrarily one chooses a moment of experience from which to look ahead..."

"This is a record of hate far more than of love," writes Maurice Bendrix in the opening passages of The End of the Affair, and it is a strange hate indeed that compels him to set down the retrospective account of his adulterous affair with Sarah Miles.

Now, a year after Sarah's death, Bendrix seeks to exorcise the persistence of his passion by retracing its course from obsessive love to love-hate. At first, he believes he hates Sarah and her husband, Henry. Yet as he delves deeper into his emotional outlook, Bendrix's hatred shifts to the God he feels has broken his life, but whose existence at last comes to recognize.]]> 160 Graham Greene Nancy 5 3.91 1951 The End of the Affair
author: Graham Greene
name: Nancy
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1951
rating: 5
read at: 2024/03/18
date added: 2024/03/18
shelves:
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]]> <![CDATA[To Be Made Well: An Invitation to Wholeness, Healing, and Hope]]> 58667578 In To Be Made Well , author Amy Julia Becker weaves together her own story with reflections on biblical accounts of Jesus� healing work, providing fresh insight into both the nature of healing and the pathway to healing, then and now. This book is a powerful invitation to personal, spiritual, and social healing as we reconnect to our bodies and souls, to God, and to our communities. For anyone struggling with pain or loss, for anyone concerned about the things that divide us, this book goes beyond wellness and beyond miraculous physical transformations to explore how we can—personally and collectively—be made well.]]> 180 Amy Julia Becker 1513809717 Nancy 0 4.23 2022 To Be Made Well: An Invitation to Wholeness, Healing, and Hope
author: Amy Julia Becker
name: Nancy
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at: 2024/03/10
date added: 2024/03/10
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[My Body Is Not a Prayer Request: Disability Justice in the Church]]> 59867868 208 Amy Kenny 1587435454 Nancy 4 4.17 2022 My Body Is Not a Prayer Request: Disability Justice in the Church
author: Amy Kenny
name: Nancy
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/03/05
date added: 2024/03/05
shelves:
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I read this after getting a cancer diagnosis -- interesting read with salient points!
]]> <![CDATA[The Gifts of Imperfection: 10th Anniversary Edition: Features a new foreword and brand-new tools]]> 58532624 NEW YORK TIMESĚýBESTSELLER â€� This tenth-anniversary edition of the game-changing #1ĚýNew York TimesĚýbestseller featuresĚýa new foreword and new tools to make the work your own.Ěý

For over a decade, BrenĂ© Brown has found a special place in our hearts as a gifted mapmaker and a fellow traveler. She is both a social scientist and a kitchen-table friend whom you can always count on to tell the truth, make you laugh, and, on occasion, cry with you. And what’s now become a movement all started withĚýThe Gifts of Imperfection,Ěýwhich has sold more than two million copies in thirty-five different languages across the globe.Ěý
What transforms this book from words on a page to effective daily practices are the ten guideposts to wholehearted living. The guideposts not only help us understand the practices that will allow us to change our lives and families,ĚýtheyĚýalso walk us through the unattainable and sabotaging expectations that get in the way.Ěý
BrenĂ© writes, “This book is an invitation to join a wholehearted revolution. A small, quiet, grassroots movement that starts with each of us saying, â€My story matters because I matter.â€� Revolution might sound a little dramatic, but in this world, choosing authenticity and worthiness is an absolute act of resistance.”Ěý]]> 208 BrenĂ© Brown 1616499605 Nancy 5 4.25 2010 The Gifts of Imperfection: 10th Anniversary Edition: Features a new foreword and brand-new tools
author: Brené Brown
name: Nancy
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2010
rating: 5
read at: 2024/03/05
date added: 2024/03/05
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The 6:20 Man (The 6:20 Man, #1)]]> 59586621
Then one morning Devine’s tedious routine is shattered by an anonymous email: She is dead.

Sara Ewes, Devine’s coworker and former girlfriend, has been found hanging in a storage room of his office building—presumably a suicide, prompting the NYPD to come calling on him. If that wasn’t enough, Devine receives another ominous visit, a confrontation that threatens to dredge up grim secrets from his past in the Army unless he participates in a clandestine investigation into his firm.

This treacherous role will take Travis from the impossibly glittering lives he once saw only through a train window, to the darkest corners of the country’s economic halls of power…where something rotten lurks. And apart from this high-stakes conspiracy, there’s a killer out there with their own agenda, and Devine is the bullseye.]]> 593 David Baldacci 1538719878 Nancy 4 4.17 2022 The 6:20 Man (The 6:20 Man, #1)
author: David Baldacci
name: Nancy
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2023/12/14
date added: 2023/12/14
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Sin of Certainty: Why God Desires Our Trust More Than Our "Correct" Beliefs]]> 25816844 The Bible Tells Me So explains how Christians mistake “certainty� and “correct belief� for faith when what God really desires is trust and intimacy.

With compelling and often humorous stories from his own life, Bible scholar Peter Enns offers a fresh look at how Christian life truly works, answering questions that cannot be addressed by the idealized traditional doctrine of “once for all delivered to the saints.�

Enns offers a model of vibrant faith that views skepticism not as a loss of belief, but as an opportunity to deepen religious conviction with courage and confidence. This is not just an intellectual conviction, he contends, but a more profound kind of knowing that only true faith can provide.

Combining Enns� reflections of his own spiritual journey with an examination of Scripture, The Sin of Certainty models an acceptance of mystery and paradox that all believers can follow and why God prefers this path because it is only this way by which we can become mature disciples who truly trust God. It gives Christians who have known only the demand for certainty permission to view faith on their own flawed, uncertain, yet heartfelt, terms.]]> 230 Peter Enns 006227208X Nancy 5 4.22 2016 The Sin of Certainty: Why God Desires Our Trust More Than Our "Correct" Beliefs
author: Peter Enns
name: Nancy
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2016
rating: 5
read at: 2023/11/30
date added: 2023/11/30
shelves:
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]]> The Poisonwood Bible 7244 The Poisonwood Bible is a story told by the wife and four daughters of Nathan Price, a fierce, evangelical Baptist who takes his family and mission to the Belgian Congo in 1959. They carry with them everything they believe they will need from home, but soon find that all of it -- from garden seeds to Scripture -- is calamitously transformed on African soil. What follows is a suspenseful epic of one family's tragic undoing and remarkable reconstruction over the course of three decades in postcolonial Africa.]]> 546 Barbara Kingsolver 0060786507 Nancy 4 4.10 1998 The Poisonwood Bible
author: Barbara Kingsolver
name: Nancy
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1998
rating: 4
read at: 2023/11/30
date added: 2023/11/30
shelves:
review:

]]> Romney: A Reckoning 101025305 A remarkably illuminating biography of the political maverick, filled with revelations and written with his full cooperation by an award-winning writer at The Atlantic.

Authoritative, personal, and vividly written, Romney: A Reckoning is a revealing account of Mitt Romney’s life.

Based on dozens of exclusive interviews with Romney, his family, and his inner circle as well as hundreds of pages of his personal journals, this book offers a rare, portrait of a politician who in recent years has been at the center of our nation’s most defining political dramas.]]> 416 McKay Coppins 1982196238 Nancy 5 4.33 2023 Romney: A Reckoning
author: McKay Coppins
name: Nancy
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2023/11/02
date added: 2023/11/02
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[How Far to the Promised Land: One Black Family's Story of Hope and Survival in the American South]]> 71872840
“A riveting book that invites you into the personal journey of one of the finest writers alive today.”—Beth Moore, New York Times bestselling author of All My Knotted-Up Life

For much of his life, Esau McCaulley was taught to see himself as an someone who, through hard work, faith, and determination, overcame childhood poverty, anti-Black racism, and an absent father to earn a job as a university professor and a life in the middle class.
Ěý
But that narrative was called into question one night, when McCaulley answered the phone and learned that his father—whose absence defined his upbringing—died in a car crash.ĚýMcCaulley was being asked to deliver his father’s eulogy, to make sense of his complicated legacy in a country that only accepts Black men on the condition that they are exceptional, hardworking, perfect. Ěý
Ěý
The resulting effort sent McCaulley back through his family history, seeking to understand the community that shaped him. In these pages, we meet his great-grandmother Sophia, a tenant farmer born with the gift of prophecy who scraped together a life in Jim Crow Alabama; his mother, Laurie, who raised four kids alone in an era when single Black mothers were demonized as “welfare queensâ€�; and a cast of family, friends, and neighbors who won small victories in a world built to swallow Black lives.ĚýWith profound honesty and compassion, he raises questions that implicate us What does each person’s struggle to build a life teach us about what we owe each other? About what it means to be human?Ěý
Ěý
How Far to the Promised Land is a thrilling and tender epic about being Black in America.ĚýIt’s a book that questions our too-simple narratives about poverty and upward mobility; a book in which the people normally written out of the American Dream are given voice.]]> 240 Esau McCaulley 0593241088 Nancy 0 4.58 2023 How Far to the Promised Land: One Black Family's Story of Hope and Survival in the American South
author: Esau McCaulley
name: Nancy
average rating: 4.58
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/10/26
shelves:
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]]> <![CDATA[Magnet Ass And The Stone-Cold Truck Hunters: The Story of Vietnam's Most Impossible Flight]]> 41225405 280 Will Cunningham 1722194510 Nancy 4
�..for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.�
]]> 4.30 Magnet Ass And The Stone-Cold Truck Hunters: The Story of Vietnam's Most Impossible Flight
author: Will Cunningham
name: Nancy
average rating: 4.30
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2023/07/12
date added: 2023/10/08
shelves:
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"Magnet Ass And The Stone-Cold Truck Hunters" is a reflection on the life of Captain Alan "Magnet Ass" Milacek, who heroically "flew his plane on one wing� and earned The Mackay Trophy (one of history's most coveted aviation awards) and went on to live a quiet, dignified life. Written by Will Cunningham, the book does not purport to be a straight “memoir.� Cunningham incorporates his process of documenting Milacek’s life when the author was in an occupational slump, pondering his own life and shortcomings while coming face to face with this dying American hero. Cunningham calls it a “memoir,� a “me-moir� and hopes it will become, for the reader, a “you-moir.� This unusual configuration was interesting to me, as a ghost writer whose career has allowed me to temporarily bond with various, far flung subjects. Writing is so strange, difficult, and intimate, memoirists are bound to connect with their clients in variously unexpected ways � as they bring to the book their own presuppositions and stories and failures. Cunningham did a great job showing this awkward, holy conflux of lives while still remaining focused on Milacek’s heroism and frail mortality. Another theme which emerged, gradually, in the book is one of identity - how we define our heroes, what we expect of them, and how their own courage is no match against the vicissitudes of daily existence � and yet, somehow, is still valuable, sacred, and enough. When I was finished, I thought of this George Eliot quote:

�..for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.�

]]> Demon Copperhead 60194162 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780063251922.

"Anyone will tell you the born of this world are marked from the get-out, win or lose."

Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, this is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father's good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. In a plot that never pauses for breath, relayed in his own unsparing voice, he braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses. Through all of it, he reckons with his own invisibility in a popular culture where even the superheroes have abandoned rural people in favor of cities.

Many generations ago, Charles Dickens wrote David Copperfield from his experience as a survivor of institutional poverty and its damages to children in his society. Those problems have yet to be solved in ours. Dickens is not a prerequisite for readers of this novel, but he provided its inspiration. In transposing a Victorian epic novel to the contemporary American South, Barbara Kingsolver enlists Dickens' anger and compassion, and above all, his faith in the transformative powers of a good story. Demon Copperhead speaks for a new generation of lost boys, and all those born into beautiful, cursed places they can't imagine leaving behind.]]> 560 Barbara Kingsolver Nancy 5
Loved it.]]> 4.46 2022 Demon Copperhead
author: Barbara Kingsolver
name: Nancy
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2023/10/06
date added: 2023/10/06
shelves:
review:
I never wanted this book to end.

Loved it.
]]> The Overstory 40180098 The Overstory is a sweeping, impassioned work of activism and resistance that is also a stunning evocation of - and paean to - the natural world. From the roots to the crown and back to the seeds, Richard Powers’s twelfth novel unfolds in concentric rings of interlocking fables that range from antebellum New York to the late twentieth-century Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest and beyond. There is a world alongside ours—vast, slow, interconnected, resourceful, magnificently inventive, and almost invisible to us. This is the story of a handful of people who learn how to see that world and who are drawn up into its unfolding catastrophe.

