en-US Wed, 30 Apr 2025 11:04:48 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 34751837 From iconic actor and bestselling author Alan Alda, an indispensable guide to communicating better—based on his experience with acting, improv, science, and storytelling

The acclaimed actor shares fascinating and powerful lessons from the art and science of communication, and teaches readers to improve the way they relate to others using improv games, storytelling, and their own innate ability to read what’s probably going on in the minds of others. With his trademark humor and frankness, Alan Alda explains what makes the out-of-the-box techniques he developed after his years as the host of Scientific American Frontiers so effective. This book reveals what it means to be a true communicator, and how we can communicate better, in every aspect of our lives—with our friends, lovers, and families, with our doctors, in business settings, and beyond.]]> 240 Alan Alda Beth 4 4.08 2017
author: Alan Alda
name: Beth
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2017/11/16
date added: 2025/04/30
shelves:
review:

]]> 36076501 A riveting story of dislocation, survival, and the power of the imagination to save us

Clemantine Wamariya was six years old when her mother and father began to speak in whispers, when neighbors began to disappear, and when she heard the loud, ugly sounds her brother said were "thunder." It was 1994, and in 100 days more than 800,000 people would be murdered in Rwanda and millions more displaced. Clemantine and her fifteen-year-old sister, Claire, ran and spent the next six years wandering through seven African countries searching for safety--hiding under beds, foraging for food, surviving and fleeing refugee camps, finding unexpected kindness, witnessing unimaginable cruelty. They did not know whether their parents were alive.

At age twelve, Clemantine, along with Claire, was granted asylum in the United States--a chance to build a new life. Chicago was disorienting, filled with neon lights, antiseptic smells, endless concrete. Clemantine spoke five languages but almost no English, and had barely gone to school. Many people wanted to help--a family in the North Shore suburbs invited Clemantine to live with them as their daughter. Others saw her only as broken. They thought she needed, and wanted, to be saved. Meanwhile Claire, who had for so long protected and provided for Clemantine, found herself on a very different path, cleaning hotel rooms to support her three children.

Raw, urgent, yet disarmingly beautiful, The Girl Who Smiled Beads captures the true costs and aftershocks of war: what is forever lost, what can be repaired, the fragility and importance of memory, the faith that one can learn, again, to love oneself, even with deep scars.]]> 275 Clemantine Wamariya 0385687001 Beth 0 currently-reading 4.18 2018
author: Clemantine Wamariya
name: Beth
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/28
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> 35068719 The deeply personal story of why award-winning personal finance blogger Elizabeth Willard Thames abandoned a successful career in the city and embraced extreme frugality in order to create a more meaningful, purpose-driven life and retire to a homestead in the woods at age thirty-two with her husband and daughter.

In 2014, Elizabeth and Nate Thames were conventional 9-5 young urban professionals. But the couple had a dream to become modern-day homesteaders in rural Vermont. Determined to retire as early as possible in order to start living each day—as opposed to wishing time away working for the weekends—they enacted a plan to save an enormous amount of money: well over seventy percent of their joint take home pay. Dubbing themselves the Frugalwoods, Elizabeth began documenting their unconventional frugality and the resulting wholesale lifestyle transformation on their eponymous blog.

In less than three years, Elizabeth and Nate reached their goal. Today, they are financially independent and living out their dream on a sixty-six-acre homestead in the woods of rural Vermont with their young daughter. While frugality makes their lifestyle possible, it’s also what brings them peace and genuine happiness. They don’t stress out about impressing people with their material possessions, buying the latest gadgets, or keeping up with any Joneses. In the process, Elizabeth discovered the self-confidence and liberation that stems from disavowing our culture’s promise that we can buy our way to "the good life." Elizabeth unlocked the freedom of a life no longer beholden to the clarion call to consume ever-more products at ever-higher sums.

Meet the Frugalwoods is the intriguing story of how Elizabeth and Nate realized that the mainstream path wasn’t for them, crafted a lifestyle of sustainable frugality, and reached financial independence at age thirty-two. While not everyone wants to live in the woods, or quit their jobs, many of us want to have more control over our time and money and lead more meaningful, simplified lives. Following their advice, you too can live your best life.]]> 256 Elizabeth Willard Thames 0062668153 Beth 4 3.69 2018
author: Elizabeth Willard Thames
name: Beth
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/27
date added: 2025/04/28
shelves: audio-books, non-fiction, self-improvement
review:
Meet the Frugalwoods presents one family's working towards financial independence. The book contains lots of sound financial advice. Thames admits repeatedly that she and her husband were quite comfortable, but still, her suggestions and advice can be useful for most people. It's the age-old differentiation between needs and wants. Thames is a talented writer and the book is entertaining as well as informative. I would be interested in reading more about her family's homesteading experiences. I guess I'll look up her blog.
]]> 6504409
So begins the spellbinding story of Warren Harlan Pease, a young U.S. Army sniper freshly returned from the Iraq War to his native New Hampshire. What follows is a page-turning adventure that is also a powerful meditation on religion and war, love and loss.

The Last Day answers questions and asks many more. Armed with a sniper’s rifle and his deeply held faith, Specialist Pease travels across ideological borders and earns an appreciation for his enemy’s culture and for what connects us all as human beings. “War doesn’t test your faith in Jesus,â€� Warren comes to realize. “It tests your faith in yourself.â€� Upon returning home, he spends an entire day with Jesus visiting and contemplating his own life with fresh eyes, and a willing heart. He examines his relationship to those he loves, and grapples with the pain he has been carrying inside since the death of his mother when he was just a boy.

This extraordinary work of compassion and healing grace combines the themes of religion, war and poetry in a way that is wholly original, and unforgettable. It will resonate with skeptics and believers, be shared and discussed between friends and among families.]]> 304 James Landis 1586421654 Beth 4 3.51 2009
author: James Landis
name: Beth
average rating: 3.51
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/24
date added: 2025/04/24
shelves: audio-books, family, inspirational, relationships, war
review:
I don't know how to describe this book: a family tragedy, a love story turned triangle, a sniper in Iraq, fatherhod,so many concepts? issues? experiences? and done very well, in my opinion. The timeline bounces around constantly, so the reader needs to be well grounded. Narration is excellent. Profanity is done as s-, d- etc I found that interesting. I had a little problem with the very detailed war pieces, but I really liked the book.
]]> 218563103 Bestselling author ReShonda Tate presents a fascinating fictional portrait of Hattie McDaniel, one of Hollywood’s most prolific but woefully underappreciated stars—and the first Black person ever to win an Oscar for her role as Mammy in the critically acclaimed film classic Gone With the Wind .

It was supposed to be the highlight of her career, the pinnacle for which she’d worked all her life. And as Hattie McDaniel took the stage in 1940 to claim an honor that would make her the first African-American woman to win an Academy Award, she tearfully took her place in history. Between personal triumphs and tragedies, heartbreaking losses, and severe setbacks, this historic night of winning best supporting actress for her role as the sassy Mammy in the controversial movie Gone With the Wind was going to be life-changing.
Or so she thought.

Months after winning the award, not only did the Oscar curse set in where Hattie couldn’t find work, but she found herself thrust in the middle of two worlds—Black and White—and not being welcomed in either. Whites only saw her as Mammy and Blacks detested the demeaning portrayal.

As the NAACP waged an all-out war against Hattie and actors like her, the emotionally conflicted actor found herself struggling daily. Through it all, Hattie continued her fight to pave a path for other Negro actors, while focusing on war efforts, fighting housing discrimination, and navigating four failed marriages. Luckily, she had a core group of friends to help her out—from Clark Gable to Louise Beavers to Ruby Berkley Goodwin and Dorothy Dandridge.

The Queen of Sugar Hill brings to life the powerful story of one woman who was driven by many passions—ambition, love, sex, family, friendship, and equality. In re-creating Hattie’s story, ReShonda Tate delivers an unforgettable novel of resilience, dedication, and determination—about what it takes to achieve your dreams—even when everything—and everyone—is against you.]]> 16 ReShonda Tate 006329110X Beth 3 3.93 2024
author: ReShonda Tate
name: Beth
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/11
date added: 2025/04/23
shelves: audio-books, racial-relationships, historical-fiction
review:
The 3 star rating is biased. The book is well written and nicely narrated, but as much anger I felt for Mizz Hattie and the racial prejudice she faced from both Whites and Blacks, I just did not like her. She clearly did work for the benefit of black black performers in the way she felt best. As portrayed here she was selfish and narrow minded. I almost didn't finish because I didn't want to spend more time with her. I liked many of her friends and James, but I especially enjoyed the historical notes at the back as the author described how she came to research and write this novel. I intend to watch Gone With the Wind again, it's been years. I don't know if I have watched it since I went with my 9th Grade class. Butterfly McQueen made more of an impression on me than Hattie McDaniels, I would watch it with different eyes now not only because the world is different than it was in 1969....
]]> 18271235 We Are Called to Rise is a boomtown tale, in which the lives of people from different backgrounds and experiences collide in a stunning coincidence. When presented the opportunity to sink into despair, these characters rise. Through acts of remarkable charity and bravery, they rescue themselves. Emotionally powerful yet tender and intimate, We Are Called to Rise is a novel of redemption and unexpected love.]]> 309 Laura McBride 1476738963 Beth 5 3.96 2014
author: Laura McBride
name: Beth
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2014
rating: 5
read at: 2015/09/15
date added: 2025/04/14
shelves: audio-books, overdrive, relationships, glad-i-read-it
review:
second reading. same rating. I didn't realize I had read it before.
]]> 474233
Because non-Mormons are not allowed inside LDS temples, curiosity seekers have tried through a variety of means, especially upon completion of the Salt Lake City edifice in 1893, to ascertain what the interior looks like and what activities transpire therein. This inordinate interest prompted church leaders to commission Professor James E. Talmage in 1911, three months before being ordained an apostle, to compile a visual and textual representation for the general public. Despite an earlier unauthorized foray into the temple by a camera-toting intruder, Talmage’s assignment would represent the first time that good quality views of the interior would be framed and that the ordinances would be discussed in print with the church’s blessing.

±őČÔÌęThe House of the Lord, more was revealed than anyone had previously thought possible. Members had customarily refrained from speaking about any aspect of their experience there, even to fellow Saints. So through this bold gesture by Elder Talmage and the First Presidency, the cloak of mystery was removed and the temple revealed to the public for what it was—a sanctuary similar to a monastery—or perhaps an ashram or kiva, depending on one’s tradition—where adherents focus undivided attention on attaining spiritual insight. We hope you enjoy this insight into the LDS Temple.]]> 232 James E. Talmage 1560851147 Beth 5 inspirational, non-fiction
"The people were given to understand that the commission to build the Lord's House was theirs, and not that of their leaders alone."

P 130: the necessity to dispel all contention in our lives before entering the Temple.

p 136: example to pray over EVERYTHING

" We can carry this temple forward with our labor without any burden to ourselves if our hearts are in the work and we will be blessed abundantly in doing so. We will be better off in our temporal affairs when it is completed that when we commenced and than we would be if we did not build it."

" The time we enjoy is the Lord's, but we have permission to direct its use according to our good pleasure." Brigham Young
]]> 4.18 1912
author: James E. Talmage
name: Beth
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1912
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/11
date added: 2025/04/11
shelves: inspirational, non-fiction
review:
Excellent discourse on Temples in history and the need for Temples in modern day. full of great quotes.

"The people were given to understand that the commission to build the Lord's House was theirs, and not that of their leaders alone."

P 130: the necessity to dispel all contention in our lives before entering the Temple.

p 136: example to pray over EVERYTHING

" We can carry this temple forward with our labor without any burden to ourselves if our hearts are in the work and we will be blessed abundantly in doing so. We will be better off in our temporal affairs when it is completed that when we commenced and than we would be if we did not build it."

