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Grief is a Theif Unless It’s Arrested!

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I really enjoyed This Book Made Me Think Of You by Libby Page, and I had actually bought it the day before it was recommended as a July reading choice for my Goodreads Kindle Book Club Forum group, since it sounded interesting, and now it is currently enshrined on Goodreads monthly list of Favorite Books of the Year (2026), occupying the March slot. I did feel it might have benefited from some editing (though some might disagree), as the last 20% of the book began to feel a bit repetitive, although still immersive. The book is about a young widow, Tilly, learning her husband Joe had set up a yearlong book of the month gift from a neighborhood bookseller to cheer her in the months after his death. Once it became clear to him his cancer diagnosis would not lead to recovery, he was concerned about doing something supportive to help his beloved during the initial year after his passing. Tilly had always loved reading and worked in the book industry coaching celebrities with memoirs her fir...
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A Well Written Book of Compelling Detail

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Through the Lens of a Monster by William A. Noguera grabs you within the first six minutes of reading, and doesn’t let you go until the last page is turned. It is a powerful, unblinking study of serial killer Joseph Naso, gleaned over countless conversations with him by the author who transcribed these interactions shortly following their occurrences when he returned to his cell in the same facility where they were housed. Noguera states, “Over the years, whenever Joseph Naso revisited a story, the core never shifted. That consistency convinced me I wasn’t hearing invention, but memory.” Decades of incarceration had instilled Noguera with deep compassion for the hell families go through when a member is suddenly missing, and potentially dead, in this case all women, many of a tender age. The author’s mission becomes determining if he can ultimately get answers for families of Nosa’s victims, a very dangerous proposition in a prison setting where any hint of snitching can lead to an ear...
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Tragicomedy Rich in Imagination, Action, Time Travel, Emotion, Drama, and Lyrical Prose

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Don’t start out reading This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone if you’re sleep deprived, as I did.  Nothing written in the book’s early pages seemed comprehensible to my brain, addled by lack of sleep, regarding what  I was about to embark upon. I actually felt angry, and was thinking, “What the heck am I reading?!” I got back to reading after a few hours sleep, and it was a game changer for me.   The Amazon book blurb tells us the book is “ Cowritten by two beloved and award-winning sci-fi writers”  There are two main characters, Red and Blue; Max wrote all of Red, and Amal wrote all of Blue. Editors at  Vector, the critical journal of the   British Science Fiction Association, in their 3/11/20 author interview “This Is How You Produce The Time War Part 1: Powder Scofield interviews Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone”  describe the book: “It’s an intense, lyrical, tragicomic novella about two elite warriors, Red and B...
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A Story You’ll Never Forget

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Barracoon by Zora Neale Hurston is like a vivid crazy quilt of a book. It starts out with a Foreword by Alice Walker, who states, “Those who love us never leave us alone with our grief. At the moment they show us our wound, they reveal they have the medicine. Barracoon: The Story of the Last ‘Black Cargo’ is a perfect example of this.” The book includes more than simply the description of her interviews with former slave eighty-six-year-old Kossola aka Cudjo Lewis, which lasts about 94 pages of the 210 page book. The balance of this narrative is followed by a 20 page Afterward which discusses many aspects related to the process of writing Barracoon, a controversy, and issues connected with the book. This is followed by a brief Acknowledgements. Also included is a list of Founders and Original Residents of Africatown where Kossola lived. Next is a very interesting Glossary that reads like a story itself, and the Bibliography of supporting and related books is a must read for anyone inte...
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What to do when the line between reality and semi-sleep is blurred

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Awake Between Worlds: Understanding Hypnagogia and the Threshold Between Sleep and Wakefulness by Katerina Silin is a brief, concise, clear, and easy to understand book about  the psychological state of hypnagogia which she has personally experienced. She also mentions well known creative minds, including writer Charles Dickens who have literally imagined solutions or material for their work while in a state of hypnagogia, and acknowledges, “ hypnagogia can become an inexhaustible creative resource.” Silin describes t he hypnagogic state as, “…a very brief and specific moment that scientists describe as the boundary between wakefulness and sleep… Many people spoke about the sensation of falling at the moment of falling asleep—often accompanied by sudden muscle jerks. This, too, is part of hypnagogia … I see shadows—vivid images of strangers and animals—at the very moment I should be falling asleep…My brain, trained for logic, could not cope with the fact that these visions felt abs...
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One of the Best World War II Books I’ve Read

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Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand (author of Seabiscuit) is one of the best World War II (WWII) books I’ve read. It covers the amazing experiences of Louis Zamperini and those he served with during WWII, his inauspicious sometimes criminal early life in Torrence, California and, thanks to the persistence of his brother Peter, his introduction to running, which ultimately culminates with his participation in the Olympics, after setting many records during his high school years.  After high school graduation Zamperini enlists, is sent to a post Pearl Harbor attack world on the island of  Oahu where constant vigilance characterizes the need to stay on top of Japanese military moves, and watching out for their fighter planes known as Zeros in order to protect that  beleaguered series of islands . The speed with which Japan invades countries gives reason for concern, as the author notes during this general time period Japan also “… attacked Thailand, Shanghai, Malaya, the Philippi...
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Queen Esther 21st Century Edition

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About one third of the way into Queen Esther by John Irving, I was thinking to myself the characters were unique in a New England gothic kind of way. They didn’t represent the traditional great American family, as the Winslows eschewed religion,  most conventions of 20th century life  and loved reading and education , but on their behalf, their own blended family was strong, supportive, and bonded. As I entered the second third of the book, I began to think “Words, so very many words!” I wondered what the word count was for this book. The problem wasn’t the number of words per se, but the fact they didn’t serve as vehicles moving a compelling story forward in a way that kept me eager to turn each page. By the final third of the book I was praying for the end to come, as I am afflicted with a kind of OCD that compels me to read to the end of every book I start, and most often sticking to it is worth it in the long run.  One of Irving’s earlier books, The Cider House Rules,...
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