A New York Times Bestseller.]]> 502 Richard Powers 039335668X Nancy 4 pulitzer-prize-winning-novels 4.10 2018 The Overstory
author: Richard Powers
name: Nancy
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2023/09/20
date added: 2023/09/20
shelves: pulitzer-prize-winning-novels
review:

]]> The Underground Railroad 30555488
In Whitehead's ingenious conception, the Underground Railroad is no mere metaphor--engineers and conductors operate a secret network of tracks and tunnels beneath the Southern soil. Cora and Caesar's first stop is South Carolina, in a city that initially seems like a haven. But the city's placid surface masks an insidious scheme designed for its black denizens. And even worse: Ridgeway, the relentless slave catcher, is close on their heels. Forced to flee again, Cora embarks on a harrowing flight, state by state, seeking true freedom.

Like the protagonist of Gulliver's Travels, Cora encounters different worlds at each stage of her journey--hers is an odyssey through time as well as space. As Whitehead brilliantly re-creates the unique terrors for black people in the pre-Civil War era, his narrative seamlessly weaves the saga of America from the brutal importation of Africans to the unfulfilled promises of the present day. The Underground Railroad is at once a kinetic adventure tale of one woman's ferocious will to escape the horrors of bondage and a shattering, powerful meditation on the history we all share.]]> 320 Colson Whitehead 0385542364 Nancy 4 pulitzer-prize-winning-novels 4.04 2016 The Underground Railroad
author: Colson Whitehead
name: Nancy
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2023/09/20
date added: 2023/09/20
shelves: pulitzer-prize-winning-novels
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan's Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them]]> 61423989
The Roaring Twenties--the Jazz Age--has been characterized as a time of Gatsby frivolity. But it was also the height of the uniquely American hate group, the Ku Klux Klan. Their domain was not the old Confederacy, but the Heartland and the West. They hated Blacks, Jews, Catholics and immigrants in equal measure, and took radical steps to keep these people from the American promise. And the man who set in motion their takeover of great swaths of America was a charismatic charlatan named D.C. Stephenson.

Stephenson was a magnetic presence whose life story changed with every telling. Within two years of his arrival in Indiana, he’d become the Grand Dragon of the state and the architect of the strategy that brought the group out of the shadows � their message endorsed from the pulpits of local churches, spread at family picnics and town celebrations. Judges, prosecutors, ministers, governors and senators across the country all proudly proclaimed their membership. But at the peak of his influence, it was a seemingly powerless woman � Madge Oberholtzer � who would reveal his secret cruelties, and whose deathbed testimony finally brought the Klan to their knees.

A FEVER IN THE HEARTLAND marries a propulsive drama to a powerful and page-turning reckoning with one of the darkest threads in American history.]]> 432 Timothy Egan 0735225265 Nancy 5 4.33 2023 A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan's Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them
author: Timothy Egan
name: Nancy
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2023/09/05
shelves:
review:
This history of the KKK includes a story of a brave young woman Madge Oberholtzer that reads like the horror story that it was... but shows the power of truth and desperate necessity of justice.
]]> <![CDATA[The Sympathizer (The Sympathizer, #1)]]> 23168277
The Sympathizer is the story of this captain: a man brought up by an absent French father and a poor Vietnamese mother, a man who went to university in America, but returned to Vietnam to fight for the Communist cause. A gripping spy novel, an astute exploration of extreme politics, and a moving love story, The Sympathizer explores a life between two worlds and examines the legacy of the Vietnam War in literature, film, and the wars we fight today.]]> 371 Viet Thanh Nguyen 0802123457 Nancy 3 pulitzer-prize-winning-novels 4.00 2015 The Sympathizer (The Sympathizer, #1)
author: Viet Thanh Nguyen
name: Nancy
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2015
rating: 3
read at: 2023/07/14
date added: 2023/07/14
shelves: pulitzer-prize-winning-novels
review:

]]> The Goldfinch 17333223
Aged thirteen, Theo Decker, son of a devoted mother and a reckless, largely absent father, survives an accident that otherwise tears his life apart. Alone and rudderless in New York, he is taken in by the family of a wealthy friend. He is tormented by an unbearable longing for his mother, and down the years clings to the thing that most reminds him of her: a small, strangely captivating painting that ultimately draws him into the criminal underworld. As he grows up, Theo learns to glide between the drawing rooms of the rich and the dusty antiques store where he works. He is alienated and in love - and his talisman, the painting, places him at the centre of a narrowing, ever more dangerous circle.

The Goldfinch is a haunted odyssey through present-day America and a drama of enthralling power. Combining unforgettably vivid characters and thrilling suspense, it is a beautiful, addictive triumph - a sweeping story of loss and obsession, of survival and self-invention, of the deepest mysteries of love, identity and fate.]]> 771 Donna Tartt 0316055433 Nancy 4 pulitzer-prize-winning-novels
Funny how novels strike you differently depending on your moment in life.

Nine years later, I picked it up again, with trepidation. I'd read many reviews of the book that echoed my initial thoughts about the book. However, dedicated to my task, I read it and became addicted to the characters and unusual plot.

I enjoyed the author's reflections on beauty, art, and the inclinations of the heart.

Overall, an enjoyable read.

]]> 3.94 2013 The Goldfinch
author: Donna Tartt
name: Nancy
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at: 2023/05/17
date added: 2023/05/25
shelves: pulitzer-prize-winning-novels
review:
I had started this book years ago when it came out, but put it down. Now, I'm doing a project in which I am reading every Pulitzer prize winning novel since my birth, and it came up on my list -- having won in 2014. And so, I began again.

Funny how novels strike you differently depending on your moment in life.

Nine years later, I picked it up again, with trepidation. I'd read many reviews of the book that echoed my initial thoughts about the book. However, dedicated to my task, I read it and became addicted to the characters and unusual plot.

I enjoyed the author's reflections on beauty, art, and the inclinations of the heart.

Overall, an enjoyable read.


]]> All the Light We Cannot See 18143977
In a mining town in Germany, Werner Pfennig, an orphan, grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find that brings them news and stories from places they have never seen or imagined. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments and is enlisted to use his talent to track down the resistance. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, Doerr illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another.

From the highly acclaimed, multiple award-winning Anthony Doerr, the stunningly beautiful instant New York Times bestseller about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II.

An alternate cover for this ISBN can be found here]]> 544 Anthony Doerr 1476746583 Nancy 3 pulitzer-prize-winning-novels 4.31 2014 All the Light We Cannot See
author: Anthony Doerr
name: Nancy
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2014
rating: 3
read at: 2023/05/25
date added: 2023/05/25
shelves: pulitzer-prize-winning-novels
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]]> The Orphan Master's Son 11529868
Considering himself "a humble citizen of the greatest nation in the world," Jun Do becomes a professional kidnapper who must navigate the shifting rules, arbitrary violence, and baffling demands of his Korean overlords in order to stay alive. Driven to the absolute limit of what any human being could endure, he boldly takes on the treacherous role of rival to Kim Jong Il in an attempt to save the woman he loves, Sun Moon, a legendary actress "so pure, she didn't know what starving people looked like."

Part breathless thriller, part story of innocence lost, part story of romantic love, The Orphan Master's Son is also a riveting portrait of a world heretofore hidden from view: a North Korea rife with hunger, corruption, and casual cruelty but also camaraderie, stolen moments of beauty, and love. A towering literary achievement, The Orphan Master's Son ushers Adam Johnson into the small group of today's greatest writers.

An epic novel and a thrilling literary discovery, The Orphan Master's Son follows a young man's journey through the icy waters, dark tunnels, and eerie spy chambers of the world's most mysterious dictatorship, North Korea.]]> 443 Adam Johnson 0812992792 Nancy 4 pulitzer-prize-winning-novels
This 2013 winner is not something I would've picked up on a shelf, but I was glad that I was able to read the tale of Jun Do/Commander Ga.

The first half of the book is markedly different than the last -- which is slightly discombulating. However, all in all, this book provides and interesting thought experiment on what it's like when your desired and hopes have to be in subservience to the Dear Leader's.]]> 4.05 2012 The Orphan Master's Son
author: Adam Johnson
name: Nancy
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at: 2023/04/20
date added: 2023/04/20
shelves: pulitzer-prize-winning-novels
review:
I'm on a quest to read every Pulitzer prize winning novel since I was born.

This 2013 winner is not something I would've picked up on a shelf, but I was glad that I was able to read the tale of Jun Do/Commander Ga.

The first half of the book is markedly different than the last -- which is slightly discombulating. However, all in all, this book provides and interesting thought experiment on what it's like when your desired and hopes have to be in subservience to the Dear Leader's.
]]> <![CDATA[The Cuckoo's Calling (Cormoran Strike, #1)]]> 16160797 456 Robert Galbraith 0316206849 Nancy 4 3.88 2013 The Cuckoo's Calling (Cormoran Strike, #1)
author: Robert Galbraith
name: Nancy
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at: 2023/04/07
date added: 2023/04/07
shelves:
review:

]]> A Visit from the Goon Squad 7331435
We first meet Sasha in her mid-thirties, on her therapist’s couch in New York City, confronting her long-standing compulsion to steal. Later, we learn the genesis of her turmoil when we see her as the child of a violent marriage, then as a runaway living in Naples, then as a college student trying to avert the suicidal impulses of her best friend. We plunge into the hidden yearnings and disappointments of her uncle, an art historian stuck in a dead marriage, who travels to Naples to extract Sasha from the city’s demimonde and experiences an epiphany of his own while staring at a sculpture of Orpheus and Eurydice in the Museo Nazionale. We meet Bennie Salazar at the melancholy nadir of his adult life—divorced, struggling to connect with his nine-year-old son, listening to a washed-up band in the basement of a suburban house—and then revisit him in 1979, at the height of his youth, shy and tender, reveling in San Francisco’s punk scene as he discovers his ardor for rock and roll and his gift for spotting talent. We learn what became of his high school gang—who thrived and who faltered—and we encounter Lou Kline, Bennie’s catastrophically careless mentor, along with the lovers and children left behind in the wake of Lou’s far-flung sexual conquests and meteoric rise and fall.

A Visit from the Goon Squad is a book about the interplay of time and music, about survival, about the stirrings and transformations set inexorably in motion by even the most passing conjunction of our fates. In a breathtaking array of styles and tones ranging from tragedy to satire to PowerPoint, Egan captures the undertow of self-destruction that we all must either master or succumb to; the basic human hunger for redemption; and the universal tendency to reach for both—and escape the merciless progress of time—in the transporting realms of art and music. Sly, startling, exhilarating work from one of our boldest writers.]]> 274 Jennifer Egan 0307592839 Nancy 3 pulitzer-prize-winning-novels 3.70 2010 A Visit from the Goon Squad
author: Jennifer Egan
name: Nancy
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2010
rating: 3
read at: 2023/03/24
date added: 2023/03/24
shelves: pulitzer-prize-winning-novels
review:

]]> Truly Madly Guilty 27831371 The electrifying new novel from the international bestselling author, Liane Moriarty

Despite their differences, Erika and Clementine have been best friends since they were children. So when Erika needs help, Clementine should be the obvious person to turn to. Or so you'd think.

For Clementine, as a mother of a two desperately trying to practise for the audition of a lifetime, the last thing she needs is Erika asking for something, again.

But the barbecue should be the perfect way to forget their problems for a while. Especially when their hosts, Vid and Tiffany, are only too happy to distract them.

Which is how it all spirals out of control...

]]> 517 Liane Moriarty 1250069815 Nancy 1 3.59 2016 Truly Madly Guilty
author: Liane Moriarty
name: Nancy
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2016
rating: 1
read at:
date added: 2023/03/20
shelves:
review:

]]> The Candy House 58437521 From one of the most dazzling and iconic writers of our time and winner of the Pulitzer Prize, an electrifying, deeply moving novel about the quest for authenticity, privacy, and meaning in a world where our memories are no longer our own—featuring characters from A Visit from the Goon Squad.

It’s 2010. Staggeringly successful and brilliant tech entrepreneur Bix Bouton is desperate for a new idea. He’s forty, with four kids, and restless when he stumbles into a conversation with mostly Columbia professors, one of whom is experimenting with downloading or “externalizing� memory. Within a decade, Bix’s new technology, Own Your Unconscious—that allows you access to every memory you’ve ever had, and to share every memory in exchange for access to the memories of others—has seduced multitudes. But not everyone.