" The time we enjoy is the Lord's, but we have permission to direct its use according to our good pleasure." Brigham Young

]]> 84369 288 C.S. Lewis 0007202326 Beth 5 I'm sad to be done with the series]]> 4.03 1956
author: C.S. Lewis
name: Beth
average rating: 4.03
book published: 1956
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/03
date added: 2025/04/03
shelves: favorite-authors, inspirational
review:
Even the elect will be deceived (Susan), the sun will be darkened, the stars fall from the sky, the wicked will be destroyed so many signs of the times...
I'm sad to be done with the series
]]> 198494052
Jack Lee is a white lawyer from Freeman County, Virginia, who has never done anything to push back against racism, until he decides to represent Jerome Washington, a Black man charged with brutally killing an elderly and wealthy white couple. Doubting his decision, Lee fears that his legal skills may not be enough to prevail in a case where the odds are already stacked against both him and his client. And he quickly finds himself out of his depth when he realizes that what is at stake is far greater than the outcome of a murder trial.

Desiree DuBose is a Black lawyer from Chicago who has devoted her life to furthering the causes of justice and equality for everyone. She comes to Freeman County and enters a fractious and unwieldy partnership with Lee in a legal battle against the best prosecutor in the Commonwealth. Yet DuBose is also aware that powerful outside forces are at work to blunt the victories achieved by the Civil Rights era.

Lee and DuBose could not be more dissimilar. On their own, neither one can stop the prosecution’s deliberate march towards a guilty verdict and the electric chair. But together, the pair fight for what once seemed impossible: a chance for a fair trial and true justice.

Over a decade in the writing, A Calamity of Souls breathes richly imagined and detailed life into a bygone era, taking the reader through a world that will seem both foreign and familiar.]]> 480 David Baldacci 1538765020 Beth 4
Oh yes, and on a lighter note, I love the Christmas Train, so more like these pleas Mr. Baldacci ]]> 4.38 2024
author: David Baldacci
name: Beth
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/31
date added: 2025/04/01
shelves: audio-books, family, racial-relationships
review:
THIS is the David Baldacci that I love to read. Like Wish you Well this is a story of real issues and real people, the good, the bad and the fluctuating. A dynamic story that delves into the Black v White that our nation has always dealt with , sometimes well, but usually not.

Oh yes, and on a lighter note, I love the Christmas Train, so more like these pleas Mr. Baldacci
]]> 62873378 One of the most remarkable true-crime narratives of the twenty-first the story of the world’s most prolific art thief, StĂ©phane Breitwieser.

In this spellbinding portrait of obsession and flawed genius, the best-selling author of The Stranger in the Woods brings us into Breitwieser’s strange world—unlike most thieves, he never stole for money, keeping all his treasures in a single room where he could admire them.

For centuries, works of art have been stolen in countless ways from all over the world, but no one has been quite as successful at it as the master thief StĂ©phane Breitwieser. Carrying out more than two hundred heists over nearly eight years—in museums and cathedrals all over Europe—Breitwieser, along with his girlfriend who worked as his lookout, stole more than three hundred objects, until it all fell apart in spectacular fashion.

In The Art Thief, Michael Finkel brings us into Breitwieser’s strange and fascinating world. Unlike most thieves, Breitwieser never stole for money. Instead, he displayed all his treasures in a pair of secret rooms where he could admire them to his heart’s content. Possessed of a remarkable athleticism and an innate ability to circumvent practically any security system, Breitwieser managed to pull off a breathtaking number of audacious thefts. Yet these strange talents bred a growing disregard for risk and an addict’s need to score, leading Breitwieser to ignore his girlfriend’s pleas to stop—until one final act of hubris brought everything crashing down.

This is a riveting story of art, crime, love, and an insatiable hunger to possess beauty at any cost.]]> 224 Michael Finkel 0525657320 Beth 4 audio-books 3.92 2023
author: Michael Finkel
name: Beth
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/24
date added: 2025/04/01
shelves: audio-books
review:

]]> 55711749
With tenderness and patience, she rescues abandoned hummingbirds and nurses them back to health until they can fly away and live in the wild. In The Hummingbird’s Gift, the care that Brenda provides her peanut-sized patients is revealed and, in the process, shows us just how truly amazing hummingbirds are.]]> 96 Sy Montgomery 1982176083 Beth 5 4.11 2021
author: Sy Montgomery
name: Beth
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/01
date added: 2025/04/01
shelves: audio-books, favorite-authors, nature, non-fiction
review:
I love sharing and learning about the beautiful world around us with Sy Mongomery
]]> 127305853 From the celebrated author of The Nightingale and The Four Winds comes Kristin Hannah's The Women—at once an intimate portrait of coming of age in a dangerous time and an epic tale of a nation divided.

Women can be heroes. When twenty-year-old nursing student Frances “Frankieâ€� McGrath hears these words, it is a revelation. Raised in the sun-drenched, idyllic world of Southern California and sheltered by her conservative parents, she has always prided herself on doing the right thing. But in 1965, the world is changing, and she suddenly dares to imagine a different future for herself. When her brother ships out to serve in Vietnam, she joins the Army Nurse Corps and follows his path.

As green and inexperienced as the men sent to Vietnam to fight, Frankie is over-whelmed by the chaos and destruction of war. Each day is a gamble of life and death, hope and betrayal; friendships run deep and can be shattered in an instant. In war, she meets—and becomes one of—the lucky, the brave, the broken, and the lost.

But war is just the beginning for Frankie and her veteran friends. The real battle lies in coming home to a changed and divided America, to angry protesters, and to a country that wants to forget Vietnam.

The Women is the story of one woman gone to war, but it shines a light on all women who put themselves in harm’s way and whose sacrifice and commitment to their country has too often been forgotten. A novel about deep friendships and bold patriotism, The Women is a richly drawn story with a memorable heroine whose idealism and courage under fire will come to define an era.]]> 471 Kristin Hannah 1250178630 Beth 4 4.58 2024
author: Kristin Hannah
name: Beth
average rating: 4.58
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/23
date added: 2025/03/24
shelves: audio-books, coping, historical-fiction, war
review:
I was in High school during the war in Viet Nam and it seemed so far away. As an adult I have known a couple of vets who saw action there one good friend who suffers the results of exposure to agent orange. This fictionalized version of one woman's experience serving as a US Army nurse is eye opening, not only the fact that she and others like her were there, but also how many returning soldiers were treated when they came home. It is hard to learn of another dark time in the history of our government.
]]> 36950036 They might’ve been a family.

Virginia finally had the chance to explore a relationship with Aaron when he asked her on a date. She had been waiting, hoping that the widower and his young son, Buddy, would welcome her into their lives. But a terrible tragedy strikes on the night of their first kiss, crushing their hopes for a future together.

Nineteen years later, Virginia is engaged, though she has not forgotten Aaron or Buddy. When her dog goes missing and it comes to light that her fiancĂ© set him loose, a distraught Virginia breaks off the engagement and is alone once again. A shy young man has found the missing pet, and although he’s bonded with the animal, he answers his conscience and returns the dog. Before long, Virginia and the young man discover a connection from their pasts that will help them let go of painful memories and change their lives forever.]]> 325 Catherine Ryan Hyde 1477880135 Beth 3

Small spoiler here.....
I expected Sheila to be the Worthy one]]> 4.39 2015
author: Catherine Ryan Hyde
name: Beth
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2015
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/16
date added: 2025/03/20
shelves: animal-stories, coping, family, favorite-authors, relationships
review:
Again I'd likethe option of half stars: 3 1/ 2. This one took a while to get into. CRH's books usually grab me pretty much right off the bat, or should I say off the bridge. I kept with it because I love her books. There are twists and turns very cleverly wound into Worthy, her usual well developed characters, but I just didn't get as attached to them this time. Glad I read it. I really should have been drawn to Jody and I'm not sure why I wasn't.


Small spoiler here.....
I expected Sheila to be the Worthy one
]]> 168942193
Years ago, a reclusive mega-bestselling children’s author quit writing under mysterious circumstances. Suddenly he resurfaces with a brand-new book and a one-of-a-kind competition, offering a prize that will change the winner’s life in this absorbing and whimsical novel.

Make a wish. . . .

Lucy Hart knows better than anyone what it’s like to grow up without parents who loved her. In a childhood marked by neglect and loneliness, Lucy found her solace in books, namely the Clock Island series by Jack Masterson. Now a twenty-six-year-old teacher’s aide, she is able to share her love of reading with bright, young students, especially seven-year-old Christopher Lamb, who was left orphaned after the tragic death of his parents. Lucy would give anything to adopt Christopher, but even the idea of becoming a family seems like an impossible dream without proper funds and stability.

But be careful what you wish for. . . .

Just when Lucy is about to give up, Jack Masterson announces he’s finally written a new book. Even better, he’s holding a contest at his home on the real Clock Island, and Lucy is one of the four lucky contestants chosen to compete to win the one and only copy.

For Lucy, the chance of winning the most sought-after book in the world means everything to her and Christopher. But first she must contend with ruthless book collectors, wily opponents, and the distractingly handsome (and grumpy) Hugo Reese, the illustrator of the Clock Island books. Meanwhile, Jack “the Mastermindâ€� Masterson is plotting the ultimate twist ending that could change all their lives forever.

. . . You might just get it.]]> 11 Meg Shaffer Beth 4 4.04 2023
author: Meg Shaffer
name: Beth
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/17
date added: 2025/03/18
shelves: audio-books, family, motherhood, relationships, sisters
review:
What a fun story! I think anyone who is accustomed to finding friends in the books they read will enjoy this novel with a bit of fantasy. Who hasn't written to an author with a secret desire to develop a friendship with someone that we have 'spent time' with in the pages of a book. I'd love to go horseback riding with Catherine Ryan Hyde and my friend Doreen and I heard back from Marguerite Henry when we wrote to her about our project on the evolution of the horse. Many authors have assistants who will answer letters, send postcards etc, but what avid reader has not fantasized about chatting with Ann Patchett in her Nashville bookstore or riding the Christmas train with David Baldacci. I thoroughly enjoyed visiting Clock Island and vicariously entering the contest set up by Jack Masterson.
]]> 59251239
Nobody has her moves.
She doesn't just swim to the bottom,
she dive-bombs.
She doesn't just somersault,
she triple-doughnuts.
She doesn't just ride the waves,
she makes them.

Odder spends her days off the coast of central California, practicing her underwater acrobatics and spinning the quirky stories for which she's known. She's a fearless daredevil, curious to a fault. But when Odder comes face-to-face with a hungry great white shark, her life takes a dramatic turn, one that will challenge everything she believes about herself—and about the humans who hope to save her.

Inspired by the true story of a Monterey Bay Aquarium program that pairs orphaned otter pups with surrogate mothers.]]> 274 Katherine Applegate 1250147425 Beth 4 4.21 2022
author: Katherine Applegate
name: Beth
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/11
date added: 2025/03/11
shelves: audio-books, nature, young-adult
review:
Fun tween book about the life of a sea otter. Applegate has used data about otters rescued, cared for, and released by the Monterrey Bay Aquarium to create the theoretical Odder.
]]> 203164398 #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER � In her inspiring, intimate memoir, the first Black woman to ever be appointed to the Supreme Court of the United States chronicles her extraordinary life story.

With this unflinching account, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson invites readers into her life and world, tracing her family’s ascent from segregation to her confirmation on America’s highest court within the span of one generation.

Named “Ketanji Onyika,â€� meaning “Lovely One,â€� based on a suggestion from her aunt, a Peace Corps worker stationed in West Africa, Justice Jackson learned from her educator parents to take pride in her heritage since birth. She describes her resolve as a young girl to honor this legacy and realize her dreams: from hearing stories of her grandparents and parents breaking barriers in the segregated South, to honing her voice in high school as an oratory champion and student body president, to graduating magna cum laude from Harvard, where she performed in musical theater and improv and participated in pivotal student organizations.

