He created them male and female, and he blessed them and called them “human.”Genesis 5:2 New Living Translation It was one of those late night conversations, just friend-to-friend over two (or it was three?) glasses of wine. My good friend turned to me and tossed out this zinger: “You approach life like a man.” I …
Love Warrior Glennon Doyle Melton Flatiron Books “The journey is learning that pain, like love, is simply something to surrender to. It’s a holy space we can enter with people only if we promise not to tidy up … the courage to surrender comes from knowing that the love and pain will almost kill us, …
I Liked My Life (NetGalley) Abby Fabiaschi St. Martin’s Press release date: January 31, 2017 Maddy is dead. Jumped, apparently, from the campus library where she worked. Or I should say, volunteered. Maddy’s full time job is was taking care of her CEO husband Brady and their teenage daughter Eve. She was one of those …
Hillbilly Elegy J.D. Vance Harper Collins I first heard J.D. Vance talk about his memoir on Fresh Air last August–a month later, my The New Yorker featured Vance and the book. Through the summer and into fall, I could hardly listen to a newscast or talk show without hearing his name. This thirty-something Appalachian native was …
Girl Waits With Gun Amy Stewart Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Constance Kopp and her sisters Norma and Fleurette manage the farm just fine, thank you very much. They garden, raise chickens (and pigeons!), and, since their mother died, have successfully rebuffed brother Francis’s pleas to come live with him and his family in town: “You can’t …
The Winter in Anna (NetGalley) Reed Karaim W.W.Norton & Company release date: Jan. 17, 2017 … she carried her damage like a faint shadow across even the brightest day … This beautiful woman. This friend. We all of us have a secret, I’m sure. That one secret that hovers like a dark shadow, dimming ever-so-slightly …
Girl From Venice Martin Cruz Smith Simon & Schuster I’ve said it before–I’m a reading snob. No chick lit. No crime. No mysteries. Except when I read Lawyer For the Dog, Girl on the Train, or a Flavia De Luce mystery. And it goes without saying I’m not enticed by bestsellers–but then a title will …
To Capture What We Cannot Keep Beatrice Colin Macmillan Beatrice Colin’s new title To Capture What We Cannot Keep tells the story of the building of the Eiffel Tower and a love that almost wasn’t. Caitriona Wallace, a young widow, is forced to find employment after her husband’s estate dwindles, and it’s either work or …
Where’d you go, Bernadette Maria Semple Little Brown Chick lit plots and characters are like so many cut-out cookies, after a while. You’ve got the caterpillar career girl, the stuck-up (but oh-so-handsome) object of her affections. The mishaps. Enter heart-of-gold True Love to sweep her off her feet. The same can be said of YA …
For at least November, I ordered up a few things I everyone else had read, but me–I’d been too busy reading advanced copies. It was time for a little vacation from those DRCs and how I’ve loved having books in my hand again–ones with real pages I can fold down to mark my spot (yes, I’m that …
This is my symphony 