In spellbinding linked narratives, Egan spins out the consequences of Own Your Unconscious through the lives of multiple characters whose paths intersect over several decades. Egan introduces these characters in an astonishing array of styles—from omniscient to first person plural to a duet of voices, an epistolary chapter, and a chapter of tweets. In the world of Egan’s spectacular imagination, there are “counters� who track and exploit desires and there are “eluders,� those who understand the price of taking a bite of the Candy House.

Intellectually dazzling and extraordinarily moving, The Candy House is a bold, brilliant imagining of a world that is moments away. With a focus on social media, gaming, and alternate worlds, you can almost experience moving among dimensions in a role-playing game.� Egan delivers a fierce and exhilarating testament to the tenacity and transcendence of human longing for real connection, love, family, privacy and redemption.]]> 352 Jennifer Egan 1476716765 Nancy 0 to-read 3.61 2022 The Candy House
author: Jennifer Egan
name: Nancy
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/03/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Tinkers 4957350
At once heartbreaking and life affirming, Tinkers is an elegiac meditation on love, loss, illness, faith, and the fierce beauty of nature.]]> 192 Paul Harding 1934137197 Nancy 3 pulitzer-prize-winning-novels 3.41 2009 Tinkers
author: Paul Harding
name: Nancy
average rating: 3.41
book published: 2009
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2023/03/10
shelves: pulitzer-prize-winning-novels
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Olive Kitteridge (Olive Kitteridge, #1)]]> 1736739
At times stern, at other times patient, at times perceptive, at other times in sad denial, Olive Kitteridge, a retired schoolteacher, deplores the changes in her little town of Crosby, Maine, and in the world at large, but she doesn’t always recognize the changes in those around her: a lounge musician haunted by a past romance; a former student who has lost the will to live; Olive’s own adult child, who feels tyrannized by her irrational sensitivities; and her husband, Henry, who finds his loyalty to his marriage both a blessing and a curse.

As the townspeople grapple with their problems, mild and dire, Olive is brought to a deeper understanding of herself and her life � sometimes painfully, but always with ruthless honesty.]]> 270 Elizabeth Strout Nancy 4 pulitzer-prize-winning-novels 3.85 2008 Olive Kitteridge (Olive Kitteridge, #1)
author: Elizabeth Strout
name: Nancy
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2008
rating: 4
read at: 2023/03/06
date added: 2023/03/06
shelves: pulitzer-prize-winning-novels
review:

]]> <![CDATA[All My Knotted-Up Life: A Memoir]]> 61357133
An incredibly thoughtful, disarmingly funny, and intensely vulnerable glimpse into the life and ministry of a woman familiar to many but known by few.

“It’s a peculiar thing, this having lived long enough to take a good look back. We go from knowing each other better than we know ourselves to barely sure if we know each other at all, to precisely sure that we don’t. All my knotted-up life I’ve longed for the sanity and simplicity of knowing who’s good and who’s bad. I’ve wanted to know this about myself as much as anyone. This was not theological. It was strictly relational. God could do what he wanted with eternity. I was just trying to make it here in the meantime. As benevolent as he has been in a myriad of ways, God has remained aloof on this uncomplicated request .� � Beth Moore

New York Times best-selling author, speaker, visionary, and founder of Living Proof Ministries Beth Moore has devoted her whole life to helping women across the globe come to know the transforming power of Jesus. An established writer of many acclaimed books and Bible studies for women on spiritual growth and personal development, Beth now unveils her own story in a much-anticipated debut memoir.

All My Knotted-Up Life

All My Knotted-Up Life is told with surprising candor about some of the personal heartbreaks and behind-the-scenes challenges that have marked Beth’s life. But beyond that, it’s a beautifully crafted portrait of resilience and survival, a poignant reminder of God’s enduring faithfulness, and proof positive that if we ever truly took the time to hear people’s full stories . . . we’d all walk around slack-jawed.]]> 304 Beth Moore 1496472675 Nancy 5
The thesis statement, to me, was this memorable line: "I didn't sign up for demons."

Exactly.

Well written evocative, loving, and courageous.]]> 4.43 2023 All My Knotted-Up Life: A Memoir
author: Beth Moore
name: Nancy
average rating: 4.43
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2023/03/01
date added: 2023/03/01
shelves:
review:
I just finished Beth Moore's amazing memoir - funny, sad, beautiful, powerful.

The thesis statement, to me, was this memorable line: "I didn't sign up for demons."

Exactly.

Well written evocative, loving, and courageous.
]]> <![CDATA[The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao]]> 297673
Diaz immerses us in the tumultuous life of Oscar and the history of the family at large, rendering with genuine warmth and dazzling energy, humor, and insight the Dominican-American experience, and, ultimately, the endless human capacity to persevere in the face of heartbreak and loss. A true literary triumph, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao confirms Junot Diaz as one of the best and most exciting voices of our time.]]> 335 Junot DĂ­az 1594489580 Nancy 4 3.89 2007 The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
author: Junot DĂ­az
name: Nancy
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2007
rating: 4
read at: 2023/02/20
date added: 2023/02/20
shelves:
review:

]]> The Road 6288
A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones, and when the snow falls it is gray. The sky is dark. Their destination is the coast, although they don’t know what, if anything, awaits them there. They have nothing; just a pistol to defend themselves against the lawless bands that stalk the road, the clothes they are wearing, a cart of scavenged food—and each other.

The Road is the profoundly moving story of a journey. It boldly imagines a future in which no hope remains, but in which the father and his son, “each the other’s world entire,� are sustained by love. Awesome in the totality of its vision, it is an unflinching meditation on the worst and the best that we are capable of: ultimate destructiveness, desperate tenacity, and the tenderness that keeps two people alive in the face of total devastation.]]> 241 Cormac McCarthy 0307265439 Nancy 0 pulitzer-prize-winning-novels 3.99 2006 The Road
author: Cormac McCarthy
name: Nancy
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at: 2023/01/20
date added: 2023/01/20
shelves: pulitzer-prize-winning-novels
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Father Joe: The Man Who Saved My Soul]]> 143685
Like everything human, it started with sex. In 1955, fourteen-year-old Tony found himself entangled with a married Catholic woman. In Cold War England, where Catholicism was the subject of news stories and Graham Greene bestsellers, Tony was whisked off by the woman’s husband to see a priest and be saved.

Yet what he found was a far cry from the priests he’d known at Catholic school, where boys were beaten with belts or set upon by dogs. Instead, he met Father Joe, a gentle, stammering, ungainly Benedictine who never used the words “wrong� or “guilt,� who believed that God was in everyone and that “the only sin was selfishness.� During the next forty years, as his life and career drastically ebbed and flowed, Tony discovered that his visits to Father Joe remained the one constant in his life—the relationship that, in the most serious sense, saved it.

From the fifties and his adolescent desire to join an abbey himself; to the sixties, when attending Cambridge and seeing the satire of Beyond the Fringe convinced him to change the world with laughter, not prayer; to the seventies and successful stints as an original editor of National Lampoon and a writer of Lemmings , the off-Broadway smash that introduced John Belushi and Chevy Chase; to professional disaster after co-creating the legendary English series Spitting Image ; from drinking to drugs, from a failed first marriage to a successful second and the miracle of parenthood—the years only deepened Tony’s need for the wisdom of his other and more real father, creating a bond that could not be broken, even by death.

A startling departure for this acclaimed satirist, Father Joe is a sincere account of how Tony Hendra learned to love. It’s the story of a whole generation looking for a way back from mockery and irony, looking for its own Father Joe, and a testament to one of the most charismatic mentors in modern literature.]]> 304 Tony Hendra 0812972341 Nancy 3
That put a pall over the passages about how terrible a father he was, of course. ]]> 3.74 2004 Father Joe: The Man Who Saved My Soul
author: Tony Hendra
name: Nancy
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2004
rating: 3
read at: 2023/01/10
date added: 2023/01/10
shelves:
review:
This is a beautifully written memoir with many powerful reflections. However, I learned -- half way through reading it -- that Hendra's biological daughter accused him of molesting her.

That put a pall over the passages about how terrible a father he was, of course.
]]> March 13529 Winner of the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

From the author of the acclaimed Year of Wonders, a historical novel and love story set during a time of catastrophe, on the front lines of the American Civil War. Acclaimed author Geraldine Brooks gives us the story of the absent father from Louisa May Alcott's Little Women—and conjures a world of brutality, stubborn courage and transcendent love. An idealistic abolitionist, March has gone as chaplain to serve the Union cause. But the war tests his faith not only in the Union—which is also capable of barbarism and racism—but in himself. As he recovers from a near-fatal illness, March must reassemble and reconnect with his family, who have no idea of what he has endured. A love story set in a time of catastrophe, March explores the passions between a man and a woman, the tenderness of parent and child, and the life-changing power of an ardently held belief.]]> 280 Geraldine Brooks Nancy 4 pulitzer-prize-winning-novels
March, by Geraldine Brooks, won the prize in 2006 and imbues life into the absent father of "Little Women." I cannot remember if I read Little Women as a kid, only that I was supposed to. So I didn't approach this read with a built-in well of affection for the story or characters.

However, it was a well written, interesting read and I applaud Brooks for taking the reader down this path into history.]]> 3.77 2005 March
author: Geraldine Brooks
name: Nancy
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2005
rating: 4
read at: 2022/12/13
date added: 2022/12/13
shelves: pulitzer-prize-winning-novels
review:
I'm in the process of reading every Pulitzer Prize winning novel since my birth.

March, by Geraldine Brooks, won the prize in 2006 and imbues life into the absent father of "Little Women." I cannot remember if I read Little Women as a kid, only that I was supposed to. So I didn't approach this read with a built-in well of affection for the story or characters.

However, it was a well written, interesting read and I applaud Brooks for taking the reader down this path into history.
]]> The Netanyahus 55817233 240 Joshua Cohen 1913097609 Nancy 4 3.81 2021 The Netanyahus
author: Joshua Cohen
name: Nancy
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2022/11/21
date added: 2022/11/21
shelves:
review:
Charming, pretentious, interesting!
]]> Klara and the Sun 54120408
In Klara and the Sun, Kazuo Ishiguro looks at our rapidly changing modern world through the eyes of an unforgettable narrator to explore a fundamental question: what does it mean to love?]]> 340 Kazuo Ishiguro 059331817X Nancy 5 3.71 2021 Klara and the Sun
author: Kazuo Ishiguro
name: Nancy
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2022/11/10
date added: 2022/11/10
shelves:
review:
A fascinating dive into the world of "artificial friends," science, faith, and love.
]]> The Known World 67 The Known World is a daring and ambitious work by Pulitzer Prize winner Edward P. Jones.

The Known World tells the story of Henry Townsend, a black farmer and former slave who falls under the tutelage of William Robbins, the most powerful man in Manchester County, Virginia. Making certain he never circumvents the law, Townsend runs his affairs with unusual discipline. But when death takes him unexpectedly, his widow, Caldonia, can't uphold the estate's order, and chaos ensues. Jones has woven a footnote of history into an epic that takes an unflinching look at slavery in all its moral complexities.]]> 388 Edward P. Jones 0061159174 Nancy 4
There's a twist. The "owner" of the enslaved people is Black. ]]> 3.83 2003 The Known World
author: Edward P. Jones
name: Nancy
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2003
rating: 4
read at: 2022/11/03
date added: 2022/11/03
shelves:
review:
I'm on a quest to read every Pulitzer prize winning novel since I was born. This 2004 winner was well written and offered an insight into the world of enslaved people in the antebellum south.

There's a twist. The "owner" of the enslaved people is Black.
]]> Never Let Me Go 6334 288 Kazuo Ishiguro 1400078776 Nancy 4
The book is well written, sparse, and nuanced, allowing the reader to feel the impotence and fragility of the narrator's lot in life. The narrator is Kathy H., and Ishiguro beautifully demonstrated both her naïveté and her care for others.

It took me a while to figure out what was going on in this book -- I don't read summaries, even on the back covers -- which allowed the horror of the plot to sneak up on me.

What is a human existence when you don't have parents, a future, or a real past?