Here, Justice Jackson pulls back the curtain, marrying the public record of her life with what is less known. She reveals what it takes to advance in the legal profession when most people in power don’t look like you, and to reconcile a demanding career with the joys and sacrifices of marriage and motherhood.

Through trials and triumphs, Justice Jackson’s journey will resonate with dreamers everywhere, especially those who nourish outsized ambitions and refuse to be turned aside. This moving, open-hearted tale will spread hope for a more just world, for generations to come.]]> 432 Ketanji Brown Jackson 0593729900 Beth 4 Her parents worked hard to give her and her brother a fair, honest view of life in Miami as they were raised in a hard working, loving nuclear family with emotionally close, involved extended family.
She includes lots of technical legal information which is informative tho I doubt I retained much. Trips to Africa, her parents' and her own, were interesting to hear about. Interesting that they consider Africa the Homeland even though they were a few generations from it.
All in all I enjoyed this book, I enjoyed hearing about Ketanji Brown Jackson's personal and academic and professional life]]> 4.45 2024
author: Ketanji Brown Jackson
name: Beth
average rating: 4.45
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/10
date added: 2025/03/11
shelves: audio-books, family, memoir, non-fiction, relationships, racial-relationships
review:
A memoir by Supreme Court Justice Brown Jackson. Audio version is narrated by Justice Brown Jackson which adds to the experience, especially the beautiful essay written and narrated by daughter Lelia. The book presents a different view of parents coming to the realization that one child is on the Autistic Spectrum and how the family learned to support her. KBJ (do we think she may end up with that moniker? She may have a bit of work to get up to RBG's level but certainly has that potential) recalls growing up Black in a White society and verges on milking it, but unfair for me to say since I never experienced it. However I also did not experience being given the family's old BMW when I got my driver's license or being taken to Harvard in the family Cadillac so it was sometimes hard to be sympathetic. ( yes, I do realize that I have no right to judge anyone)
Her parents worked hard to give her and her brother a fair, honest view of life in Miami as they were raised in a hard working, loving nuclear family with emotionally close, involved extended family.
She includes lots of technical legal information which is informative tho I doubt I retained much. Trips to Africa, her parents' and her own, were interesting to hear about. Interesting that they consider Africa the Homeland even though they were a few generations from it.
All in all I enjoyed this book, I enjoyed hearing about Ketanji Brown Jackson's personal and academic and professional life
]]> 1429233 113 Paul McCusker 1561797936 Beth 5 adventure, inspirational Message to the USA
"Courage, friends, whether we live or die Aslan will be our good Lord "
On to The Last Battle]]> 4.37 1953
author: Paul McCusker
name: Beth
average rating: 4.37
book published: 1953
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/08
date added: 2025/03/08
shelves: adventure, inspirational
review:
I really liked this one, full of adventures and great characters and horses ;-)
Message to the USA
"Courage, friends, whether we live or die Aslan will be our good Lord "
On to The Last Battle
]]> 2814
Story captures our hearts and feeds our imaginations. It reminds us who we are and where we came from. Story gives meaning and direction to our lives as we learn to see it as an affirmation of God’s love and truth–an acknowledgment of our longing for a rock in the midst of life’s wilderness.

Drawing upon her own experiences, well-known tales in literature, and selected narratives from Scripture, Madeleine L’Engle gently leads the way into the glorious world of story in The Rock That Is Higher. Here she acknowledges universal human longings and considers how literature, Scripture, personal stories, and life experiences all point us toward our true home.]]> 320 Madeleine L'Engle 0877887268 Beth 0 to-read 4.12 1993
author: Madeleine L'Engle
name: Beth
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1993
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 18266072 5 Malala Yousafzai 1478952741 Beth 5 4.15 2012
author: Malala Yousafzai
name: Beth
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2012
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2025/03/05
shelves:
review:

]]> 57819560
When Thomas impulsively decides to follow the teacher from Nazareth, he and Tasmin argue--since the twins have been together since the womb, Tasmin can't accept losing her brother to some magician-prophet. Aided by Jude, younger brother to Jesus of Nazareth, she decides to follow the Nazarene's group and do whatever she must to mend the fractured relationship and bring her brother home.]]> Angela Elwell Hunt 1664486461 Beth 4 4.19 2020
author: Angela Elwell Hunt
name: Beth
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/10
date added: 2025/03/02
shelves: audio-books, family, inspirational, scriptural-fiction
review:
Kind of like listening to The Chosen rather than watching except Thomas has a sister Tasmin instead of a betrothed named Rama and the story line includes Jesus' siblings.
]]> 58884736
"A story of love and hope as interweaving characters display: how all moments, big and small, can measure a life. If you want joy, love, romance, and hope—read with us." —Jenna Bush Hager
A luminous, spirit-lifting blockbuster that asks: would you choose to find out the length of your life?

Eight ordinary people. One extraordinary choice.

It seems like any other day. You wake up, drink a cup of coffee, and head out.

But today, when you open your front door, waiting for you is a small wooden box. The contents of this mysterious box tells you the exact number of years you will live.

From suburban doorsteps to desert tents, every person on every continent receives the same box. In an instant, the world is thrust into a collective frenzy. Where did these boxes come from? What do they mean? Is there truth to what they promise?

As society comes together and pulls apart, everyone faces the same shocking choice: Do they wish to know how long they’ll live? And, if so, what will they do with that knowledge?

The Measure charts the dawn of this new world through an unforgettable cast of characters whose decisions and fates interweave with one another: best friends whose dreams are forever entwined, pen pals finding refuge in the unknown, a couple who thought they didn’t have to rush, a doctor who cannot save himself, and a politician whose box becomes the powder keg that ultimately changes everything.

Enchanting and deeply uplifting, The Measure is an ambitious, invigorating story about family, friendship, hope, and destiny that encourages us to live life to the fullest.]]> 353 Nikki Erlick 0063204207 Beth 5 Matthew 7:1-2
Judge not, that ye be not judged.
For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure you mete, it shall be measured to you again.

The story starts with a touch of fantasy as adults all over the world are each given a box containing a string(it is never explained how the boxes are delivered, but it really doesn't matter). The strings are of varying length and it eventually becomes apparent that the length of each person's string represents the length of her/his life. The issues are whether or not to open the box, and how does the length of one's string impact one's choices. That piece of fantasy blends in to day to day stories of several characters followed throughout the novel. The characters are relatable, varied and for the most part, likable. The Strings change the world much as did our recent Pandemic. With frightening speed, the society finds a new prejudice as the worth of an individual is determined by the length of their string. The concept is an excellent metaphor (is that the word I want??) of how baseless, unnecessary and harmful social prejudices are.
I really enjoyed listening to this book, it is very thought provoking. the unlikeliness of the box and string is forgotten as the story is so well told and is frighteningly believable.]]> 3.96 2022
author: Nikki Erlick
name: Beth
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/17
date added: 2025/02/18
shelves: audio-books, family, relationships
review:
The Measure, aptly titled:
Matthew 7:1-2
Judge not, that ye be not judged.
For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure you mete, it shall be measured to you again.

The story starts with a touch of fantasy as adults all over the world are each given a box containing a string(it is never explained how the boxes are delivered, but it really doesn't matter). The strings are of varying length and it eventually becomes apparent that the length of each person's string represents the length of her/his life. The issues are whether or not to open the box, and how does the length of one's string impact one's choices. That piece of fantasy blends in to day to day stories of several characters followed throughout the novel. The characters are relatable, varied and for the most part, likable. The Strings change the world much as did our recent Pandemic. With frightening speed, the society finds a new prejudice as the worth of an individual is determined by the length of their string. The concept is an excellent metaphor (is that the word I want??) of how baseless, unnecessary and harmful social prejudices are.
I really enjoyed listening to this book, it is very thought provoking. the unlikeliness of the box and string is forgotten as the story is so well told and is frighteningly believable.
]]> 140225
The Dawn Treader is the first ship Narnia has seen in centuries. King Caspian has built it for his voyage to find the seven lords, good men whom his evil uncle Miraz banished when he usurped the throne. The journey takes Edmund, Lucy, and their cousin Eustace to the Eastern Islands, beyond the Silver Sea, toward Aslan's country at the End of the World.]]> 248 C.S. Lewis 006112527X Beth 4 4.10 1952
author: C.S. Lewis
name: Beth
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1952
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/09
date added: 2025/02/10
shelves: adventure, inspirational, young-adult
review:
I felt it started kind of slowly, but along about the dragon incident, it grabbed me, and I liked it a lot. Many good Gospel symbolism there. Wherever you are, if you call on Aslan He will be there to support you.
]]> 17667452 410 Catherine Ryan Hyde 1611092078 Beth 4 kindle, relationships You've got to love Nathan McCann.]]> 4.16 2009
author: Catherine Ryan Hyde
name: Beth
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/07
date added: 2025/02/07
shelves: kindle, relationships
review:
I was intrigued by the fact that Nathan found a newborn in the woods, alone, in October. I wouldn't expect to enjoy a story about boxing, so that's a testament to CRH's talent as a storyteller. There are loads of good quotes in this one, but most are marked in the Kindle edition, so I'm not typing them in here. Sorry.
You've got to love Nathan McCann.
]]> 105584138
Barbra Streisand is by any account a living legend, a woman who in a career spanning six decades has excelled in every area of entertainment. She is among the handful of EGOT winners (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony) and has one of the greatest and most recognizable voices in popular music. She has been nominated for a Grammy 46 times, and with Yentl she became the first woman to write, produce, direct, and star in a major motion picture. In My Name Is Barbra, she tells her own story about her life and extraordinary career, from growing up in Brooklyn to her first star-making appearances in New York nightclubs to her breakout performance in Funny Girl (musical and film) to the long string of successes in every medium in the years that followed. The book is, like Barbra herself, frank, funny, opinionated, and charming. She recounts her early struggles to become an actress, eventually turning to singing to earn a living; the recording of some of her acclaimed albums; the years of effort involved in making Yentl; her direction of The Prince of Tides; her friendships with figures ranging from Marlon Brando to Madeleine Albright; her political advocacy; and the fulfillment she’s found in her marriage to James Brolin.

No entertainer’s memoir has been more anticipated than Barbra Streisand’s, and this engrossing and delightful book will be eagerly welcomed by her millions of fans.

Barbra Streisand is an American singer, actress, director and producer and one of the most iconic figures in music and film, the only recording artist in history to have earned #1 albums over six consecutive decades. She has received the American Film Institute’s Lifetime Achievement Award, the Kennedy Center Honor, the National Medal of Arts, France’s LĂ©gion d’Honneur, and America’s highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom. She founded The Barbra Streisand Women’s Heart Center at Cedars-Sinai, helping to raise awareness and push for more research into women’s heart disease, the leading cause of death among women. Through the Streisand Foundation, which she established in 1986, she has supported national organizations working on preservation of the environment, voter education, the protection of civil liberties and civil rights, women’s issues, and nuclear disarmament. In 2021 she launched the Barbra Streisand Institute at UCLA, a forward-thinking institution dedicated to finding solutions to the most vital social issues.]]> 1040 Barbra Streisand 0525429522 Beth 3 audio-books, memoir I always enjoy hearing the author narrate her own book, especially a memoir and it was a treat here to lusten to the music selections. Also, I've always liked Barbra Streisand in spite of her extreme liberal opinions. She contradicts herself a bit there with her 'we the people ' talk mixed in with elaborate home buying and renovating, world traveling, and wedding plans. She is not one of us commoners, and I don't know that she is aware of the disparity in lifestyles. It was interesting to hear her describe her interest in retro and historic fashion and her own involvement in clothing design.
If she really believes that all liars are Republicans, she needs to remove her rose colored glasses.]]> 4.13 2023
author: Barbra Streisand
name: Beth
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/03
date added: 2025/02/03
shelves: audio-books, memoir
review:
3 1/2 stars
I always enjoy hearing the author narrate her own book, especially a memoir and it was a treat here to lusten to the music selections. Also, I've always liked Barbra Streisand in spite of her extreme liberal opinions. She contradicts herself a bit there with her 'we the people ' talk mixed in with elaborate home buying and renovating, world traveling, and wedding plans. She is not one of us commoners, and I don't know that she is aware of the disparity in lifestyles. It was interesting to hear her describe her interest in retro and historic fashion and her own involvement in clothing design.
If she really believes that all liars are Republicans, she needs to remove her rose colored glasses.
]]> 201944050
But then a chance encounter with a man who’s fallen on hard times changes everything. Milo needs a break, and self-contained Tilda surprises herself by deciding she should help him. Just for a while. A few days at the most.

