Full Catastrophe LivingJon Kabat-Zinn [Note to my readers: this post is a bit more personal than most of my book reviews.] Nearly twenty years ago I was diagnosed with a chronic pain condition; almost ten years ago I sought treatment. For the most part I’ve dealt with it by alternately ignoring it, plowing through, or spitting in …
Age of MiraclesKaren Thompson Walker My bookstore friend had a book for me–“imaginative premise”, she said, “I dreamt about it all night.” Then the suggestion that I just might want to consider it as a read-aloud for my classes. And she was right. Even the New Yorker raved about this debut novel in their August 6 issue, saying …
Stuffed Patricia Volk Family is what we first know of the world. Family is the world, your very own living microcosm of humanity, with its heroes and victims and martyrs and failures, beauties and gamblers, hawks and lovers, cowards and fakes, dreamers and steamrollers, and the people who quietly get the job done. Every behavior in the world …
Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children Ransom Riggs Peculiar traits often skip a generation, or ten. Peculiar children are not always, or even usually, born to peculiar parents, and peculiar parents do do always, or even usually, bear peculiar children. Can you imagine, in a world so afraid of otherness, why this would be a danger to …
Orange is the new black (non-fiction)Piper Kerman Piper Kerman’s life was comfortably suburban and solidly upper middle-class–she was a Smith graduate with all the door-openings and privilege that a Seven Sisters degree can convey. But Kerman also yearned for the adrenalin rush that came with living on the edge. And less than two years after graduation, the twenty-three-year-old found herself running …
The Distant Hours Kate Morton “… stories are everywhere. That’s all writing is, apparently, capturing sights and thoughts on paper. Spinning, like a spider does, but using words to make the pattern.” As soon as Edie Burchill confessed she kept a copy of Jane Eyre in her bag should she “need to queue unexpectedly” I …
A Red Herring Without Mustard Alan Bradley I have a real problem with mysteries. I don’t like them. Add to that the fact that I’m an Anglophile and my problem gets curiouser and curiouser–for who does mysteries better than the British? Miss Marple? No thank you. Poirot? I’ll pass. Sherlock Holmes? Not so much. And I …
The Watery Part of the WorldMichael Parker “Whaley said to her sister, ‘Maggie, I’m sorry all these years I never acted like I love you but I do,’ and her sister didn’t say anything just made that hush sound with the s’s streaming out of her mouth like water lapping the beach at night … …
The IlluminationKevin Brockmeier There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in. ~ Leonard Cohen Kevin Brockmeier creates a very believable world where every hurt–from hangnail to heart attack–shines with some sort of light, either shimmering, pulsing, flickering, blinding. At the very outset of the Illumination, as it was almost immediately called, …
Every Last One Anna Quindlen Mary Beth and Greg Latham have a picture perfect family:17-year-old Ruby, a talented writer; and twins Alex, a budding athlete, and Max, the drummer. Mary runs a successful landscaping business and Greg is a respected local doctor. Add to that their sprawling home in a small town, surround them with …
This is my symphony 