Plenty. Ishiguro's novel showcases the beauty of our frail humanity with a deft pen.

]]> 3.85 2005 Never Let Me Go
author: Kazuo Ishiguro
name: Nancy
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2005
rating: 4
read at: 2022/10/01
date added: 2022/10/01
shelves:
review:
This is my first Kazuo Ishiguro novel, which offers up a bleak story of "parent-less" children raised for the sole purpose of others' health and well-being.

The book is well written, sparse, and nuanced, allowing the reader to feel the impotence and fragility of the narrator's lot in life. The narrator is Kathy H., and Ishiguro beautifully demonstrated both her naïveté and her care for others.

It took me a while to figure out what was going on in this book -- I don't read summaries, even on the back covers -- which allowed the horror of the plot to sneak up on me.

What is a human existence when you don't have parents, a future, or a real past?

Plenty. Ishiguro's novel showcases the beauty of our frail humanity with a deft pen.


]]> Middlesex 2187 Middlesex tells the breathtaking story of Calliope Stephanides, and three generations of the Greek-American Stephanides family, who travel from a tiny village overlooking Mount Olympus in Asia Minor to Prohibition-era Detroit, witnessing its glory days as the Motor City and the race riots of 1967 before moving out to the tree-lined streets of suburban Grosse Pointe, Michigan. To understand why Calliope is not like other girls, she has to uncover a guilty family secret, and the astonishing genetic history that turns Callie into Cal, one of the most audacious and wondrous narrators in contemporary fiction. Lyrical and thrilling, Middlesex is an exhilarating reinvention of the American epic.]]> 529 Jeffrey Eugenides 0312422156 Nancy 5 4.03 2002 Middlesex
author: Jeffrey Eugenides
name: Nancy
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2002
rating: 5
read at: 2022/09/26
date added: 2022/09/26
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[How to Tell a Story: The Essential Guide to Memorable Storytelling from The Moth]]> 58735007
Over the past twenty-five years, the directors of The Moth have worked with people from all walks of life—including astronauts, hairdressers, rock stars, a retired pickpocket, high school students, and Nobel Prize winners—to develop true personal stories that have moved and delighted live audiences and listeners of The Moth’s Peabody Award–winning radio hour and podcast. A leader in the modern storytelling movement, The Moth inspires thousands of people around the globe to share their stories each year.

Now, with How to Tell a Story, The Moth will help you learn how to uncover and craft your own unique stories, like Moth storytellers Mike Birbiglia, Rosanne Cash, Neil Gaiman, Elizabeth Gilbert, Padma Lakshmi, Darryl “DMC� McDaniels, Hasan Minhaj, Tig Notaro, Boots Riley, Betty Reid Soskin, John Turturro, and more.

Whether your goal is to make it to the Moth stage, deliver the perfect wedding toast, wow clients at a business dinner, give a moving eulogy, ace a job interview, be a hit at parties, change the world, or simply connect more deeply to those around you, stories are essential. Sharing secrets of The Moth’s time-honed process and using examples from beloved storytellers, a team of Moth directors will show you how to

� mine your memories for your best stories
� explore structures that will boost the impact of your story
� deliver your stories with confidence
� tailor your stories for any occasion

Filled with empowering, easy-to-follow tips for crafting stories that forge lasting bonds with friends, family, and colleagues alike, this book will help you connect authentically with the world around you and unleash the power of story in your life.]]> 336 Meg Bowles 0593139003 Nancy 5 3.83 2022 How to Tell a Story: The Essential Guide to Memorable Storytelling from The Moth
author: Meg Bowles
name: Nancy
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2022/09/19
date added: 2022/09/19
shelves:
review:
This book not only explain precisely how to tell a story, it showed the importance of passing down our vulnerabilities, strengths, mistakes, and victories to others.
]]> <![CDATA[A Trust Betrayed: The Untold Story of Camp Lejeune and the Poisoning of Generations of Marines and Their Families (A Merloyd Lawrence Book)]]> 18210812 301 Mike Magner 0306822571 Nancy 4
So very very tragic, sad, and infuriating.]]> 3.80 2014 A Trust Betrayed: The Untold Story of Camp Lejeune and the Poisoning of Generations of Marines and Their Families (A Merloyd Lawrence Book)
author: Mike Magner
name: Nancy
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at: 2022/08/30
date added: 2022/08/30
shelves:
review:
As President Biden is about to sign a bill that empowers victims to seek justice, I read Mike Magner's excellent, detailed book about what exactly happened at Camp Lejeune.

So very very tragic, sad, and infuriating.
]]> Empire Falls 187020
Miles Roby has been slinging burgers at the Empire Grill for 20 years, a job that cost him his college education and much of his self-respect. What keeps him there? It could be his bright, sensitive daughter Tick, who needs all his help surviving the local high school. Or maybe it’s Janine, Miles� soon-to-be ex-wife, who’s taken up with a noxiously vain health-club proprietor. Or perhaps it’s the imperious Francine Whiting, who owns everything in town–and seems to believe that “everything� includes Miles himself. In Empire Falls Richard Russo delves deep into the blue-collar heart of America in a work that overflows with hilarity, heartache, and grace]]> 483 Richard Russo 0375726403 Nancy 4
The audio version is over 20 hours long, which felt like a commitment -- but the length allowed the reader to see the breadth and scope of life.

]]> 3.94 2001 Empire Falls
author: Richard Russo
name: Nancy
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2001
rating: 4
read at: 2022/08/26
date added: 2022/08/26
shelves:
review:
I'm on a quest to read all of the Pulitzer prize winning novels since I was born. This 2001 novel Empire Falls received the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and it is beautifully written. The language is stunning and deft.

The audio version is over 20 hours long, which felt like a commitment -- but the length allowed the reader to see the breadth and scope of life.


]]> The Latecomer 57693566 From the New York Times bestselling author of The Plot, Jean Hanff Korelitz’s The Latecomer is a layered and immersive literary novel about three siblings, desperate to escape one another, and the upending of their family by the late arrival of a fourth.

The Latecomer follows the story of the wealthy, New York City-based Oppenheimer family, from the first meeting of parents Salo and Johanna, under tragic circumstances, to their triplets born during the early days of IVF. As children, the three siblings--Harrison, Lewyn, and Sally--feel no strong familial bond and cannot wait to go their separate ways, even as their father becomes more distanced and their mother more desperate. When the triplets leave for college, Johanna, faced with being truly alone, makes the decision to have a fourth child. What role will the “latecomer� play in this fractured family?

A complex novel that builds slowly and deliberately, The Latecomer touches on the topics of grief and guilt, generational trauma, privilege and race, traditions and religion, and family dynamics. It is a profound and witty family story from an accomplished author, known for the depth of her character studies, expertly woven storylines, and plot twists.]]> 439 Jean Hanff Korelitz 1250790794 Nancy 0 3.93 2022 The Latecomer
author: Jean Hanff Korelitz
name: Nancy
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at: 2022/07/24
date added: 2022/07/24
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay]]> 3985 639 Michael Chabon 0312282990 Nancy 3 4.18 2000 The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
author: Michael Chabon
name: Nancy
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2000
rating: 3
read at: 2022/07/24
date added: 2022/07/24
shelves:
review:

]]> You Should Have Known 17893439 You Should Have Known, a book in which she castigates women for not valuing their intuition and calls upon them to examine their first impressions of men for signs of serious trouble later on. But weeks before the book is published, a chasm opens in her own life: a violent death, a missing husband, and, in the place of a man Grace thought she knew, only a chain of terrible revelations. Left behind in the wake of a spreading and very public disaster and horrified by the ways in which she has failed to heed her own advice, Grace must dismantle one life and create another for her child and herself.]]> 439 Jean Hanff Korelitz 1455599492 Nancy 5 3.38 2014 You Should Have Known
author: Jean Hanff Korelitz
name: Nancy
average rating: 3.38
book published: 2014
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2022/07/13
shelves:
review:
I read this after having already seen the film adaptation, and the book was so much more nuanced and introspective!
]]> <![CDATA[The Plot (The Book Series, #1)]]> 55315487 Jean Hanff Korelitz’s The Plot is a psychologically suspenseful novel about a story too good not to steal, and the writer who steals it.

Jacob Finch Bonner was once a promising young novelist with a respectably published first book. Today, he’s teaching in a third-rate MFA program and struggling to maintain what’s left of his self-respect; he hasn’t written—let alone published—anything decent in years. When Evan Parker, his most arrogant student, announces he doesn’t need Jake’s help because the plot of his book in progress is a sure thing, Jake is prepared to dismiss the boast as typical amateur narcissism. But then . . . he hears the plot.

Jake returns to the downward trajectory of his own career and braces himself for the supernova publication of Evan Parker’s first novel: but it never comes. When he discovers that his former student has died, presumably without ever completing his book, Jake does what any self-respecting writer would do with a story like that—a story that absolutely needs to be told.

In a few short years, all of Evan Parker’s predictions have come true, but Jake is the author enjoying the wave. He is wealthy, famous, praised and read all over the world. But at the height of his glorious new life, an e-mail arrives, the first salvo in a terrifying, anonymous campaign: You are a thief, it says.

As Jake struggles to understand his antagonist and hide the truth from his readers and his publishers, he begins to learn more about his late student, and what he discovers both amazes and terrifies him. Who was Evan Parker, and how did he get the idea for his “sure thing� of a novel? What is the real story behind the plot, and who stole it from whom?]]> 320 Jean Hanff Korelitz 125079076X Nancy 5
Worth every dime. So compelling/fun - finished in 24 hours and sad it's over.

Highly recommend!]]> 3.75 2021 The Plot (The Book Series, #1)
author: Jean Hanff Korelitz
name: Nancy
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2022/07/02
date added: 2022/07/02
shelves:
review:
For a flight home from Chicago yesterday, I picked up THE PLOT by Jean Hanff Koreli on whim. (Even had to buy readers to read words on paper instead of my normal Kindle or Audible.)

Worth every dime. So compelling/fun - finished in 24 hours and sad it's over.

Highly recommend!
]]> Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body 26074156 New York Times bestselling author of Bad Feminist: a searingly honest memoir of food, weight, self-image, and learning how to feed your hunger while taking care of yourself.

“I ate and ate and ate in the hopes that if I made myself big, my body would be safe. I buried the girl I was because she ran into all kinds of trouble. I tried to erase every memory of her, but she is still there, somewhere. . . . I was trapped in my body, one that I barely recognized or understood, but at least I was safe.�

In her phenomenally popular essays and long-running Tumblr blog, Roxane Gay has written with intimacy and sensitivity about food and body, using her own emotional and psychological struggles as a means of exploring our shared anxieties over pleasure, consumption, appearance, and health. As a woman who describes her own body as “wildly undisciplined,� Roxane understands the tension between desire and denial, between self-comfort and self-care. In Hunger, she explores her past—including the devastating act of violence that acted as a turning point in her young life—and brings readers along on her journey to understand and ultimately save herself.

With the bracing candor, vulnerability, and power that have made her one of the most admired writers of her generation, Roxane explores what it means to learn to take care of yourself: how to feed your hungers for delicious and satisfying food, a smaller and safer body, and a body that can love and be loved—in a time when the bigger you are, the smaller your world becomes.]]> 306 Roxane Gay 0062362593 Nancy 4 4.17 2017 Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body
author: Roxane Gay
name: Nancy
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2022/06/24
date added: 2022/06/24
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Wanted: A Spiritual Pursuit Through Jail, Among Outlaws, and Across Borders]]> 22291135 384 Chris Hoke 0062321366 Nancy 0 4.55 2015 Wanted: A Spiritual Pursuit Through Jail, Among Outlaws, and Across Borders
author: Chris Hoke
name: Nancy
average rating: 4.55
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at: 2022/06/24
date added: 2022/06/24
shelves:
review:

]]> Interpreter of Maladies 5439 Librarian's note: An alternate cover edition can be found here

Navigating between the Indian traditions they've inherited and the baffling new world, the characters in Jhumpa Lahiri's elegant, touching stories seek love beyond the barriers of culture and generations. In "A Temporary Matter," published in The New Yorker, a young Indian-American couple faces the heartbreak of a stillborn birth while their Boston neighborhood copes with a nightly blackout. In the title story, an interpreter guides an American family through the India of their ancestors and hears an astonishing confession. Lahiri writes with deft cultural insight reminiscent of Anita Desai and a nuanced depth that recalls Mavis Gallant.]]> 198 Jhumpa Lahiri 0618101365 Nancy 4
Interpreter of Maladies has nine short stories by Jhumpa Lahiri which sold over 15 million copies. All nine stories are about Indians and Indian Americans struggling to make their place in the Western world.