Maybe all he needs is someone to organize him, to help him clean up his act? She is sure she knows how to kick-start Milo into turning his life around.

What Tilda doesn’t know is that â€� with this single act of kindness â€� it might actually be her own life that’s about to change foreverâ€�

A totally gorgeous, heartbreaking and uplifting story, about friendship, trust, and finding love in unexpected places, perfect for fans of Beth Moran, Sarah Morgan and Faith Hogan.

Readers love Samantha ‘A joy to read. Sparkling with witty dialogue and full of wise wordsâ€� a masterpiece of storytelling.â€� Celia Anderson, author

‘I love Samantha’s books. There is so much more to them that “justâ€� a story. It’s about life and taking chances. Of perhaps not being so quick to judge and to step into someone’s shoes for a while to truly try and understand themâ€� A truly stunning read.â€� Ć·±ŠÓéÀÖ reviewer ⭐⭐⭐⭐â­�

‘This book just pulled me in. The story pulled at my heart as I read on and on and on. I couldn’t stop reading as I had to know what the ending was going to be!â€� I’m still thinking about this storyâ€� A beautiful story about friendship that I highly recommend.â€� Ć·±ŠÓéÀÖ reviewer ⭐⭐⭐⭐â­�

‘WOW this is one book that will keep readers flicking page after page. I loved the storyâ€� The author once again captures real life dramasâ€� Takes you on a journeyâ€� Fabulous!â€� Ć·±ŠÓéÀÖ reviewer ⭐⭐⭐⭐â­�

‘Honest, raw, poignant and heart-breaking. It is also warm-hearted, positive, uplifting, funny and full of love and hopeâ€� Clearly written straight from the heartâ€� A book that will stay with you, long after the last page has been read.â€� Ć·±ŠÓéÀÖ reviewer ⭐⭐⭐⭐â­�

‘Wow I couldn't get enough of this, from the incredibly intriguing opening chapter, to the fact that there seemed to be some many secrets to be revealed â€� including some that truly shocked meâ€� I absolutely loved it.â€� Ć·±ŠÓéÀÖ reviewer ⭐⭐⭐⭐â­�

‘The reader is led on an emotional trip as they navigate their past and present lives, highlighting the strength of friendship and the intricacies of life..]]> 290 Samantha Tonge 1835189857 Beth 5 4.23 2024
author: Samantha Tonge
name: Beth
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/10
date added: 2025/01/25
shelves:
review:
The book ended, but I wasn't done spending time with Milo and Tilda.
]]> 33590154 192 Mary Appelhof 1612129471 Beth 5 nature, non-fiction 4.32 1982
author: Mary Appelhof
name: Beth
average rating: 4.32
book published: 1982
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/22
date added: 2025/01/25
shelves: nature, non-fiction
review:
Still working on fruit fly control and I think I need a larger box but I'm watching the worms multiply as they feed on kitchen scraps
]]> 44641664 An enthralling story of one family's extraordinary courage and resistance amidst the horrors of war from the New York Times bestselling author of The Secret Rooms.

As war swept across Europe in 1940, the idyllic life of Fey von Hassell seemed a world away from the conflict. The daughter of Ulrich von Hassell, Hitler's Ambassador to Italy, her marriage to Italian aristocrat Detalmo Pirzio-Biroli brought with it a castle and an estate in the north of Italy. Beautiful and privileged, Fey and her two young sons lead a tranquil life undisturbed by the trauma and privations of war. But with Fascism approaching its zenith, Fey's peaceful existence is threatened when Ulrich and Detalmo take the brave and difficult decision to resist the Nazis.

When German soldiers pour over the Italian border, Fey is suddenly marooned in the Nazi-occupied north and unable to communicate with her husband, who has joined the underground anti-Fascist movement in Rome. Before long, SS soldiers have taken up occupancy in the castle. As Fey struggles to maintain an air of warm welcome to her unwanted guests, the clandestine activities of both her father and husband become increasingly brazen and openly rebellious. Darkness descends when Ulrich's foiled plot to kill the Fuhrer brings the Gestapo to Fey's doorstep. It would be months before Detalmo learns that his wife had been arrested and his two young boys seized by the SS.

Suffused with Catherine Bailey's signature atmospheric prose, A Castle in Wartime tells the unforgettable story of the extraordinary bravery and fortitude of one family who collectively and individually sacrificed everything to resist the Nazis from within. Bailey's unprecedented access to stunning first-hand family accounts, along with records from concentration camps and surviving SS files, make this a dazzling and compulsively readable book, opening a view on the cost and consequences of resistance.]]> 480 Catherine Bailey 0525559299 Beth 4 audio-books, non-fiction, war
Merged review:

some of the war descriptions are tough to hear, this is an amazing story of a failed coup against Hitler and how it affected those involved as well as anyone related to them.]]> 4.27 2019
author: Catherine Bailey
name: Beth
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2020/12/06
date added: 2025/01/22
shelves: audio-books, non-fiction, war
review:
some of the war descriptions are tough to hear, this is an amazing story of a failed coup against Hitler and how it affected those involved as well as anyone related to them.

Merged review:

some of the war descriptions are tough to hear, this is an amazing story of a failed coup against Hitler and how it affected those involved as well as anyone related to them.
]]> 100701026 Runtime: 13 hours and 33 minutes

In 1958, a small Minnesota town is rocked by the murder of its most powerful citizen, pouring fresh fuel on old grievances in this dazzling standalone novel.

On Memorial Day, as the people of Jewel, Minnesota gather to remember and honor the sacrifice of so many sons in the wars of the past, the half-clothed body of wealthy landowner Jimmy Quinn is found floating in the Alabaster River, dead from a shotgun blast. Investigation of the murder falls to Sheriff Brody Dern, a highly decorated war hero who still carries the physical and emotional scars from his military service. Even before Dern has the results of the autopsy, vicious rumors begin to circulate that the killer must be Noah Bluestone, a Native American WWII veteran who has recently returned to Jewel with a Japanese wife. As suspicions and accusations mount and the town teeters on the edge of more violence, Dern struggles not only to find the truth of Quinn’s murder but also put to rest the demons from his own past.

Caught up in the torrent of anger that sweeps through Jewel are a war widow and her adolescent son, the intrepid publisher of the local newspaper, an aging deputy, and a crusading female lawyer, all of whom struggle with their own tragic histories and harbor secrets that Quinn’s death threatens to expose.

Both a complex, spellbinding mystery and a masterful portrait of midcentury American life, The River We Remember is an unflinching look at the wounds left by the wars we fight abroad and at home, a moving exploration of the ways in which we seek to heal, and a testament to the enduring power of the stories we tell about the places we call home.]]> William Kent Krueger 1797161008 Beth 4 4.05 2023
author: William Kent Krueger
name: Beth
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/14
date added: 2025/01/14
shelves: audio-books, family, mystery, relationships
review:
William Kent Krueger is an artist and his medium is prose. From someone else's pen this could be a tragic story but Krueger's expertise with prose presents some sticky and some downright nasty situations in a picturesque manor. There were also other not so dramatic events just as beautifully told and the scenery is very artistically presented. Cj Wilson's narration is wonderful.
]]> 205839887 A foster mother must contend with the emotional turmoil of her new blended family in a heartfelt novel of hope and second chances by New York Times bestselling author Catherine Ryan Hyde.

Maggie Blount, divorced mother of two and California physician, puts her private practice on hold when disaster strikes. Doctors on Wheels takes her and Alex—Maggie’s professional and romantic partner—wherever they’re needed. After rolling into rural Louisiana in the wake of a category five hurricane, Maggie immediately bonds with two sisters and their puppy, all orphaned by the storm. It’s enough to break Maggie’s heart, and she’s not leaving them behind.

Feeling blessed and looking forward to their new foster home in affluent Vista del Mar—a world apart from the one they’ve known—Jean and Rose are polite, appreciative, and humble. Frankly, polar opposite of Maggie’s own self-involved teenage daughters, Willa and Gemma, who resist this intrusion by strangers into their privileged lives. Soon enough, Maggie’s new blended family is in chaos.

Teaching Willa and Gemma about gratitude and empathy will be hard enough. Maggie must also admit her own role in their entitled upbringing, undo the damage, and anticipate the needs of all four girls and a puppy, all amid faraway natural disasters and those closer to home.]]> 302 Catherine Ryan Hyde 1662504462 Beth 4
"People don't change when everything is going along fine. People change when the roof falls in. Literally or figuratively."
and in Bess' words: if nothing changes, nothing changes

Kathy, shall I send this one back to you, or have you already read it?]]> 4.00 2024
author: Catherine Ryan Hyde
name: Beth
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/13
date added: 2025/01/14
shelves: coping, family, relationships, sisters
review:
I always enjoy reading Catherine Ryan Hyde. This one was timely as we watched California burn and I wondered about the selfless volunteers who head towards rather than away from a disaster in order to help.

"People don't change when everything is going along fine. People change when the roof falls in. Literally or figuratively."
and in Bess' words: if nothing changes, nothing changes

Kathy, shall I send this one back to you, or have you already read it?
]]> 780882
It’s Christmas and the Berkshire countryside lies wrapped in winter chill. But the well-born guests who have gathered at Applecross for a delicious weekend of innocent intrigue and passionate romance are warmed by roaring fires and candlelight, holly and mistletoe, good wine and gorgeously wrapped gifts. It’s scarcely the setting for misfortune, and no one–not even that clever young aristocrat and budding sleuth Vespasia Cumming-Gould–anticipates the tragedy that is to darken this light-hearted holiday house party.]]> 192 Anne Perry 034546673X Beth 3 slightly similar to A Christmas Hope, same historic time

"..and mercy, the gift to forgive;to wash away from the memory as if it had not happened, to accept the gift of God which is love and hope; courage to begin again in the faith that redemption is coming to the world, is the meaning of Christmas. That is why we are met here together today, it is why we deck the halls with Holly, why the bells will ring tonight from village to village across the land until the earth and the sky are filled with their sound."
"Of course', she answered softly,"I have made my journey and arrived at Christmas...How could I accept it for myself and deny it to another?"
" It is everyone's journey...no man needs to make it alone but his choice to go with another is the one act of friendship which brings us closest to the Man who was born on the first Christmas and is the gift of them all."
]]> 3.39 2003
author: Anne Perry
name: Beth
average rating: 3.39
book published: 2003
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/08
date added: 2025/01/09
shelves: audio-books, historical-fiction, relationships
review:
3 1/2 stars
slightly similar to A Christmas Hope, same historic time

"..and mercy, the gift to forgive;to wash away from the memory as if it had not happened, to accept the gift of God which is love and hope; courage to begin again in the faith that redemption is coming to the world, is the meaning of Christmas. That is why we are met here together today, it is why we deck the halls with Holly, why the bells will ring tonight from village to village across the land until the earth and the sky are filled with their sound."
"Of course', she answered softly,"I have made my journey and arrived at Christmas...How could I accept it for myself and deny it to another?"
" It is everyone's journey...no man needs to make it alone but his choice to go with another is the one act of friendship which brings us closest to the Man who was born on the first Christmas and is the gift of them all."

