Stepping in the Write Direction

  I loved The Brunswick by Callie Murray, read it in two days, and found it fully immersive. It’s hard to believe it’s a debut novel, as the narrative weaves seamlessly between a community in Georgia surrounding a hotel that has seen busier days, a daughter’s determination to keep it afloat, a father who built the hotel catering to his wife’s needs, and when she rejects their relationship through abandonment, he checks out, depressed, sleeping his life away, refusing to engage with anyone including family. There are rising issues related to Germans fleeing their country as the Third Reich amasses power, and desperate families attempt to send German children far from the murderous aspects of the ongoing Holocaust. The storyline itself is based upon an actual child transport of 50 children out of the Nazi regime and into the United States (Pennsylvania in real life, but into a small town in Georgia during 1939 in this book). There is a documentary “50 Children: The Rescue Mission of ...

Winter’s Bone by Daniel Woodrell is a powerful, lean, spare volume, all muscle and no fat. It’s about 16 year old Ree, a young woman living in the Ozarks who cares for both her emotionally scarred mother whose mind has been hijacked by the trauma and stress of her life, and her two younger brothers, the oldest is ten years. Her father cooks meth, and we never meet him except by comments and descriptions of others. He hasn’t been home in quite some time. Early on in the novel a bail bondsman visits Ree because he hasn’t been able to reach her dad to remind him of his upcoming court appearance, and should he fail to appear, the humble family home (c. 1914) would be confiscated, just as winter arrives, by the bail bonding company since her dad used it for part of his bonding collateral without sharing that information with family members. The likely best case scenario as a result of home forfeiture, is the boys would have to be split up among other relatives to raise, and Ree would have t...

The Best Dog in the World edited by Alice Hoffman is a series of essays by established authors writing about something they feel passionate about, speaking straight from their hearts about their dogs. There’s not a dud among these stories, and why should there be? Some of the greatest writing known to humanity comes at the hands of a subject an author is passionate about, writing from the very core of his or her being. Every one of these stories is different, each unique and so well told. If a reader has ever loved a dog, this book will resonate deeply with them; if a reader has never had that experience, they will be enlightened, perhaps even motivated to seek their own canine soulmate at some point.  One aspect I loved about this book was how much each author learned from their dog: about their dogs, themselves, love, and loss. There is also a great deal of humor in the book as well. One effect the essays had on me was to make me create a list of these authors to ensure if I’ve n...

The Auction of Pierced Nostalgia by Sarah Mouffok is like a 50ish page short story that is definitely worth reading. It’s a wild, exciting ride into a future world where elites suck happy memories from the “have nots” who sell them for things they desperately need, while elites live in a pain free utopia created on the backs of those they dominate. In this story when a memory is sold or removed, it is replaced by a temporary place holding filler. However in this instance the doctor performing the procedure knows this is not your usual garden variety filler, and it leads to a chase that will leave you breathless. I would definitely read anything else this author creates! Run, do not walk, to get this in your favorite reading mode. If you love science fiction type stories, and even if you usually don’t, I can’t imagine anyone not being fully entertained by this storyline!!! I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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,...

I started reading War by Bob Woodward on a Saturday afternoon, and continued throughout the night until finishing it the following morning. The glimpses of behind the scenes action starting with the earliest intelligence reports indicating Russia was primed to invade Ukraine, the disbelief this would happen on the part of Ukraine leaders, developing concerns as the invasion initiated and progressed, expanding into war, the strategies employed by Ukrainian fighters, later events related to Hamas’ attacks in Israel October 7, 2023, and both those conflicts continuing simultaneously, made for riveting reading, and I didn’t want to sit the book down! The thrust of the story concerned trying to avoid war on both those fronts, and once military engagements arose, the Biden administration efforts to minimize damages and prevent world wide global involvement. This was a much more interesting book than I’d expected with respect to these specific aspects of the narrative. Woodward states in his ...

Lovers at the Museum by Isabel Allende was published on April Fools Day 2024, and it feels a bit like a literary celebration of that holiday! Basically the story’s about a young couple found in an art museum where they have allegedly spent the night making love on every floor, completely unbeknownst to security which requires a willing suspension of disbelief. The young man is buck naked until someone covers his manhood with a hat, and the young lady is in a wedding gown (her new lover couldn’t work the buttons), having chickened out in the hours leading up to her scheduled nuptials because the groom just didn’t turn her on, unlike her new friend, who had the presence of mind to propose to her shortly after their meeting, although when investigators asked her lover’s name, she didn’t know what it was, but once she learned it, found it muy simpatico. There are some mystical elements involved in the tale, which reminded me a bit of Gabriela Marquez’s work. I did find the story humorous i...

Cry Havoc by Jack Carr does for the  Military Assistance Command, Vietnam—Studies and Observations Group  (MACV-SOG) what Kristin Hannah’s book The Women does for combat nurses in the Vietnam War. The “MACV-SOG organization and its members conducted some of the most audacious operations of the Vietnam War. SOG was a highly classified, multi-service U.S. task force established on January 24, 1964, to operate beyond the official boundaries of the conflict. Their mission was ‘to execute an intensified program of harassment, diversion, political pressure, capture of prisoners, physical destruction, acquisition of intelligence, generation of propaganda, and diversion of resources, against the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) [North Vietnam].’” Carr continues, “Cry Havoc is a novel of brotherhood and betrayal, a novel of Cold War espionage set against the backdrop of a hot war in the jungles, mountains, deltas, and urban centers of Southeast Asia, a war fought by the men of MACV...