Lahiri's beautiful writing made this a book that's about more than an immigrant experience, though that alone would be valuable. Her stories are about love, life, and strangers met along the way.]]> 4.18 1999 Interpreter of Maladies
author: Jhumpa Lahiri
name: Nancy
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1999
rating: 4
read at: 2022/06/15
date added: 2022/06/15
shelves:
review:
In my quest to read all of the Pulitzer prize winning novels in my lifetime, I came across this winner from 2000.

Interpreter of Maladies has nine short stories by Jhumpa Lahiri which sold over 15 million copies. All nine stories are about Indians and Indian Americans struggling to make their place in the Western world.

Lahiri's beautiful writing made this a book that's about more than an immigrant experience, though that alone would be valuable. Her stories are about love, life, and strangers met along the way.
]]> The Hours 11899 The Pulitzer Prize-winning novel that became a motion picture starring Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore, and Nicole Kidman, directed by Stephen Daldry from a screenplay by David Hare.

In The Hours, Michael Cunningham, widely praised as one of the most gifted writers of his generation, draws inventively on the life and work of Virginia Woolf to tell the story of a group of contemporary characters struggling with the conflicting claims of love and inheritance, hope and despair. The narrative of Woolf's last days before her suicide early in World War II counterpoints the fictional stories of Samuel, a famous poet whose life has been shadowed by his talented and troubled mother, and his lifelong friend Clarissa, who strives to forge a balanced and rewarding life in spite of the demands of friends, lovers, and family.

Passionate, profound, and deeply moving, this is Cunningham's most remarkable achievement to date.]]> 230 Michael Cunningham 0312305060 Nancy 3 3.95 1998 The Hours
author: Michael Cunningham
name: Nancy
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1998
rating: 3
read at: 2022/05/21
date added: 2022/05/21
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer]]> 40856825 306 Steven Millhauser Nancy 3 3.49 1996 Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer
author: Steven Millhauser
name: Nancy
average rating: 3.49
book published: 1996
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2022/05/12
shelves:
review:
In my quest to read all of the Pulitzer prize winning novels of my lifetime, I came across Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer, which explores the American Dream... all of its promise, hope, disappointment and death.
]]> <![CDATA[The Life We're Looking For: Reclaiming Relationship in a Technological World]]> 58844848 A deeply reflective primer on creating meaningful connections, rebuilding abundant communities, and living in a way that engages our full humanity in an age of unprecedented anxiety and loneliness--from the author of The Tech-Wise Family

"Andy Crouch shows the path to reclaiming a life that restores the heart of what it means to thrive."--Arthur C. Brooks, #1 New York Times bestselling author of From Strength to Strength

Our greatest need is to be recognized--to be seen, loved, and embedded in rich relationships with those around us. But for the last century, we've displaced that need with the ease of technology. We've dreamed of mastery without relationship (what the premodern world called magic) and abundance without dependence (what Jesus called Mammon). Yet even before a pandemic disrupted that quest, we felt threatened and strangely out of place: lonely, anxious, bored amid endless options, oddly disconnected amid infinite connections.

In The Life We're Looking For, bestselling author Andy Crouch shows how we have been seduced by a false vision of human flourishing--and how each of us can fight back. From the social innovations of the early Christian movement to the efforts of entrepreneurs working to create more humane technology, Crouch shows how we can restore true community and put people first in a world dominated by money, power, and devices.

There is a way out of our impersonal world, into a world where knowing and being known are the heartbeat of our days, our households, and our economies. Where our vulnerabilities are seen not as something to be escaped but as the key to our becoming who we were made to be together. Where technology serves us rather than masters us--and helps us become more human, not less.]]> 240 Andy Crouch 059323734X Nancy 5
If you feel the modern world is leaving you less fulfilled, this book helpfully explains the spiritual underpinnings of technology and reveals its false promises.

Highly recommend!]]> 4.05 2022 The Life We're Looking For: Reclaiming Relationship in a Technological World
author: Andy Crouch
name: Nancy
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2022/05/12
date added: 2022/05/12
shelves:
review:
This is more than a book on technology.

If you feel the modern world is leaving you less fulfilled, this book helpfully explains the spiritual underpinnings of technology and reveals its false promises.

Highly recommend!
]]> American Pastoral 11650 Pulitzer Prize Winner (1998)

In American Pastoral, Philip Roth gives us a novel of unqualified greatness that is an elegy for all the twentieth century's promises of prosperity, civic order, and domestic bliss. Roth's protagonist is Seymour 'Swede' Levov—a legendary high school athlete, a devoted family man, a hard worker, the prosperous inheritor of his father's Newark glove factory—comes of age in thriving, triumphant post-war America. And then one day in 1968, Swede's beautiful American luck deserts him.

For Swede's adored daughter, Merry, has grown from a loving, quick-witted girl into a sullen, fanatical teenager—a teenager capable of an outlandishly savage act of political terrorism. And overnight Swede is wrenched out of the longed-for American pastoral and into the indigenous American berserk. Compulsively readable, propelled by sorrow, rage, and a deep compassion for its characters, this is Roth's masterpiece.]]> 432 Philip Roth Nancy 3
Philip Roth’s 1997 novel, “American Pastoral" (which won the 1998 prize) is an interesting view into
America between World War II and Vietnam by focusing on the vicissitudes of Seymour (Swede) Levov.

The premise is interesting and the Audible narrator Ron Silver did a remarkably compelling job animating it. However, it felt too long and I doubt I would've enjoyed it as much without the wonderful narration.]]> 3.93 1997 American Pastoral
author: Philip Roth
name: Nancy
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1997
rating: 3
read at: 2022/05/12
date added: 2022/05/12
shelves:
review:
I'm in the process of reading every Pulitzer-prize winning novel since my birth.

Philip Roth’s 1997 novel, “American Pastoral" (which won the 1998 prize) is an interesting view into
America between World War II and Vietnam by focusing on the vicissitudes of Seymour (Swede) Levov.

The premise is interesting and the Audible narrator Ron Silver did a remarkably compelling job animating it. However, it felt too long and I doubt I would've enjoyed it as much without the wonderful narration.
]]> <![CDATA[My Life as an Indian (Native American)]]> 39089904 As a welcome guest of the Indians, J. W. Schultz took part in almost every aspect of tribal life, enabling him to write vivid and dramatic descriptions of buffalo hunts, war parties, daring raids on enemy quarters, and other adventures; but he also paints a detailed picture of the quieter side of life in the vast encampments of lodges that dotted the plains: religious ceremonies and customs, child-rearing, food preparation, burial practices, tales told around the campfire, and much else.
The author’s sensitive commentary testifies to his deep love and affection for the people with whom he lived, among them Nät-ah�-ki, the young and beautiful Blackfoot girl who became his wife; Ashton, an Easterner with a secret sorrow; Diana, an orphaned Indian girl, who, as Ashton’s loving ward, received a proper education but met a tragic death; and Berry, a tall, fearless Indian trader of mixed blood who became the author’s long-time friend.
Spanning a period in American history that saw the Indian way of life dwindle to near extinction, this extraordinary firsthand account of a white man’s experiences in the word of the Plains Indian will not only captivate general readers but will also appeal to ethnologists and students of Native American life and culture. A new Introduction by Hugh A. Dempsey, Chief Curator Emeritus, Glenbow Museum, Calgary, Alberta, provides biographical information on the author and traces the book’s publishing history and cultural impact.]]> 336 James Willard Schultz 048678858X Nancy 0 to-read 4.44 1905 My Life as an Indian (Native American)
author: James Willard Schultz
name: Nancy
average rating: 4.44
book published: 1905
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/04/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Independence Day (Frank Bascombe, #2)]]> 12374 Independence Day reveals a man and our country with unflinching comedy and the specter of hope and even permanence, all of which Richard Ford evokes with a keen intelligence, perfect emotional pitch, and a voice invested with absolute authority.]]> 464 Richard Ford 0099447126 Nancy 3
The narrator, Richard Poe, is superb. His amazing delivery made it easy to listen to the adventures (that's too strong a word, honestly) of the main character, Frank Bascombe -- a privileged realtor, whose job gives him many opportunities to wax eloquent about life and property. The anemic plot allowed me to simply tune in and listen to the beautiful writing without having to follow any real action.

Ford's strengths was his almost surgical descriptions of his characters and settings, which made the book worth reading. Almost. Also, due to the age of the book, his political rants against George H. W. Bush made for an interesting anachronism after the past few years of actual political chaos.

Overall, a well written book about nothing much.

]]> 3.87 1995 Independence Day (Frank Bascombe, #2)
author: Richard Ford
name: Nancy
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1995
rating: 3
read at: 2022/04/11
date added: 2022/04/10
shelves:
review:
I'm in the process of reading every Pulitzer prize winning novel since I was born. This 1996 winner by Richard Ford meanders from interesting character to interesting character, but never takes the reader really anywhere. The plot is thin. However, I knew this going into it, after reading the criticisms, so I settled in for the 20+ hour Audible experience.

The narrator, Richard Poe, is superb. His amazing delivery made it easy to listen to the adventures (that's too strong a word, honestly) of the main character, Frank Bascombe -- a privileged realtor, whose job gives him many opportunities to wax eloquent about life and property. The anemic plot allowed me to simply tune in and listen to the beautiful writing without having to follow any real action.

Ford's strengths was his almost surgical descriptions of his characters and settings, which made the book worth reading. Almost. Also, due to the age of the book, his political rants against George H. W. Bush made for an interesting anachronism after the past few years of actual political chaos.

Overall, a well written book about nothing much.


]]> <![CDATA[The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx (Summary & Study Guide)]]> 10300723
This study guide includes the following Plot Summary, Chapter Summaries & Analysis, Characters, Objects/Places, Themes, Style, Quotes, and Topics for Discussion.]]> 57 BookRags Nancy 3 4.32 2011 The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx (Summary & Study Guide)
author: BookRags
name: Nancy
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2011
rating: 3
read at: 2022/02/22
date added: 2022/02/22
shelves:
review:

]]> Tabloid Dreams 384009 A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, was a keen, piercing book told largely in the voice of Vietnamese immigrants to America. To say that his new collection is a departure is an understatement: Butler has taken actual headlines from the more outrageous of the supermarket tabloids and fashioned short fiction around them. Headlines such as "Titanic Victim Speaks Through Waterbed," "Woman Loses Cookie Bake-Off, Sets Self on Fire," and "Every Man She Kisses Dies" are the starting points for this quirky volume from one of the most original American writers at work today.]]> 224 Robert Olen Butler 0805055894 Nancy 0 to-read 3.82 1996 Tabloid Dreams
author: Robert Olen Butler
name: Nancy
average rating: 3.82
book published: 1996
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/02/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Intercourse 2541492 Intercourse delightfully reveals what goes through a person's mind at a crucial momentduring sex. Smart, provocative, subtle, and erotic, each story is a many faceted gem. Butler dazzles and entertains as he channels the most intimate thoughts of 50 couples,including:
Adam & Eve
Bonnie & Clyde
Pocahontas & John Smith
Richard Milhous Nixon & Pat Nixon
Walt Whitman & Oscar Wilde
Elvis Presley & Holly Singleton (admirer)
Princess Diana & Prince Charles
William Jefferson Clinton & Hillary Diane Rodham
Santa Claus & Ingebirgitta (elf)]]> 216 Robert Olen Butler 0811863573 Nancy 0 to-read 3.30 2008 Intercourse
author: Robert Olen Butler
name: Nancy
average rating: 3.30
book published: 2008
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/02/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Had a Good Time: Stories from American Postcards]]> 354407 288 Robert Olen Butler 0802142044 Nancy 0 to-read 3.63 2004 Had a Good Time: Stories from American Postcards
author: Robert Olen Butler
name: Nancy
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2004
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/02/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Severance 291103 264 Robert Olen Butler 0811856143 Nancy 0 to-read 3.63 2006 Severance
author: Robert Olen Butler
name: Nancy
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/02/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Hot Country (Christopher Marlowe Cobb Thriller #1)]]> 13590745 While investigating a German ammunition ship docked in the marina, Cobb finds himself fired upon by unknown assailants, then witnesses a priest being shot with marksman-like precision right in the cross the holy man wears around his neck. Cobb employs a young pickpocket to help him find out the identity of the sniper and, more importantly, why important German officials are coming into the city in the middle of the night from the ship at the port. Soon Cobb finds himself wrapped in a web of secrets that could change the fate of myriad world leaders, redefine the destiny of two continents, and end his life at any moment
An action-packed chronicle of passion and war, Butler’s powerful crime-fiction debut is a thriller not to be missed, from a writer who is a true master of his craft.]]> 326 Robert Olen Butler 0802120466 Nancy 0 to-read 3.54 2012 The Hot Country (Christopher Marlowe Cobb Thriller #1)
author: Robert Olen Butler
name: Nancy
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/02/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Perfume River 28819020 Perfume River is an exquisite novel that examines family ties and the legacy of the Vietnam War through the portrait of a single North Florida family.