]]> 39085216
Betsy and Ty Franklin, owners of Franklin Dairy Farm in southern Alabama, have long since buried their desire for children of their own. While Ty manages their herd of dairy cows, Betsy busies herself with the farm’s day-to-day operations and tries to forget her dream of motherhood.

But when her free-spirited sister, Jenna, drops off her two young daughters for “just two weeks,â€� Betsy’s carefully constructed wall of self-protection begins to crumble. As the two weeks stretch deeper into the Alabama summer, Betsy and Ty learn to navigate the new additions in their world—and revel in the laughter that now fills their home. Meanwhile, record temperatures promise to usher in the most active hurricane season in decades.

Attending an art retreat four hundred miles away, Jenna is fighting her own battles. She finally has time and energy to focus on her photography, a lifelong ambition. But she wonders how her rediscovered passion can fit in with the life she’s made back home as a single mom. But when Hurricane Ingrid aims a steady eye at the Alabama coast, Jenna must make a decision that will change her family’s future, even as Betsy and Ty try to protect their beloved farm . . . and their hearts.]]> 383 Lauren K. Denton 071808425X Beth 3 I didn't like it as well as A Place to Land]]> 3.74 2018
author: Lauren K. Denton
name: Beth
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2018
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/07
date added: 2025/01/07
shelves: audio-books, motherhood, relationships, sisters
review:
3 1/2
I didn't like it as well as A Place to Land
]]> 17568759
Even though she suspects that an upper-class clique is quickly closing ranks to protect the real killer, Claudine vows to do her utmost for Dai. But it seems that hypocritical London society would rather send an innocent poet to the gallows than expose the shocking truth about one of their own.

Nevertheless, it’s the season of miracles and Claudine finally sees a glimmer of hope—not only for Dai but for a young woman she befriends who is teetering on the brink of a lifetime of unhappiness. Anne Perry’s heartwarming new holiday novel is a celebration of courage, faith, and love for all seasons.]]> 197 Anne Perry 0345530756 Beth 4
"Christmas is about offering hope to all people not just those like ourselves. Christmas is about everyone, rich or poor, friend or stranger. The moment you exclude anyone, you exclude yourself."]]> 3.60 2013
author: Anne Perry
name: Beth
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/28
date added: 2025/01/06
shelves: audio-books, historical-fiction, relationships
review:
Interesting story line and interesting characters, not sure if it would really have played out this way in real life...

"Christmas is about offering hope to all people not just those like ourselves. Christmas is about everyone, rich or poor, friend or stranger. The moment you exclude anyone, you exclude yourself."
]]> 60693360 A hidden past isn’t past at all.

Violet Figg and her sister Trudy have lived a quiet life in Sugar Bend ever since a night forty years ago stole Trudy’s voice and cemented Violet’s role as Trudy’s fierce and loyal protector. Now, Trudy spends her days making sculptures from found objects and speaking via notes written on scraps of paper, while Violet runs their art shop, monitors the bird activity up and down the water, and tries not to think of her one great love she gave up in order to keep her sister safe.

Eighteen-year-old Maya knows where everyone else belongs, but she’s been searching for her own place ever since her grandmother died seven years ago. Moving in and out of strangersâ€� houses has left her exhausted, so when she sees a flyer on a gas station window for a place called Sugar Bend, she follows the strange pull she feels and finds herself on the doorstep of an art shop called Two Sisters.

When a boat rises to the surface of Little River in the middle of the night, the present and the no-longer-buried past clash, and the future is at stake for Maya, Violet, and Trudy. As history creeps continually closer to the present and old secrets come to light, the sisters must decide if it’s time to face the truth of what happened forty years ago, or risk losing each other and newly formed bonds with those they’ve come to love.]]> 336 Lauren K. Denton 0785232656 Beth 5 3.85 2022
author: Lauren K. Denton
name: Beth
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/24
date added: 2024/12/24
shelves: audio-books, family, relationships, sisters
review:

]]> 55333938 This is a previously-published edition of ISBN 9780593101537.

The remarkable, little-known story of Belle da Costa Greene, J. P. Morgan's personal librarian—who became one of the most powerful women in New York despite the dangerous secret she kept in order to make her dreams come true, from New York Times bestselling author Marie Benedict and acclaimed author Victoria Christopher Murray.

In her twenties, Belle da Costa Greene is hired by J. P. Morgan to curate a collection of rare manuscripts, books, and artwork for his newly built Pierpont Morgan Library. Belle becomes a fixture on the New York society scene and one of the most powerful people in the art and book world, known for her impeccable taste and shrewd negotiating for critical works as she helps build a world-class collection.

But Belle has a secret, one she must protect at all costs. She was born not Belle da Costa Greene but Belle Marion Greener. She is the daughter of Richard Greener, the first Black graduate of Harvard and a well-known advocate for equality. Belle's complexion isn't dark because of her alleged Portuguese heritage that lets her pass as white—her complexion is dark because she is African American.

The Personal Librarian tells the story of an extraordinary woman, famous for her intellect, style, and wit, and shares the lengths to which she must go—for the protection of her family and her legacy—to preserve her carefully crafted white identity in the racist world in which she lives.]]> 341 Marie Benedict Beth 4 3.98 2021
author: Marie Benedict
name: Beth
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/21
date added: 2024/12/21
shelves:
review:

]]> 12284375    While Temple’s doctor recommended a hospital, her mother believed in her. Temple went to school instead.
   Today, Dr. Temple Grandin is a scientist and professor of animal science at Colorado State University. Her world-changing career revolutionized the livestock industry. As an advocate for autism, Temple uses her experience as an example of the unique contributions that autistic people can make.
   This compelling biography complete with Temple’s personal photos takes us inside her extraordinary mind and opens the door to a broader understanding of autism.
]]> 160 Sy Montgomery 0547443153 Beth 5 Sy Mongomery is one of my favorite authors.]]> 4.06 2012
author: Sy Montgomery
name: Beth
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2012
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/19
date added: 2024/12/19
shelves: animal-stories, autism, inspirational, non-fiction
review:
I have always had lots of respect for Temple Grandin for her handling her Autism and her activism and action against animal cruelty. She is a real hero, and so is her mother, Eustacia Cutler. Every child born with Autism should be blessed with such a parent.
Sy Mongomery is one of my favorite authors.
]]> 323355 From the Introduction:

The Book of Mormon is a volume of holy scripture comparable to the Bible. It is a record of God's dealings with the ancient inhabitants of the Americas and contains, as does the Bible, the fulness of the everlasting gospel.

The book was written by many ancient prophets by the spirit of prophecy and revelation. Their words, written on gold plates, were quoted and abridged by a prophet-historian named Mormon. The record gives an account of two great civilizations. One came from Jerusalem in 600 B.C., and afterward separated into two nations, known as the Nephites and the Lamanites. The other came much earlier when the Lord confounded the tongues at the Tower of Babel. Thsi group is known as the Jaredites. After thousands of years, all were destroyed except the Lamanites, and they are the principal ancestors of the American Indians.

The crowning event recorded in the Book of Mormon is the personal ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ among the Nephites soon after his resurrection. It puts forth the doctrines of the gospel, outlines the plan of salvation, and tells men what they must do to gain peace in this life and eternal salvation in the life to come.

After Mormon completed his writings, he delivered the account to his son Moroni, who added a few words of his own and hid up the plates in the hill Cumorah. On September 21, 1823, the same Moroni, the a glorified, resurrected being, appeared to the Prophet Joseph Smith and instructed him relative to the ancient record and its destined translation into the English language.

In due course the plates were delivered to Joseph Smith, who translated them by the gift and power of God. The record is now published in many languages as a new and additional witness that Jesus Christ is the Son of the living God and that all who will come unto him and obey the laws and ordinances of his gospel may be saved.

Concerning this record the Prophet Joseph Smith said: "I told the brethren that the Book of Mormon was the most correct of any book on earth, and the keystone of our religion, and a man would get nearer to God by abiding by its precepts, than by any other book."

In addition to Joseph Smith, the Lord provided for eleven others to see the gold plates for themselves and to be special witnesses of the truth and divinity of the Book of Mormon. Their written testimonies are included herewith as "The Testimony of Three Witnesses" and "The Testimony of Eight Witnesses."

We invite all men everywhere to read the Book of Mormon, to ponder in their hearts the message it contains, and then to ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ if the book is true. Those who pursue this course an ask in faith will gain a testimony of its truth and divinity by the power of the Holy Ghost. (See Moroni 10: 3-5)

Those who gain this divine witness from the Holy Spirit will also come to know by the same power that Jesus Christ is the Savior of the world, that Joseph Smith is his revelator and prophet in these last days, and that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the Lord's kingdom once again established on the earth, preparatory to the second coming of the Messiah.]]> 531 Joseph Smith Jr. 0967686563 Beth 5
It's still true.


It is true.

Alma 32: 10-11 "Behold, I say unto you, do ye suppose that ye cannot worship God save it be in your synagogues only? And moreover , I would ask, do ye suppose that ye must not worship God only once in a week?" So....worship in your homes, everyday.

I told the brethren that the Book of Mormon was the most correct of any book on earth, and the keystone of our religion, and a man would get nearer to God by abiding by its precepts, than by any other book.� (History of the Church, 4:461.)]]> 4.22 1830
author: Joseph Smith Jr.
name: Beth
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1830
rating: 5
read at: 2023/07/16
date added: 2024/12/13
shelves: glad-i-read-it, history, inspirational, non-fiction, currently-reading
review:
It was surely written for our day!

It's still true.


It is true.

Alma 32: 10-11 "Behold, I say unto you, do ye suppose that ye cannot worship God save it be in your synagogues only? And moreover , I would ask, do ye suppose that ye must not worship God only once in a week?" So....worship in your homes, everyday.

I told the brethren that the Book of Mormon was the most correct of any book on earth, and the keystone of our religion, and a man would get nearer to God by abiding by its precepts, than by any other book.� (History of the Church, 4:461.)
]]> 56922701
Sofia har ĂŠrlig talt heller ikke lyst til at byde Carmen velkommen. Hendes sĂžster har altid vĂŠret sarkastisk og umedgĂžrlig. Men Sofia venter sig igen, boghandlen mangler hĂŠnder, og deres mors stĂžrste Ăžnske er, at de to sĂžstre kommer bedre ud af det med hinanden. MĂ„ske skulle hun give Carmen en chance?

PÄ Sofias foranledning hvirvles Carmen snart ind i den gamle boghandels daglige trummerum. Det viser sig dog, at det vil krÊve et sandt julemirakel at fÄ den pÄ rette kurs igen. Kan Carmen mon overraske dem alle denne jul? Og kan hun klinke skÄrene med de vigtigste mennesker i hendes liv: sin familie?]]> 310 Jenny Colgan 0063141671 Beth 4 Made me dream of a trip to Scotland]]> 3.61 2021
author: Jenny Colgan
name: Beth
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/12
date added: 2024/12/13
shelves: audio-books, family, relationships, sisters
review:
Lots of fun. It's not a realistic timeline, but it's fiction, and I enjoyed it. I like Bookshops and bookshop stories.
Made me dream of a trip to Scotland
]]> 6329494 350 Dick Francis 0399155910 Beth 3 mystery 3.75 2009
author: Dick Francis
name: Beth
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2009
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/09
date added: 2024/12/08
shelves: mystery
review:
Second time. Liked it better mostly because I miss reading a Dick Francis. I do prefer the earlier books before his son Felix stepped in.
]]> 216625585 116 David A. Bednar 1649333471 Beth 5 4.78
author: David A. Bednar
name: Beth
average rating: 4.78
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/05
date added: 2024/12/05
shelves:
review:

]]> 77477 304 Anna Quindlen 0345468694 Beth 4 3.60 2002
author: Anna Quindlen
name: Beth
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2002
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/04
date added: 2024/12/04
shelves: audio-books, family, relationships
review:

]]> 36373413 The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society and Lilac Girls.