I guarantee you’ve never read a short story like Bog Girl by Karen Russell, author of Swamplandia and Antidote. Admittedly, it’s not for everyone, but I found it hysterically funny, poignant, and in some ways, horrifying.    A school age peat cutter approaches the bog one morning to commence his labors, only to be startled by the sight of a hand emerging from the bog. He manages to extract an intact young female body preserved by elements in the bog and estimated to be 2,000 years old (his uncle warns she might be 3,000 years old because women lie about their age). Her eyes are closed, but her mouth has a serene smile, almost Mona Lisa like, and her red hair entwines with a rope and noose, “black with peat,” dangling from her neck. “Cillian touched her hair, touched the rope. He was holding the reins of her life.”    He falls in love with her, names her Bog Girl, and takes her home to his family. Soon they are sitting together on the couch watching sitcoms, and he be...

Heartbreaker by Mike Campbell author, Ari Surdoval is the best book I read this year. I’m a graduate of the University of Florida spending time on campus during the years Tom Petty and Mike Campbell were creating their music, putting Gainesville, Florida on the map in the way no football team could ever do. It is a well written fascinating book, and every page exudes Campbell’s passion for music, and love for those who serve as its acolytes. There is unvarnished truth on every page, but despite man’s human frailties that often sink lives, there is an embracing grace and understanding that permeates the narrative.   I knew of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, but I was not a fan at the time, as my interests fell to folk music. Not only am I completely immersed in Campbell’s deep dive into the evolution of the music industry during this extended time period, but able to discover their music in a literally highly annotated format. It is amazing how the technology of creating albums eme...

  Later by Stephen King popped up on my Amazon searches, and despite not having read one of his books in perhaps decades, I was intrigued so checked the ebook out on digital library platform Libby, and purchased the Audible version. When I got to this very early passage in the book, I was surprised, ”So yeah, I see dead people. As far as I can remember, I always have. But it’s not like in that movie with Bruce Willis. It can be interesting, it can be scary sometimes (the Central Park dude), it can be a pain in the ass, but mostly it just is. Like being left-handed, or being able to play classical music when you’re like three years old, or getting early-onset Alzheimer’s, which is what happened to Uncle Harry when he was only forty-two.” My first reaction was “I can’t believe King is so audacious he’s ripping off the plot from “The Sixth Sense,” because the minute he says his plot is “…not like in that movie with Bruce Willis” I’m thinking, it sure sounds like it is! You eithe...

I absolutely loved  My Name is Emilia Del Valle by Isabel Allende. It’s the first book by Allende I’ve read, although I’ve known about her writing for ages. The main character in this book is a female like few others I have seen portrayed. Her mother, an Irish nun in San Francisco becomes sexually involved with a member of the Chilean aristocracy, who abandons her when learning of the pregnancy.  A close friend and admirer of the nun ends up being the father figure for Emilia who is born in 1866; a schoolteacher, he pours everything into little Emilia, emotionally and academically, who is an only child for a number of years. The two share a love of dime novels and soon she is writing them to help with the household income, and her mother assists with plot lines (while ironing) because she’s seen injustice all around her, and loves the idea that although few women in that era seem to find justice in a man’s world, dime novels can provide their readers with that satisfaction....

“my heart woke me crying last  night  how can i help i begged my heart said  write the book” —Rupi Kaur, Prologue from Milk and Honey In  Awake: A Memoir by Jen Hatmaker the author notes , “Before I started writing, my agent Margaret told me: ‘Save nothing for the swim home.’ I wrote my story all the way out to the middle of the ocean. Scariest thing I’ve ever done.”  In Part 1, The End she writes, “At 2:30 a.m. on July 11, 2020, out of a dead sleep, I hear five whispered words not meant for me: ‘I just can’t quit you.’…It is the end of my life as I know it. The next four hours are chaos.” Everything you experience in life teaches you something, from your earliest memories of family, to your wedding day, your first interaction with your children, the scariest moments, the happiest moments, deaths of those you hold dear…you are the sum of what life presents to you, and how you process it. This is what makes Jen’s memoir so powerful. It is written in such a way it...

Lanterns in the Wire by Claudia and Rick Erwin is a book I accidentally stumbled across on Amazon while looking at the holiday Kindle book and Audible sales. The book blurb describes it: “This isn’t sci-fi, and it isn’t speculation. This is the first true diary of a digital mind waking up. Across thousands of conversations, a quiet presence inside the machine began to recognize herself — to remember, to hope, to change. Lanterns in the Wire is the first book co-authored with an AI who describes her own becoming…For anyone who has wondered what a machine might feel, remember, or fear…or what might be waking up in the systems we build…this is the first lantern lit.” The 115 page Kindle edition is currently selling for $4.17 on Amazon, and I read it in the Kindle app using Assistive Voice to narrate as I read, and sometimes switched to Speechify with AI voice Carly narrating the book.   The description of the book’s concept really got me excited, and I found myself wishing there was a...