Robert Quinlan is a seventy-year-old historian, teaching at Florida State University, where his wife Darla is also tenured. Their marriage, forged in the fervor of anti-Vietnam-war protests, now bears the fractures of time, both personal and historical, with the couple trapped in an existence of morning coffee and solitary jogging and separate offices. For Robert and Darla, the cracks remain under the surface, whereas the divisions in Robert’s own family are more apparent: he has almost no relationship with his brother Jimmy, who became estranged from the family as the Vietnam War intensified. Robert and Jimmy’s father, a veteran of WWII, is coming to the end of his life, and aftershocks of war ripple across their lives once again, when Jimmy refuses to appear at his father’s bedside. And an unstable homeless man whom Robert at first takes to be a fellow Vietnam veteran turns out to have a deep impact not just on Robert, but on his entire family.]]> 272 Robert Olen Butler 0802125751 Nancy 0 to-read 3.53 2016 Perfume River
author: Robert Olen Butler
name: Nancy
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/02/19
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[The 2008 Robert Olen Butler Prize Stories]]> 5028353 164 Robert Olen Butler 1934832065 Nancy 0 to-read 4.50 2008 The 2008 Robert Olen Butler Prize Stories
author: Robert Olen Butler
name: Nancy
average rating: 4.50
book published: 2008
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/02/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The 2005 Robert Olen Butler Prize Stories]]> 354409 232 Robert Olen Butler 0974822981 Nancy 0 to-read 3.75 2006 The 2005 Robert Olen Butler Prize Stories
author: Robert Olen Butler
name: Nancy
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/02/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The 2007 Robert Olen Butler Prize Stories]]> 1870441 176 Robert Olen Butler 0979150167 Nancy 0 to-read 4.25 2007 The 2007 Robert Olen Butler Prize Stories
author: Robert Olen Butler
name: Nancy
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/02/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> A Small Hotel 10121446 The book begins on the day that Michael and Kelly are to finalize their divorce. Kelly is due in court, but instead drives from her home in Pensacola, Florida, across the panhandle to New Orleans and checks into Room 303 at the Olivier House in the city’s French Quarter—the hotel where she and Michael fell in love some twenty years earlier and where she now finds herself about to make a decision that will affect her, Michael, and their nineteen-year-old daughter, Samantha. Butler masterfully weaves scenes of the present with memories from both the viewpoint of Michael and Kelly—scenes that span some twenty years, taking the reader back to critical moments in the couple’s relationship and showing two people deeply in love but also struggling with their own insecurities and inabilities to express this love.
An intelligent, deeply moving, and remarkably written portrait of a relationship that reads as a cross between a romance novel and a literary page-turner, A Small Hotel is a masterful story that will remind readers once again why Robert Olen Butler has been called the “best living American writer”]]> 241 Robert Olen Butler 0802119875 Nancy 0 to-read 3.35 2011 A Small Hotel
author: Robert Olen Butler
name: Nancy
average rating: 3.35
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/02/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[From Where You Dream: The Process of Writing Fiction]]> 222115 From Where You Dream, Butler reimagines the process of writing as emotional rather than intellectual, and tells writers how to achieve the dreamspace necessary for composing honest, inspired fiction. Proposing that fiction is the exploration of the human condition with yearning as its compass, Butler reinterprets the traditional tools of the craft using the dynamics of desire. Offering a direct view into the mind and craft of a literary master, From Where You Dream is an invaluable tool for the novice and experienced writer alike.
]]> 288 Robert Olen Butler 0802142575 Nancy 0 to-read 3.94 2005 From Where You Dream: The Process of Writing Fiction
author: Robert Olen Butler
name: Nancy
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2005
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/02/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Late City 57500767 Late City covers much of the early twentieth century, unfurling as a conversation between the dying man and a surprising God. As the two review Sam's life, from his childhood in the American South and his time in the French trenches during World War I to his fledgling newspaper career in Chicago in the Roaring Twenties and the decades that follow, snippets of history are brought sharply into focus. Sam grows up in Louisiana, with a harsh father, who he comes to resent both for his physical abuse and for what Sam eventually perceives as his flawed morality. Eager to escape and prove himself, Sam enlists in the army as a sniper while still underage. The hardness his father instilled in him helps him make it out of World War I alive, but, as he recounts these tales on his deathbed, we come to realize that it also prevents him from contending with the emotional wounds of war. Back in the U.S., Sam moves to Chicago to begin a career as a newspaperman that will bring him close to all the major historical turns of the twentieth century. There he meets his wife and has a son, whose fate counters Sam's at almost every turn.

As he contemplates his relationships-with his parents, his brothers in arms, his wife, his editor, and most importantly, his son-Sam is amazed at what he still has left to learn about himself after all these years in this heart-rending novel from the Pulitzer Prize winner.]]> 304 Robert Olen Butler 080215882X Nancy 4 3.94 2021 Late City
author: Robert Olen Butler
name: Nancy
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2022/02/19
date added: 2022/02/19
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain]]> 261601 Robert Olen Butler's lyrical and poignant collection of stories about the aftermath of the Vietnam War and its impact on the Vietnamese was acclaimed by critics across the nation and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1993.

Now Grove Press is proud to reissue this contemporary classic by one of America's most important living writers, in a new edition of 'A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain' that includes two subsequently published stories -- "Salem" and "Missing" -- that brilliantly complete the collection's narrative journey, returning to the jungles of Vietnam.]]> 269 Robert Olen Butler 0802137989 Nancy 5
This 1993 winner is comprised of 15 stories, told from the perspective of Vietnamese immigrants from the Mekong Delta who now live in the Louisiana bayou.

My favorite story was a ghost story, in which a South Vietnamese soldier is spared from a Vietcong ambush by the supernatural intervention of beautiful woman's ghost. But when he attempts to find the ghost, to thank her, she eats him. Believe me, it was riveting and I was on the edge of my seat as I read it.

Another story began, "I was once able to bring fire from heaven. My wife knew that and her would be lovers soon learned that, though sometimes the lesson was a hard one for them." This man, an informant to the American Air Force, would give the locations of enemy combatants. He would slip in the coordinates of his wife's lovers -- all of whom would be mysteriously killed in American airstrikes.

This anthology is one of the rare, beautiful finds on my Pulitzer journey, something I never would've picked up but am so glad I did.

Butler made these Vietnamese immigrants come alive in a way I hadn't experienced. Highly recommend, beautiful, haunting, poignant writing.]]> 3.95 1992 A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain
author: Robert Olen Butler
name: Nancy
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1992
rating: 5
read at: 2022/01/28
date added: 2022/01/28
shelves:
review:
I'm in the process of reading every Pulitzer-prize winning novel since I was born.

This 1993 winner is comprised of 15 stories, told from the perspective of Vietnamese immigrants from the Mekong Delta who now live in the Louisiana bayou.

My favorite story was a ghost story, in which a South Vietnamese soldier is spared from a Vietcong ambush by the supernatural intervention of beautiful woman's ghost. But when he attempts to find the ghost, to thank her, she eats him. Believe me, it was riveting and I was on the edge of my seat as I read it.

Another story began, "I was once able to bring fire from heaven. My wife knew that and her would be lovers soon learned that, though sometimes the lesson was a hard one for them." This man, an informant to the American Air Force, would give the locations of enemy combatants. He would slip in the coordinates of his wife's lovers -- all of whom would be mysteriously killed in American airstrikes.

This anthology is one of the rare, beautiful finds on my Pulitzer journey, something I never would've picked up but am so glad I did.

Butler made these Vietnamese immigrants come alive in a way I hadn't experienced. Highly recommend, beautiful, haunting, poignant writing.
]]> A Little Life 22822858
Over the decades, their relationships deepen and darken, tinged by addiction, success, and pride.ĚýYet their greatest challenge, each comes to realize, is Jude himself, by midlife a terrifyingly talented litigator yet an increasingly broken man, his mind and body scarred by an unspeakable childhood, and haunted by what he fears is a degree of trauma that he’ll not only be unable to overcome—but that will define his life forever.]]> 720 Hanya Yanagihara 0385539258 Nancy 5 favorites 4.28 2015 A Little Life
author: Hanya Yanagihara
name: Nancy
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2015
rating: 5
read at: 2022/01/28
date added: 2022/01/28
shelves: favorites
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Going Postal (Discworld, #33; Moist von Lipwig, #1)]]> 64222
It was a tough decision.

But he has to see that the mail gets through, come rain, hail, sleet, dogs, the Post Office Workers' Friendly and Benevolent Society, the evil chairman of the Grand Trunk Semaphore Company, and a midnight killer.

Getting a date with Adora Bell Dearheart would be nice, too.

Maybe it'll take a criminal to succeed where honest men have failed, or maybe it's a death sentence either way.

Or perhaps there's a shot at redemption in the mad world of the mail, waiting for a man who's prepared to push the envelope...]]> 394 Terry Pratchett 0060502932 Nancy 0 to-read 4.40 2004 Going Postal (Discworld, #33; Moist von Lipwig, #1)
author: Terry Pratchett
name: Nancy
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2004
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/01/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Less Is Lost (Arthur Less #2) 56817262 In theĚýfollow-up to the best-selling and Pulitzer Prize-winning Less, the awkward and lovable Arthur Less returns in an unforgettable road trip across America.

“Go get lost somewhere, it always does you good.�

For Arthur Less, life is going surprisingly well: he is a moderately accomplished novelist in a steady relationship with his partner, Freddy Pelu. But nothing lasts: the death of an old lover and a sudden financial crisis has Less running away from his problems yet again as he accepts a series of literary gigs that send him on a zigzagging adventure across the US.

Less roves across the “Mild Mild West,”ĚýthroughĚýthe South and to his mid-Atlantic birthplace, with an ever-changing posse of writerly characters and his trusty duo â€� a human-like black pug, Dolly, and a rusty camper van nicknamed Rosina. He grows a handlebar mustache, ditches his signature gray suit, and disguises himself in the bolero-and-cowboy-hatĚýcostume of a true “Unitedstatesianâ€�... with varying levels of success, as he continues to be mistaken for either a Dutchman, the wrong writer, or, worst of all, a “bad gay.â€�

We cannot, however, escape ourselves—even across deserts,Ěýbayous,Ěýand coastlines.ĚýFrom his estranged father and strained relationship with Freddy, to the reckoning he experiences in confronting his privilege, Arthur Less must eventually face his personal demons. With all of the irrepressible wit and musicality that made Less a bestselling, Pulitzer Prize-winning, must-read breakout book,ĚýLess IsĚýLostĚýis a profound and joyous novel about the enigma of life in America, the riddle of love, and the stories we tell along the way.]]> 304 Andrew Sean Greer 0316301396 Nancy 0 to-read 3.78 2022 Less Is Lost (Arthur Less #2)
author: Andrew Sean Greer
name: Nancy
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/01/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Naked 4138 Naked, Sedaris turns the mania for memoir on its proverbial ear, mining the exceedingly rich terrain of his life, his family, and his unique worldview—a sensibility at once take-no-prisoners sharp and deeply charitable. A tart-tongued mother does dead-on imitations of her young son's nervous tics, to the great amusement of his teachers; a stint of Kerouackian wandering is undertaken (of course!) with a quadriplegic companion; a family gathers for a wedding in the face of imminent death. Through it all is Sedaris's unmistakable voice, without doubt one of the freshest in American writing.]]> 304 David Sedaris Nancy 3 4.10 1997 Naked
author: David Sedaris
name: Nancy
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1997
rating: 3
read at: 2021/12/25
date added: 2021/12/25
shelves:
review:
I've always loved David Sedaris, but this didn't age as well as I'd hoped.
]]> Biathanatos 3150593 254 John Donne 2130516734 Nancy 3
In it Donne argues suicide is “not so naturally sin, that it may never be otherwise.� He does concede that most cases of suicide - despair, self-protection, suffering -- are sinful, but some suicide is justified... for example, he calls submission or acquiescence to martyrdom suicide.