London 1940, bombs are falling. Emmy Lake is Doing Her Bit for the war effort, volunteering as a telephone operator with the Auxiliary Fire Services. When Emmy sees an advertisement for a job at the London Evening Chronicle, her dreams of becoming a Lady War Correspondent seem suddenly achievable. But the job turns out to be typist to the fierce and renowned advice columnist, Henrietta Bird. Emmy is disappointed, but gamely bucks up and buckles down.

Mrs Bird is very clear: Any letters containing Unpleasantness—must go straight in the bin. But when Emmy reads poignant letters from women who are lonely, may have Gone Too Far with the wrong men and found themselves in trouble, or who can’t bear to let their children be evacuated, she is unable to resist responding. As the German planes make their nightly raids, and London picks up the smoldering pieces each morning, Emmy secretly begins to write letters back to the women of all ages who have spilled out their troubles.

Prepare to fall head over heels with Emmy and her best friend, Bunty, who are spirited and gutsy, even in the face of events that bring a terrible blow. As the bombs continue to fall, the irrepressible Emmy keeps writing, and readers are transformed by AJ Pearce’s hilarious, heartwarming, and enormously moving tale of friendship, the kindness of strangers, and ordinary people in extraordinary times.]]> 281 A.J. Pearce 1501170066 Beth 2 3.76 2018
author: A.J. Pearce
name: Beth
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2018
rating: 2
read at: 2024/12/01
date added: 2024/12/01
shelves: audio-books, historical-fiction, war, relationships
review:
While this book was well written and easy to 'read' (listen to), I did not like Emmy. Almost any choice she made I thought 'No! don't do that!' and then (SPOILER ALERT) she gets away with it and everything turns out well....for her. No life lessons here. I didn't know it was first in a series, I won't be looking for anymore, although I might give the author another try sans Emmy Lake.
]]> 187016422 The Chicken Sisters.

Esther Larson has been cooking for funerals in the Northwoods of Wisconsin for seventy years. Known locally as the “funeral ladies,â€� she and her cohort have worked hard to keep the mourners of Ellerie County fed—it is her firm belief that there is very little a warm casserole and a piece of cherry pie can’t fix. But, after falling for an internet scam that puts her home at risk, the proud Larson family matriarch is the one in need of help these days. Iris, Esther’s whip-smart Gen Z granddaughter, would do anything for her family and her community.

As she watches her friends and family move out of their lakeside town onto bigger and better things, Iris wonders why she feels so left behind in the place she is desperate to make her home. But when Cooper Welsh shows up, she finally starts to feel like she’s found the missing piece of her puzzle. Cooper is dealing with becoming a legal guardian to his younger half-sister after his beloved stepmother dies. While their celebrity-chef father is focused on his booming career and top-ranked television show, Cooper is still hurting from a public tragedy he witnessed last year as a paramedic and finding it hard to cope. With Iris in the gorgeous Ellerie County, though, he hopes he might finally find the home he’s been looking for.

It doesn’t seem like a community cookbook could possibly solve their problems, especially one where casseroles have their own section and cream of chicken soup mix is the most frequently used ingredient. But when you mix the can-do spirit of Midwestern grandmothers with the stubborn hope of a boy raised by food plus a dash of long-awaited forgiveness—things might just turn out okay. Includes Recipes   ]]> 272 Claire Swinarski 0063319888 Beth 4 coping, family, relationships 3.69 2024
author: Claire Swinarski
name: Beth
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/24
date added: 2024/11/26
shelves: coping, family, relationships
review:
Under the guise of a simple story about a decades old friendship circle of church ladies is a deeper tale of motherhood and sisterhood, PTSD, parental neglect and abandonment, internet scam....well woven and well told
]]> 11196702
Filled with nonstop action and told in Matthew Reilly’s characteristically white-knuckle prose, Scarecrow Returns is a work of gripping suspense and complete exhilaration.]]> 500 Matthew Reilly 1416577688 Beth 3 4.23 2012
author: Matthew Reilly
name: Beth
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2012
rating: 3
read at: 2012/09/02
date added: 2024/11/23
shelves: audio-books, espionage, adventure
review:
Adventure packed from the beginning. More language and violence than I like, but the hero is a man of integrity, honor and loyalty. Sounds like a series, but I would guess other books would be repetitious. The underlying plot is a bit unsettling and probebly closer to true than any of us would care to beleive.
]]> 210693908
We came into being the day Becca Valentine was born. We’ve been by her side ever since. What she doesn’t know yet, is that one day she might become our mother.

Then two men come into her life. Both seeking her heart. And then we realise: everything rests on Becca’s love story. Because one of the men is Lucy and Thomas’s father. And the other is mine and Samuel’s. And there’s simply no way we can all be born.

We all want her to make the right choice. We all want to be born. To hold her hand one day. To feel her stroke our hair. To call her our mother.

Then we discover there is something we can do. We can change Fate. But we only have a single chance each. How would you make sure you were born? And what if doing that isn’t what’s best for the person you already love the most in the world â€� your mother?]]> 290 Laura Pearson 1836034482 Beth 4
"No one makes it through life without feeling pain."

"Doing the right thing,the kind thing is more important than anything else. Even if it means shooting yourself in the foot. (Even if it means you'll never get to live at all)"]]> 4.19 2024
author: Laura Pearson
name: Beth
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/19
date added: 2024/11/19
shelves: audio-books, family, motherhood, relationships
review:
Such an interesting concept: unborn spirits watching their potential parents, dreaming of their own births, and what life on earth with a body that can smell, taste, and feel. Not a foreign thought to me at all.

"No one makes it through life without feeling pain."

"Doing the right thing,the kind thing is more important than anything else. Even if it means shooting yourself in the foot. (Even if it means you'll never get to live at all)"
]]> 15781725
Virginia, 1852. Seventeen-year-old Josephine Bell decides to run from the failing tobacco farm where she is a slave and nurse to her ailing mistress, the aspiring artist Lu Anne Bell.

New York City, 2004. Lina Sparrow, an ambitious first-year associate in an elite law firm, is given a difficult, highly sensitive assignment that could make her career: she must find the "perfect plaintiff" to lead a historic class-action lawsuit worth trillions of dollars in reparations for descendants of American slaves.

It is through her father, the renowned artist Oscar Sparrow, that Lina discovers Josephine Bell and a controversy roiling the art world: are the iconic paintings long ascribed to Lu Anne Bell really the work of her house slave, Josephine? A descendant of Josephine's would be the perfect face for the reparations lawsuit - if Lina can find one. While following the runaway girl's faint trail through old letters and plantation records, Lina finds herself questioning her own family history and the secrets that her father has never revealed: How did Lina's mother die? And why will he never speak about her?

Moving between antebellum Virginia and modern-day New York, this searing, suspenseful and heartbreaking tale of art and history, love and secrets, explores what it means to repair a wrong and asks whether truth is sometimes more important than justice.]]> 370 Tara Conklin 0062207393 Beth 4 The undertaker/underground RR conductor

Interesting story that bounces back and forth between Josephine, a young slave girl and Lena, a young lawyer working on a slavery reparations case and searching for a descendant of slavery to be the plaintiff in the lawsuit.
Lena is dealing at the same time with her own family drama, and there is an Art mystery included also.]]> 3.74 2013
author: Tara Conklin
name: Beth
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/14
date added: 2024/11/14
shelves: audio-books, historical-fiction, racial-relationships, relationships
review:
"Slavery breeds nothing but sloth and degradation among the owners, and it is the greatest hypocrisy that extends if still within our (or any) national borders."
The undertaker/underground RR conductor

Interesting story that bounces back and forth between Josephine, a young slave girl and Lena, a young lawyer working on a slavery reparations case and searching for a descendant of slavery to be the plaintiff in the lawsuit.
Lena is dealing at the same time with her own family drama, and there is an Art mystery included also.
]]> 58195740 Miranda Brooks grew up in the stacks of her eccentric uncle Billy's bookstore, solving the inventive scavenger hunts he created just for her. But on Miranda's twelfth birthday, Billy has a mysterious falling-out with her mother and suddenly disappears from Miranda's life. She doesn't hear about him again until sixteen years later when she receives unexpected news: Billy has died and left her Prospero Books, which is teetering on bankruptcy, and one final scavenger hunt.
When Miranda returns home to Los Angeles and to Prospero Books—now as its owner—she finds clues that Billy has hidden for her inside novels on the store's shelves, in locked drawers of his apartment upstairs, in the name of the store itself. Miranda becomes determined to save Prospero Books and to solve Billy's last scavenger hunt. She soon finds herself drawn into a journey where she meets people from Billy's past, people whose stories reveal a history that Miranda's mother has kept hidden—and the terrible secret that tore her family apart.
Bighearted and trenchantly observant, The Bookshop of Yesterdays is a lyrical story of family, love and the healing power of community. It's a love letter to reading and bookstores, and a testament to how our histories shape who we become.

Duration: 11:39:52]]> 12 Amy Meyerson 1488204756 Beth 4 3.39 2018
author: Amy Meyerson
name: Beth
average rating: 3.39
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2019/01/20
date added: 2024/11/14
shelves:
review:

]]> 210214214
Something old, something new, something stolen�?

Gina Knight is looking forward to the prospect of retirement with her husband of forty-three years. Until, to her surprise, said husband decides he needs to 'find himself' � alone � and disappears to Santa Fe, leaving divorce papers in his wake.

Now Gina needs a new role in life, not to mention somewhere to live, so she applies for the position of Companion to elderly Dorothy Reed. At eighty-nine, ‘Dotâ€� needs someone to help her around the house â€� or at least, her family seems to think so. Her companion’s first role would be to accompany Dot for a week-long extravagant wedding party.

But when Georgina arrives at the large Norfolk estate where the wedding will take place, she quickly discovers Dot has an ulterior motive for hiring her. While the other guests are busy sipping champagne and playing croquet, Dot needs Georgina to help her solve a mystery � about a missing painting, which she believes is hidden somewhere in the house.

Because, after all, who would suspect two old ladies of getting up to mischief?]]> 282 Kate Galley 1835338607 Beth 4 audio-books A fun read! (Or listen ;-) 3.92 2024
author: Kate Galley
name: Beth
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/06
date added: 2024/11/12
shelves: audio-books
review:
A fun read! (Or listen ;-)
]]> 19355355
What none of them could have known was how transformative both the trip and the bonds that develop between them would prove, driving each to create a new destiny together.]]> 362 Catherine Ryan Hyde 1477820019 Beth 5 Emory

Wow! CRH does it again. I have seen less favorable reviews, but this book really resonated with me. Many connections for me.
Kathy, have you read this one? Let me know if I should send you this one. Yosemite and another destination that I won't name cuz it would be a spoiler. I started to cry when I realized where they were.]]> 4.04 2014
author: Catherine Ryan Hyde
name: Beth
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2014
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/04
date added: 2024/11/04
shelves: family, favorite-authors, glad-i-read-it, relationships
review:
"I've seen a lot of people walk a lot of roads. Some not so happy. And it makes them what they are. So if you run around putting a pillow under people to cushion their fall...well, I'm just not sure it's quite the favor we think it is."
Emory

Wow! CRH does it again. I have seen less favorable reviews, but this book really resonated with me. Many connections for me.
Kathy, have you read this one? Let me know if I should send you this one. Yosemite and another destination that I won't name cuz it would be a spoiler. I started to cry when I realized where they were.
]]> 203931805 From beloved CBS Sunday Morning correspondent Mo Rocca, author of New York Times bestseller Mobituaries, comes an inspiring collection of stories that celebrates the triumphs of people who made their biggest marks late in life.

Eighty has been the new sixty for about twenty years now. In fact, there have always been late-in-life achievers, those who declined to go into decline just because they were eligible for social security. Journalist, humorist, and history buff Mo Rocca and coauthor Jonathan Greenberg introduce us to the people past and present who peaked when they could have been puttering—breaking out as writers, selling out concert halls, attempting to set land-speed records—and in the case of one ninety-year tortoise, becoming a first-time father. (Take that, Al Pacino!)

In the vein of Mobituaries, Roctogenarians is a collection of entertaining and unexpected profiles of these unretired titans—some long gone (a cancer-stricken Henri Matisse, who began work on his celebrated cut-outs when he could no longer paint), some very much still living (Rita Moreno, the EGOT who’s still got it). The amazing cast of characters also includes Mary Church Terrell, who at eighty-six helped lead sit-ins at segregated Washington, DC, lunch counters in the 1950s, and Carol Channing, who married the love of her life at eighty-two. Then there’s Peter Mark Roget, who began working on his thesaurus in his twenties and completed it at seventy-three (because sometimes finding the right word takes time.)

With passion and wonder Rocca and Greenberg recount the stories of yesterday’s and today’s strongest finishers. Because with all due respect to the Golden Girls, some people will never be content sitting out on the lanai. (PS Actress Estelle Getty was sixty-two when she got her big break. And yes, she’s in the book.)]]> 384 Mo Rocca 1668052504 Beth 5 audio-books 3.95
author: Mo Rocca
name: Beth
average rating: 3.95
book published:
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/11/02
shelves: audio-books
review:
Great book and wonderful narration by one of the authors. I will look for Mobituaries.
]]> 41692854 From the bestselling author of The Ragged Edge of Night comes a powerful and poetic novel of survival and sacrifice on the American frontier.

Wyoming, 1870. For as long as they have lived on the frontier, the Bemis and Webber families have relied on each other. With no other settlers for miles, it is a matter of survival. But when Ernest Bemis finds his wife, Cora, in a compromising situation with their neighbor, he doesn’t think of survival. In one impulsive moment, a man is dead, Ernest is off to prison, and the women left behind are divided by rage and remorse.

Losing her husband to Cora’s indiscretion is another hardship for stoic Nettie Mae. But as a brutal Wyoming winter bears down, Cora and Nettie Mae have no choice but to come together as one family—to share the duties of working the land and raising their children. There’s Nettie Mae’s son, Clyde—no longer a boy, but not yet a man—who must navigate the road to adulthood without a father to guide him, and Cora’s daughter, Beulah, who is as wild and untamable as her prairie home.

Bound by the uncommon threads in their lives and the challenges that lie ahead, Cora and Nettie Mae begin to forge an unexpected sisterhood. But when a love blossoms between Clyde and Beulah, bonds are once again tested, and these two resilient women must finally decide whether they can learn to trust each other—or else risk losing everything they hold dear.]]> 497 Olivia Hawker 1542091136 Beth 0 to-read 4.19 2019
author: Olivia Hawker
name: Beth
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 40012112 From New York Times bestselling author Catherine Ryan Hyde comes an uplifting and poignant novel about friendship, trust, and facing your fears.

No longer tolerating her husband’s borderline abuse, Faith escapes to her parentsâ€� California beach house to plan her next move. She never dreamed her new chapter would involve befriending Sarah, a fourteen-year-old on the run from her father and reeling from her mother’s sudden and suspicious death.

While Sarah’s grandmother scrambles to get custody, Faith is charged with spiriting the girl away on a journey that will restore her Sarah implores Faith to take her to Falkner’s Midnight Sun, the prized black mare that her father sold out from under her. Sarah shares an unbreakable bond with Midnight and can’t bear to be apart from her. Throughout the sweltering summer, as they follow Midnight from show to show, Sarah comes to terms with what she witnessed on the terrible night her mother died.

But the journey is far from over. Faith must learn the value of trusting her instincts—and realize that the key to her future, and Sarah’s, is in her hands.]]> 338 Catherine Ryan Hyde 1503959864 Beth 4 Good quote:
"I think very often in life we do something important for someone else for no better reason than that thy need us to. And really, when you think about it...what more reason is needed?" Estelle]]> 4.23 2018
author: Catherine Ryan Hyde
name: Beth
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2023/03/28
date added: 2024/10/26
shelves:
review:
How unexpcted. Probably the first Ryan Hyde that didn't automatically get 5 stars and it's a horse story! I'm a bckyard pleasure, trail horse kind of gal so the Dressage didn't grab me. As usual, tho, she creates a good story with well-defined characters. My first horse (1967) was 1/2 of a $200.00 grade mare who ended up being pregnant and dropped a handsome colt 7 months later ( to the frustration of the dealer who sold her to us that he had not charged us more) I had to do some on- line searching to see that Midnight's 'bargain' price of $35,000 was not at all fictitious. A different world than when I was involved with horses.
Good quote:
"I think very often in life we do something important for someone else for no better reason than that thy need us to. And really, when you think about it...what more reason is needed?" Estelle
]]> 20518822 “The Midnight Plan of the Repo Man introduces my favorite kind of flawed cynical protagonist in Ruddy McCann, former football star, now Repo Man in a small town full of memorable weirdos. It's suspenseful, action-packed, romantic, and above all, truly funny.  I loved it.”—Nelson DeMille, New York Times bestselling author

Ruddy McCann, former college football star, has experienced a seismic drop in popularity; he is now Kalkaska, Michigan’s full-time repo man and part-time bar bouncer. His best friend is his low-energy Basset hound Jake, with whom he shares a simple life of stealing cars.

Simple, that is, until Ruddy starts hearing a voice in his head.

The voice introduces himself as Alan Lottner, a dead realtor. Ruddy isn’t sure if Alan is real, or if he’s losing his mind. To complicate matters, it turns out Katie, the girl he’s fallen for, is Alan’s daughter.

When Alan demands Ruddy find his murderers, Ruddy decides a voice in your head seeking vengeance is best ignored.  When Alan also demands he clean up his act, and apartment, Ruddy tells him to back off, but where can a voice in your head go?

With a sweet romance, a murder mystery, a lazy but loyal dog and a town full of cabin-fevered characters you can’t help but love, New York Times bestselling novelist W. Bruce Cameron’s The Midnight Plan of the Repo Man is yet another laugh-out-loud, keep-you-up-late, irresistible read. ]]> 336 W. Bruce Cameron 0765377489 Beth 4 Fun 4.00 2014
author: W. Bruce Cameron
name: Beth
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/25
date added: 2024/10/26
shelves: audio-books, family, mystery, relationships
review:
Fun
]]> 6540352 Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Now, in this spellbinding historical novel, we meet the young girl whose bright spirit sent her on an unforgettable trip down the rabbit hole–and the grown woman whose story is no less enthralling.

But oh my dear, I am tired of being Alice in Wonderland. Does it sound ungrateful?

Alice Liddell Hargreaves’s life has been a richly woven tapestry: As a young woman, wife, mother, and widow, she’s experienced intense passion, great privilege, and greater tragedy. But as she nears her eighty-first birthday, she knows that, to the world around her, she is and will always be only “Alice.â€� Her life was permanently dog-eared at one fateful moment in her tenth year–the golden summer day she urged a grown-up friend to write down one of his fanciful stories.

That story, a wild tale of rabbits, queens, and a precocious young child, becomes a sensation the world over. Its author, a shy, stuttering Oxford professor, does more than immortalize Alice–he changes her life forever. But even he cannot stop time, as much as he might like to. And as Alice’s childhood slips away, a peacetime of glittering balls and royal romances gives way to the urgent tide of war. 

For Alice, the stakes could not be higher, for she is the mother of three grown sons, soldiers all. Yet even as she stands to lose everything she treasures, one part of her will always be the determined, undaunted Alice of the story, who discovered that life beyond the rabbit hole was an astonishing journey.

A love story and a literary mystery, Alice I Have Been brilliantly blends fact and fiction to capture the passionate spirit of a woman who was truly worthy of her fictional alter ego, in a world as captivating as the Wonderland only she could inspire.]]> 345 Melanie Benjamin 0385344139 Beth 3
But, I will definitely read Alice soon]]> 3.63 2009
author: Melanie Benjamin
name: Beth
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2009
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/23
date added: 2024/10/23
shelves: audio-books, family, historical-fiction, motherhood, relationships, sisters
review:
31/2 * maybe 4 because the narration was excellent. What a great idea for a novel. Let's meet the young lady who inspired Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. Although apparently based on some suggested but unproven facts and events, the story is darker than I would like or want to read. Also, this is not the first book featuring a volatile mother-daughter relationship in which the daughter becomes her mother :-(

But, I will definitely read Alice soon
]]> 123200277
Texas hill country, 1868. As nineteen-year-old Benjamin Shreve tends to business in his workshop, he witnesses a stagecoach strand a passenger. When the man, a treasure hunter, persuades Benjamin to help track down the vanished coach—and a mysterious fortune left aboard—Benjamin is drawn into a drama whose scope he could never have imagined, for they discover on reaching the coach that its passengers include Nell, a pregnant young woman, and her four-year-old son, Tot, who are fleeing Nell’s brutal husband and his murderous brothers.

Having told the Freedmen’s Bureau the whereabouts of her husband’s gang—a sadistic group wanted for countless acts of harassment and violence against Black citizens—Nell is in grave danger. If her husband catches her, he will kill her and take their son. Learning of their plight, Benjamin offers to deliver Nell and Tot to a distant port on the Gulf of Mexico, where they can board a ship to safety. He is joined in this chivalrous act by two other companions: the treasure hunter whose stranding began this endeavor and a restless Black Seminole who is a veteran of wars on both sides of the Rio Grande and who has an escape plan of his own.

​Fraught with jeopardy from the outset, the trek across Texas becomes still more dangerous as buried secrets, including a cursed necklace, emerge. And even as Benjamin falls in love with Nell and imagines a life as Tot’s father, vengeful pursuers are never far behind. With its vivid characters and expansive canvas, The Madstone calls to mind Lonesome Dove, yet Elizabeth Crook’s new novel is a singular achievement. Told in Benjamin’s resolute and unforgettable voice, it is full of eccentric action, unrelenting peril, and droll humor—a thrilling and beautifully rendered story of three people sharing a hazardous and defining journey that will forever bind them together.]]> 288 Elizabeth Crook 0316564346 Beth 5 4.02 2023
author: Elizabeth Crook
name: Beth
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/16
date added: 2024/10/20
shelves: adventure, audio-books, historical-fiction, motherhood, racial-relationships
review:
This takes place in Texas in the late 1800s, rugged and wild times, and characters. In spite of some dark events handled in the book, it is beautifully, almost poetically written, and the narration by Will Collyer was perfect. I felt dust in my nose, hail stones on my back and cactus spikes in my knees.
]]> 40740914
Because how do you decide what makes life worth living? How do you separate out what you can do without from what you hold dear? In dealing with the Devil our narrator will take himself â€� and his beloved cat â€� to the brink. Genki Kawamura's If Cats Disappeared from the World is a story of loss and reconciliation, of one man’s journey to discover what really matters in modern life.

This beautiful tale is translated from the Japanese by Eric Selland, who also translated The Guest Cat by Takashi Hiraide. Fans of The Guest Cat and The Travelling Cat Chronicles will also surely love If Cats Disappeared from the World.]]> 202 Genki Kawamura 1509889175 Beth 5
"One thing you realize when you have lived with a cat for a long time is that you may think you own them, but that's not the way it is. Cats simply allow us the pleasure of their company.]]> 3.77 2012
author: Genki Kawamura
name: Beth
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2012
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/12
date added: 2024/10/12
shelves: animal-stories, audio-books, family, humor, relationships
review:
What a fun, quirky book! The Devil, an interesting concept here, comes to a young man who has just learned that he will die from an untreatable brain tumor. The sell your soul to the Devil offer is, for each day added to his life he must choose something to be eliminated from the world. For a couple of days, he finds out how the world is affected by the items he chooses to eliminate. When Aloha (the devil??) says the next thing to eliminate is cats, he rebels and chooses to die. Along the way we learn about the young man and his relationship with his deceased mother and his estranged father, and as we learn, he learns. In his words, what matters is not how long we live, but HOW we live.