He even claims Jesus Christ voluntarily died on the cross, which he claims was suicidal.

I read this because of its controversial topic, but fans of Donne's other work will find this a slog. It's almost like he wrote it in an intentionally obtuse way in order to dissuade the casual reader who might be tempted to misinterpret his work.

Regardless, fascinating that this exists.]]> 3.64 1608 Biathanatos
author: John Donne
name: Nancy
average rating: 3.64
book published: 1608
rating: 3
read at: 2021/11/30
date added: 2021/11/30
shelves:
review:
Biathanatos is a long and very very difficult.

In it Donne argues suicide is “not so naturally sin, that it may never be otherwise.� He does concede that most cases of suicide - despair, self-protection, suffering -- are sinful, but some suicide is justified... for example, he calls submission or acquiescence to martyrdom suicide.

He even claims Jesus Christ voluntarily died on the cross, which he claims was suicidal.

I read this because of its controversial topic, but fans of Donne's other work will find this a slog. It's almost like he wrote it in an intentionally obtuse way in order to dissuade the casual reader who might be tempted to misinterpret his work.

Regardless, fascinating that this exists.
]]> Night Music 5121710 416 Jojo Moyes 0340895950 Nancy 4 3.57 2008 Night Music
author: Jojo Moyes
name: Nancy
average rating: 3.57
book published: 2008
rating: 4
read at: 2021/11/30
date added: 2021/11/30
shelves:
review:
Part HGTV, part romance... this novel is a fun read about a woman who inherits a house that needs major renovation.
]]> A Thousand Acres 41193 371 Jane Smiley 1400033837 Nancy 4 3.82 1991 A Thousand Acres
author: Jane Smiley
name: Nancy
average rating: 3.82
book published: 1991
rating: 4
read at: 2021/10/21
date added: 2021/10/21
shelves:
review:
This book -- about a woman named Virginia Cook Smith who lives on a thousand acre farm in Zebulon County, Iowa -- is a slow burn... but it's a well written and compelling story of love, abuse, sisterhood, and family.
]]> <![CDATA[Gentle and Lowly: The Heart of Christ for Sinners and Sufferers]]> 52891090 224 Dane C. Ortlund 1433566133 Nancy 5 4.50 2020 Gentle and Lowly: The Heart of Christ for Sinners and Sufferers
author: Dane C. Ortlund
name: Nancy
average rating: 4.50
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2021/10/16
date added: 2021/10/16
shelves:
review:
I've gone to church my whole life and never read about the heart of Christ. Stunning and life changing -- allows you to feel and accept God's lavish love.
]]> Breathing Lessons 31181
What begins as a day trip to a funeral becomes an adventure in the unexpected. As Maggie and Ira navigate the riotous twists and turns, they intersect with an assorted cast of eccentrics–and rediscover the magic of the road called life and the joy of having somebody next to you to share the ride . . . bumps and all.
--back cover]]> 368 Anne Tyler 0345485599 Nancy 3 I'm on a quest to read the Pulitzer Prize winning novel for every year since I was born.

This 1989 winner was pleasant enough, but it felt too low-stakes to maintain interest. Ira and Maggie Moran drive from Baltimore to Pennsylvania for a funeral. During the trip, their 28 years of marriage is laid bare.

Anne Tyler, at least in this book, reminds me a bit of John Updike, in that their characters are middle class privileged people inexplicably upset at their lot in life. However, there was this beautiful descriptions of domestic angst:

“All those things we used to promise ourselves we'd never, ever do when we grew up. Like we promised we wouldn't mince when we walk barefoot. We promised we wouldn't lie out on the beach tanning instead of swimming, or swimming with our chins high so we wouldn't wet our hairdos. We promised we wouldn't wash the dishes right after supper because that would take us away from our husbands; remember that? How long since you saved the dishes till morning so you could be with Max? How long since Max even noticed that you didn't?�


� Anne Tyler, Breathing Lessons]]> 3.68 1988 Breathing Lessons
author: Anne Tyler
name: Nancy
average rating: 3.68
book published: 1988
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2021/09/19
shelves:
review:

I'm on a quest to read the Pulitzer Prize winning novel for every year since I was born.

This 1989 winner was pleasant enough, but it felt too low-stakes to maintain interest. Ira and Maggie Moran drive from Baltimore to Pennsylvania for a funeral. During the trip, their 28 years of marriage is laid bare.

Anne Tyler, at least in this book, reminds me a bit of John Updike, in that their characters are middle class privileged people inexplicably upset at their lot in life. However, there was this beautiful descriptions of domestic angst:

“All those things we used to promise ourselves we'd never, ever do when we grew up. Like we promised we wouldn't mince when we walk barefoot. We promised we wouldn't lie out on the beach tanning instead of swimming, or swimming with our chins high so we wouldn't wet our hairdos. We promised we wouldn't wash the dishes right after supper because that would take us away from our husbands; remember that? How long since you saved the dishes till morning so you could be with Max? How long since Max even noticed that you didn't?�


� Anne Tyler, Breathing Lessons
]]> <![CDATA[The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love]]> 294081 The Pulitzer Prize-winning modern classic of two Cuban musician brothers during the mambo-filled nights of 1950s New York, from literary trailblazer Oscar Hijuelos

It's 1949, and two young Cuban musicians make their way from Havana to the grand stage of New York City. It is the era of mambo, and the Castillo brothers, workers by day, become stars of the dance halls by night, where their orchestra plays the lush, sensuous, pulsing music that earns them the title "Mambo Kings." This is their moment of youth, exuberance, love, and freedom―a golden time that decades later is remembered with nostalgia and deep affection.

Oscar Hijuelos's portrait of the Castillo brothers, their families, their fellow musicians and lovers, and their triumphs and tragedies recreates the sights and sounds of an era in music and an unsung moment in American life. Exuberantly celebrated from the moment it was published in 1989, The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1990, making Hijuelos the first Hispanic recipient of the award. It remains a perennial bestseller, with the story's themes of cultural fusion and identity still relevant today.]]> 407 Oscar Hijuelos 0140143912 Nancy 3
This book is deeply poignant, nostalgic, erotic, and heartbreaking.]]> 3.68 1989 The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love
author: Oscar Hijuelos
name: Nancy
average rating: 3.68
book published: 1989
rating: 3
read at: 2021/09/19
date added: 2021/09/19
shelves:
review:
I'm on a quest to read all of the Pulitzer Prize winning novels since I was born. This 1990 winner was a brief, delightfully written novel that reflects longing, desire, loss, and love of Cuban musicians who were briefly famous after appearing on the I Love Lucy Show. A beautiful depiction of the 1950s era New York music scene.

This book is deeply poignant, nostalgic, erotic, and heartbreaking.
]]> <![CDATA[The Cry of the Soul: How Our Emotions Reveal Our Deepest Questions about God]]> 350144
All emotion―whether positive or negative―can give us a glimpse of the true nature of God. We want to control our negative emotions and dark desires. God wants us to recognize them as the cry of our soul to be made right with Him. Beginning with the Psalms, Cry of the Soul explores what Scripture says about our darker emotions and points us to ways of honoring God as we faithfully embrace the full range of our emotional life.]]> 272 Dan Allender 1576831809 Nancy 5 4.27 1994 The Cry of the Soul: How Our Emotions Reveal Our Deepest Questions about God
author: Dan Allender
name: Nancy
average rating: 4.27
book published: 1994
rating: 5
read at: 2021/09/18
date added: 2021/09/18
shelves:
review:

]]> Nine Perfect Strangers 39280445 Could ten days at a health resort really change you forever?

These nine perfect strangers are about to find out...

Nine people gather at a remote health resort. Some are here to lose weight, some are here to get a reboot on life, some are here for reasons they can’t even admit to themselves. Amidst all of the luxury and pampering, the mindfulness and meditation, they know these ten days might involve some real work. But none of them could imagine just how challenging the next ten days are going to be.

Frances Welty, the formerly best-selling romantic novelist, arrives at Tranquillum House nursing a bad back, a broken heart, and an exquisitely painful paper cut. She’s immediately intrigued by her fellow guests. Most of them don’t look to be in need of a health resort at all. But the person that intrigues her most is the strange and charismatic owner/director of Tranquillum House. Could this person really have the answers Frances didn’t even know she was seeking? Should Frances put aside her doubts and immerse herself in everything Tranquillum House has to offer—or should she run while she still can?

It’s not long before every guest at Tranquillum House is asking exactly the same question.

Combining all of the hallmarks that have made Liane Moriarty's writing a go-to for anyone looking for wickedly smart, page-turning fiction that will make you laugh and gasp, Nine Perfect Strangers once again shows why she is a master of her craft.]]> 453 Liane Moriarty 1250069823 Nancy 3 3.53 2018 Nine Perfect Strangers
author: Liane Moriarty
name: Nancy
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2018
rating: 3
read at: 2021/09/18
date added: 2021/09/18
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Out of the Silent Planet (The Space Trilogy, #1)]]> 25350 160 C.S. Lewis 0007157150 Nancy 5 3.93 1938 Out of the Silent Planet (The Space Trilogy, #1)
author: C.S. Lewis
name: Nancy
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1938
rating: 5
read at: 2021/08/31
date added: 2021/08/31
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church]]> 2319645 332 N.T. Wright 0061551821 Nancy 5 4.30 2007 Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church
author: N.T. Wright
name: Nancy
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2007
rating: 5
read at: 2021/08/31
date added: 2021/08/31
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Leviathan Wakes (The Expanse, #1)]]> 8855321
Jim Holden is XO of an ice miner making runs from the rings of Saturn to the mining stations of the Belt. When he and his crew stumble upon a derelict ship, the Scopuli, they find themselves in possession of a secret they never wanted. A secret that someone is willing to kill for—and kill on a scale unfathomable to Jim and his crew. War is brewing in the system unless he can find out who left the ship and why.

Detective Miller is looking for a girl. One girl in a system of billions, but her parents have money and money talks. When the trail leads him to the Scopuli and rebel sympathizer Holden, he realizes that this girl may be the key to everything.

Holden and Miller must thread the needle between the Earth government, the Outer Planet revolutionaries, and secretive corporations—and the odds are against them. But out in the Belt, the rules are different, and one small ship can change the fate of the universe.]]> 592 James S.A. Corey 1841499889 Nancy 5 4.30 2011 Leviathan Wakes (The Expanse, #1)
author: James S.A. Corey
name: Nancy
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2011
rating: 5
read at: 2021/08/31
date added: 2021/08/31
shelves:
review:

]]> The Long Game: A Memoir 27209388 Ěý
In October 1984, a hard-charging Kentucky politician waited excitedly for President Ronald Reagan to arrive at a presidential rally in Louisville. In the midst of a tough Senate campaign against an incumbent Democrat, the young Republican hoped Reagan’s endorsement would give a much-needed boost to his insurgent campaign. He even had a camera crew ready to capture the president’s words for a TV commercial he planned to air during the campaign’s final stretch. Alas, when Reagan finally stepped to the microphone, he smiled for the crowd and “I’m happy to be here with my good friend, Mitch O’Donnell.”�
Ěý
That was hardly Mitch McConnell’s first setback, and far from his last. He swallowed hard, put his head down, and kept going. Four weeks later, in the biggest upset of the year, his dream of being a US senator came true—by a margin of about one vote per precinct. By persevering, he’d be the only Republican in the country to beat an incumbent Democratic US senator.Ěý
Ěý
McConnell learned patience and fortitude during his post–World War II youth in Alabama. His mother helped him beat polio by leading him through long, aching exer­cises every day for two years. His father taught him the importance of standing up to bullies, even if it meant tak­ing the occasional punch. It turned out to be the perfect childhood for a future Senate majority leader. “In the line of work I would choose, compromise is key, but I’d come to find that certain times required me to invoke the fight­ing spirit both of my parents instilled in me.”�

For more than three decades, McConnell has worked steadily to advance conservative values, including limited government, indi­vidual liberty, fiscal prudence, and a strong national defense. But he has always cared much more about moving the ball forward than about who gets the credit.

Now McConnell reveals what he really thinks about the rivalry between the Senate and the House; the players and the stakes involved when a group of political oppor­tunists tried to hijack the Tea Party movement; and key figures such as Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Harry Reid. He explains the real causes of the chronic gridlock that has so many vot­ers enraged, his ongoing efforts to restore the US Senate’s indispensable dual role as a brake on excess and a tool for national consensus, and what ordinary citizens have a right to expect from Washington.Ěý]]> 288 Mitch McConnell 0399564101 Nancy 0 3.64 2016 The Long Game: A Memoir
author: Mitch McConnell
name: Nancy
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at: 2021/08/23
date added: 2021/08/23
shelves:
review:

]]> Beloved (Beloved Trilogy, #1) 6149 Staring unflinchingly into the abyss of slavery, this spellbinding novel transforms history into a story as powerful as Exodus and as intimate as a lullaby.

Sethe, its protagonist, was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. She has too many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. And Sethe's new home is haunted by the ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved. Filled with bitter poetry and suspense as taut as a rope, Beloved is a towering achievement by Nobel Prize laureate Toni Morrison.]]> 325 Toni Morrison Nancy 0 3.96 1987 Beloved (Beloved Trilogy, #1)
author: Toni Morrison
name: Nancy
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1987
rating: 0
read at: 2021/03/15
date added: 2021/03/15
shelves:
review:

]]> A Summons to Memphis 60737 A Summons to Memphis introduces the Carver family, natives of Nashville, residents, with the exception of Phillip, of Memphis, Tennessee. During the twilight of a Sunday afternoon in March, New York book editor Phillip Carver receives an urgent phone call from each of his older, unmarried sisters. They plead with Phillip to help avert their widower father's impending remarriage to a younger woman. Hesitant to get embroiled in a family drama, he reluctantly agrees to go back south, only to discover the true motivation behind his sisters' concern. While there, Phillip is forced to confront his domineering siblings, a controlling patriarch, and flood of memories from his troubled past. Peter Taylor is one of the masters of Southern literature, whose work stands in the company of Eudora Welty, James Agee, and Walker Percy. In A Summons to Memphis, he has composed a richly evocative story of revenge, resolution, and redemption and given us a classic work of American literature.]]> 209 Peter Taylor 0375701176 Nancy 2
It was not.

The book has incredibly boring plot lines -- a business relationship that went bad for various mind numbing reasons, which was then strained to the point of incredulity. Then, it was restored without any conversation at all. A father who ruins the romantic lives and marriages of his kids, for reasons that are never truly apparent, and just a million details surrounding these dull topics.

]]> 3.64 1986 A Summons to Memphis
author: Peter Taylor
name: Nancy
average rating: 3.64
book published: 1986
rating: 2
read at: 2021/03/03
date added: 2021/03/03
shelves:
review:
I am on a quest to read all of the Pulitzer Prize winning novels since I was born. This 1987 winner fell flat. At first, I was so excited because the novel takes place exactly where I am -- Franklin, Tennessee -- and takes the reader to Memphis, Chattanooga, and the Cumberland Plateau. So the book is filled with place identifiers that I anticipated might make it a satisfying read.

It was not.

The book has incredibly boring plot lines -- a business relationship that went bad for various mind numbing reasons, which was then strained to the point of incredulity. Then, it was restored without any conversation at all. A father who ruins the romantic lives and marriages of his kids, for reasons that are never truly apparent, and just a million details surrounding these dull topics.


]]> <![CDATA[Mockingjay (The Hunger Games, #3)]]> 8684868 An Alternate Cover Edition can be found here: /book/show/5...

The final book in the ground-breaking HUNGER GAMES trilogy. Against all odds, Katniss Everdeen has survived the Hunger Games twice. But now that she's made it out of the bloody arena alive, she's still not safe. The Capitol is angry. The Capitol wants revenge. Who do they think should pay for the unrest? Katniss. And what's worse, President Snow has made it clear that no one else is safe either. Not Katniss's family, not her friends, not the people of District 12.]]> 339 Suzanne Collins Nancy 5 4.31 2010 Mockingjay (The Hunger Games, #3)
author: Suzanne Collins
name: Nancy
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2010
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2021/01/29
shelves:
review:

]]> Foreign Affairs 202897
Virginia Miner, a fifty-something, unmarried tenured professor, is in London to work on her new book about children’s folk rhymes. Despite carrying a U.S. passport, Vinnie feels essentially English and rather looks down on her fellow Americans. But in spite of that, she is drawn into a mortifying and oddly satisfying affair with an Oklahoman tourist who dresses more Bronco Billy than Beau Brummel.

Also in London is Vinnie’s colleague Fred Turner, a handsome, flat broke, newly separated, and thoroughly miserable young man trying to focus on his own research. Instead, he is distracted by a beautiful and unpredictable English actress and the world she belongs to.

Both American, both abroad, and both achingly lonely, Vinnie and Fred play out their confused alienation and dizzying romantic liaisons in Alison Lurie’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. Smartly written, poignant, and witty, Foreign Affairs remains an enduring comic masterpiece.]]> 292 Alison Lurie 0812976312 Nancy 4
1985's winner was "Foreign Affairs" by Alison Lurie, who -- I just learned -- died last month. I enjoyed this well-written novel, because it focused on a woman over fifty and treated her with dignity, respect, and compassion.

For example, the main character reflects:

''In the world of classic British fiction almost the entire population is under fifty, or even under forty - as was true of the real world when the novel was invented.'' Even today, in most novels ''it is taken for granted that people over fifty are as set in their ways as elderly apple trees, and as permanently shaped and scarred by the years they have weathered. The literary convention is that nothing major can happen to them except through subtraction.'' However, she still feels vibrant and alive and refuses to ''become a minor character in her own life? Why shouldn't she imagine herself as an explorer standing on the edge of some landscape as yet unmapped by literature: interested, even excited - ready to be surprised?''

Perhaps female protagonists in their fifties was a fresh concept in the mid-1980s, but as a modern reader it didn't seem as -- pardon the pun -- novel. Still, the story telling held up (though some of the twists seemed obvious as I turned the pages). Also, it was quaint to hear a slight critique of Ronald Reagan's unPresidential behavior, because he had appeared in a Hollywood movie. Ha! I would've loved to have heard what Lurie thought about more recent political developments.

Overall, a clever read and a nicely-drawn main character!]]> 3.71 1984 Foreign Affairs
author: Alison Lurie
name: Nancy
average rating: 3.71
book published: 1984
rating: 4
read at: 2021/01/23
date added: 2021/01/23
shelves:
review:
I'm on a quest to read all of the Pulitzer-prize winning novels since my birth.

1985's winner was "Foreign Affairs" by Alison Lurie, who -- I just learned -- died last month. I enjoyed this well-written novel, because it focused on a woman over fifty and treated her with dignity, respect, and compassion.

For example, the main character reflects:

''In the world of classic British fiction almost the entire population is under fifty, or even under forty - as was true of the real world when the novel was invented.'' Even today, in most novels ''it is taken for granted that people over fifty are as set in their ways as elderly apple trees, and as permanently shaped and scarred by the years they have weathered. The literary convention is that nothing major can happen to them except through subtraction.'' However, she still feels vibrant and alive and refuses to ''become a minor character in her own life? Why shouldn't she imagine herself as an explorer standing on the edge of some landscape as yet unmapped by literature: interested, even excited - ready to be surprised?''

Perhaps female protagonists in their fifties was a fresh concept in the mid-1980s, but as a modern reader it didn't seem as -- pardon the pun -- novel. Still, the story telling held up (though some of the twists seemed obvious as I turned the pages). Also, it was quaint to hear a slight critique of Ronald Reagan's unPresidential behavior, because he had appeared in a Hollywood movie. Ha! I would've loved to have heard what Lurie thought about more recent political developments.

Overall, a clever read and a nicely-drawn main character!
]]> <![CDATA[A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life]]> 53487237 A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, he shares a version of that class with us, offering some of what he and his students have discovered together over the years. Paired with iconic short stories by Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Gogol, the seven essays in this book are intended for anyone interested in how fiction works and why it’s more relevant than ever in these turbulent times.

In his introduction, Saunders writes, “We’re going to enter seven fastidiously constructed scale models of the world, made for a specific purpose that our time maybe doesn’t fully endorse but that these writers accepted implicitly as the aim of art—namely, to ask the big questions, questions like, How are we supposed to be living down here? What were we put here to accomplish? What should we value? What is truth, anyway, and how might we recognize it?� He approaches the stories technically yet accessibly, and through them explains how narrative functions; why we stay immersed in a story and why we resist it; and the bedrock virtues a writer must foster. The process of writing, Saunders reminds us, is a technical craft, but also a way of training oneself to see the world with new openness and curiosity.

A Swim in a Pond in the Rain is a deep exploration not just of how great writing works but of how the mind itself works while reading, and of how the reading and writing of stories make genuine connection possible.]]> 403 George Saunders 1984856049 Nancy 5
However, as I was reading this book by Syracuse professor George Saunders, analyzing various Russian short stories and explaining what worked in each and what didn't, I realized the arrogance of the very concept of "self teaching."

"A Swim in a Pond in the Rain" is basically a course Saunders had been teaching for years, and -- for the price of a book -- I got to "sit in on it." Saunders's reflections caused me to change the setting of a story I'm writing from Manhattan to a rural Tennessee diner. And once I did that, my story suddenly seemed to make more sense.

What a huge opportunity for those without access to formal college classes to have books like this -- full of heart, advice, and hard-earned wisdom. I realized that I hadn't been engaged in a life-long process of self-teaching, but rather I'd taken advantaged of other people's generosity. They laboriously dedicated their own thought processes on writing and life to the page, so I could learn from it more easily, at my own pace, while taking care of babies and working odd jobs.

Anyway.

I bought the Kindle version, because I wanted to get started right away, and then the audio version, because I was spending time on the road. So glad for the double purchase, because the audible version has the most wonderful narrators for the short stories, including Phylicia Rashad, Nick Offerman , Glenn Close, Keith David, Rainn Wilson, BD Wong , and Renée Elise Goldsberry. I actually preferred the audio version, but was thankful to have both for reference. I'll probably end up buying a hard copy as well for the shelf.

Highly recommended, if you are a lover of words, writing, and story-telling.

Hat tip to Karen Swallow Prior for the recommendation.]]> 4.55 2021 A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life
author: George Saunders
name: Nancy
average rating: 4.55
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2021/01/23
date added: 2021/01/23
shelves:
review:
I've always described myself as an autodidact, since I never graduated from college and learned how to write outside the ivy-covered walls.

However, as I was reading this book by Syracuse professor George Saunders, analyzing various Russian short stories and explaining what worked in each and what didn't, I realized the arrogance of the very concept of "self teaching."

"A Swim in a Pond in the Rain" is basically a course Saunders had been teaching for years, and -- for the price of a book -- I got to "sit in on it." Saunders's reflections caused me to change the setting of a story I'm writing from Manhattan to a rural Tennessee diner. And once I did that, my story suddenly seemed to make more sense.

What a huge opportunity for those without access to formal college classes to have books like this -- full of heart, advice, and hard-earned wisdom. I realized that I hadn't been engaged in a life-long process of self-teaching, but rather I'd taken advantaged of other people's generosity. They laboriously dedicated their own thought processes on writing and life to the page, so I could learn from it more easily, at my own pace, while taking care of babies and working odd jobs.

Anyway.

I bought the Kindle version, because I wanted to get started right away, and then the audio version, because I was spending time on the road. So glad for the double purchase, because the audible version has the most wonderful narrators for the short stories, including Phylicia Rashad, Nick Offerman , Glenn Close, Keith David, Rainn Wilson, BD Wong , and Renée Elise Goldsberry. I actually preferred the audio version, but was thankful to have both for reference. I'll probably end up buying a hard copy as well for the shelf.

Highly recommended, if you are a lover of words, writing, and story-telling.

Hat tip to Karen Swallow Prior for the recommendation.
]]>