"One thing you realize when you have lived with a cat for a long time is that you may think you own them, but that's not the way it is. Cats simply allow us the pleasure of their company.
]]> 154462576 New York Times bestselling author of The Bear and the Nightingale

January 1918. Laura Iven was a revered field nurse until she was wounded and discharged from the medical corps, leaving behind a brother still fighting in Flanders. Now home in Halifax, Canada, she receives word of Freddie’s death in combat, along with his personal effects—but something doesn’t make sense. Determined to uncover the truth, Laura returns to Belgium as a volunteer at a private hospital. Soon after arriving, she hears whispers about haunted trenches, and a strange hotelier whose wine gives soldiers the gift of oblivion. Could Freddie have escaped the battlefield, only to fall prey to something—or someone—else?

November 1917. Freddie Iven awakens after an explosion to find himself trapped in an overturned pillbox with a wounded enemy soldier, a German by the name of Hans Winter. Against all odds, the two men form an alliance and succeed in clawing their way out. Unable to bear the thought of returning to the killing fields, especially on opposite sides, they take refuge with a mysterious man who seems to have the power to make the hellscape of the trenches disappear.

As shells rain down on Flanders, and ghosts move among those yet living, Laura’s and Freddie’s deepest traumas are reawakened. Now they must decide whether their world is worth salvaging—or better left behind entirely.]]> 325 Katherine Arden 0593128257 Beth 0 to-read 3.96 2024
author: Katherine Arden
name: Beth
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 158649513 Orphan Train meets Before We Were Yours meets Water for Elephants in this compelling multigenerational novel of survival, love, and the families we make.

In 1924, four-year-old Cecily Larson’s mother reluctantly drops her off at an orphanage in Chicago, promising to be back once she’s made enough money to support both Cecily and herself. But she never returns, and shortly after high-spirited Cecily turns seven, she is sold to a traveling circus to perform as the “little sisterâ€� to glamorous bareback rider Isabelle DuMonde. With Isabelle and the rest of the circus, Cecily finally feels she’s found the family she craves. But as the years go by, the cracks in her little world begin to show. And when teenage Cecily meets and falls in love with a young roustabout named Lucky, she finds her life thrown onto an entirely unexpected—and dangerous—course.

In 2015, Cecily is now 94 and living a quiet life in Minnesota, with her daughter, granddaughter, and great-grandson. But when her family decides to surprise her with an at-home DNA test, the unexpected results not only bring to light the tragic love story that Cecily has kept hidden for decades but also throw into question everything about the family she’s raised and claimed as her own for nearly seventy years. Cecily and everyone in her life must now decide who they really are and what family—and forgiveness—really mean.

Sweeping through a long period of contemporary history, The Hidden Life of Cecily Larson is an immersive, compelling, and entertaining family drama centered around one remarkable woman and her determination to survive.]]> 384 Ellen Baker 0063351196 Beth 4 3.84 2024
author: Ellen Baker
name: Beth
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/08
date added: 2024/10/12
shelves: audio-books, family, motherhood, relationships, racial-relationships
review:

]]> 306357 481 Cokie Roberts 006078234X Beth 0 audio-books 3.83 2008
author: Cokie Roberts
name: Beth
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2008
rating: 0
read at: 2024/10/12
date added: 2024/10/12
shelves: audio-books
review:

]]> 15957 352 Ann Patchett 1841150509 Beth 4 some favorite quotes:
"To be truly brave, I believe a person has to be more than a little stupid. If you know how hard or dangerous something was going to be at the onset, chances are you would never do it...."

"Do you miss your mother?" I asked her. "Every day of my life', she said. "Every single minute."
yes, me too.
Kathy, have you read this? Shall I send it to you, or hold on for your next visit to our suite ;-)]]> 3.81 1992
author: Ann Patchett
name: Beth
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1992
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/03
date added: 2024/10/06
shelves: family, favorite-authors, motherhood, relationships
review:
How have i missed this one? Ann Patchett's first novel? No spoilers here, but I was a little concerned about how she would end (and honestly, I am not sure how I feel about the way it did end) it so I wasn't in a hurry to finish, but could hardly put it down. The characters are beautifully crafted and consistently varied. Boy, can Ann Patchett create a world. I wouldn't say I absolutely loved it, but it is so well written I really enjoyed reading it. Maybe I'll go back and add a 5th star.
some favorite quotes:
"To be truly brave, I believe a person has to be more than a little stupid. If you know how hard or dangerous something was going to be at the onset, chances are you would never do it...."

"Do you miss your mother?" I asked her. "Every day of my life', she said. "Every single minute."
yes, me too.
Kathy, have you read this? Shall I send it to you, or hold on for your next visit to our suite ;-)
]]> 8127 Anne of Green Gables is also a wonderful portrait of a time, a place, a family� and, most of all, love.

WITH AN AFTERWORD BY JENNIFER LEE CARELL]]> 320 L.M. Montgomery 0451528824 Beth 4 4.30 1908
author: L.M. Montgomery
name: Beth
average rating: 4.30
book published: 1908
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/10/02
shelves: audio-books, classics, family, relationships, series
review:

]]> 121749
Narnia . . . where animals talk . . . where trees walk . . . where a battle is about to begin.

A prince denied his rightful throne gathers an army in a desperate attempt to rid his land of a false king. But in the end, it is a battle of honor between two men alone that will decide the fate of an entire world.

Prince Caspian is the fourth book in C.S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia, a series that has become part of the canon of classic literature, drawing readers of all ages into a magical land with unforgettable characters for over fifty years. This is a stand-alone novel, but if you would like to see more of Lucy and Edmund’s adventures, read The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, the fifth book in The Chronicles of Narnia.]]> 240 C.S. Lewis 000720230X Beth 4 On to the Dawn Treader 3.99 1951
author: C.S. Lewis
name: Beth
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1951
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/20
date added: 2024/09/20
shelves: fantasy, adventure, time-travel
review:
On to the Dawn Treader
]]> 27161156 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780062300546.

Hillbilly Elegy recounts J.D. Vance's powerful origin story...

From a former marine and Yale Law School graduate now serving as a U.S. Senator from Ohio and the Republican Vice Presidential candidate for the 2024 election, an incisive account of growing up in a poor Rust Belt town that offers a broader, probing look at the struggles of America's white working class.

Hillbilly Elegy is a passionate and personal analysis of a culture in crisis—that of white working-class Americans. The disintegration of this group, a process that has been slowly occurring now for more than forty years, has been reported with growing frequency and alarm, but has never before been written about as searingly from the inside. J. D. Vance tells the true story of what a social, regional, and class decline feels like when you were born with it hung around your neck.

The Vance family story begins hopefully in postwar America. J. D.'s grandparents were "dirt poor and in love," and moved north from Kentucky's Appalachia region to Ohio in the hopes of escaping the dreadful poverty around them. They raised a middle-class family, and eventually one of their grandchildren would graduate from Yale Law School, a conventional marker of success in achieving generational upward mobility. But as the family saga of Hillbilly Elegy plays out, we learn that J.D.'s grandparents, aunt, uncle, and, most of all, his mother struggled profoundly with the demands of their new middle-class life, never fully escaping the legacy of abuse, alcoholism, poverty, and trauma so characteristic of their part of America. With piercing honesty, Vance shows how he himself still carries around the demons of his chaotic family history.

A deeply moving memoir, with its share of humor and vividly colorful figures, Hillbilly Elegy is the story of how upward mobility really feels. And it is an urgent and troubling meditation on the loss of the American dream for a large segment of this country.]]> 264 J.D. Vance Beth 3 3.81 2016
author: J.D. Vance
name: Beth
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2016
rating: 3
read at: 2024/09/19
date added: 2024/09/19
shelves:
review:
Will you believe me when I say I put this book on my shelf I had no idea who the author was?
]]> 203956621 The New York Times bestselling author, governor of South Dakota, and former congresswoman shares eye-opening realities of DC dysfunction, lessons from leading her state through unprecedented challenge, and how we seize this moment to move America forward.    Any elected official can talk about how broken our government is. But their solutions always seem to involve more money, new programs—and reelection to another term. Few offer an unfiltered glimpse into how government actually works, empowering citizens with the knowledge to be part of the solution.   Governor Kristi Noem never planned on being in politics. But her concern for our nation compelled her, on a local, national, and global level. Because she took a different path into public service, as a concerned mom and rancher, her insights help every citizen understand how positive change really happens, despite the dysfunction in Washington DC. Governor Noem explains how the country is not going back to the Republican party of the 2000s. And that’s a good thing. This book is packed with eye-opening stories and practical lessons from the front lines of the battle. And she names names.  â€� A lot has changed since 2016, and based on her accomplishments in Congress and as Governor, no one is better equipped than Kristi Noem to explain the tremendous opportunities this opens up for every American.]]> 272 Kristi Noem 1546008160 Beth 0 audio-books 3.50 2024
author: Kristi Noem
name: Beth
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at: 2024/09/19
date added: 2024/09/19
shelves: audio-books
review:

]]> 9924 The Grass Harp tells the story of three endearing misfits--an orphaned boy and two whimsical old ladies--who one day take up residence in a tree house. AS they pass sweet yet hazardous hours in a china tree, The Grass Harp manages to convey all the pleasures and responsibilities of freedom. But most of all it teaches us about the sacredness of love, "that love is a chain of love, as nature is a chain of life."

This volume also includes Capote's A Tree of Night and Other Stories, which the Washington Post called "unobstrusively beautiful...a superlative book."]]> 272 Truman Capote 0679745572 Beth 2 audio-books, short-stories 4.01 1956
author: Truman Capote
name: Beth
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1956
rating: 2
read at: 2024/09/19
date added: 2024/09/19
shelves: audio-books, short-stories
review:
Capote is talented with description, and the stories are well narrated, but I didn't really like any of them. The Grass Harp a bit.
]]> 20256635
When Wes Carver returns to Black River, he carries two things in the cab of his truck: his wife's ashes and a letter from the prison parole board. The convict who held him hostage during a riot, twenty years ago, is being considered for release.

Wes has been away from Black River ever since the riot. He grew up in this small Montana town, encircled by mountains, and, like his father before him and most of the men there, he made his living as a Corrections Officer. A talented, natural fiddler, he found solace and joy in his music. But during that riot Bobby Williams changed everything for Wes � undermining his faith and taking away his ability to play.

How can a man who once embodied evil ever come to good? How can he pay for such crimes with anything but his life? As Wes considers his own choices and grieves for all he's lost, he must decide what he believes and whether he can let Williams walk away.

With spare prose and stunning detail, S. M. Hulse drops us deep into the heart and darkness of an American town.]]> 240 S.M. Hulse 0544309871 Beth 3 3 and a half, maybe 4. 3.95 2015
author: S.M. Hulse
name: Beth
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2015
rating: 3
read at: 2024/09/01
date added: 2024/09/09
shelves: audio-books, coping, family, relationships
review:
3 and a half, maybe 4.
]]> 41739312 The dramatic true story of Marie-Madeleine Fourcade--codename Hedgehog--the woman who headed the largest spy network in occupied France during World War II, from the New York Times bestselling author of Citizens of London and Those Angry Days.

In 1941, a thirty-one-year-old Frenchwoman born to privilege and known for her beauty and glamour became the leader of a vast Resistance organization--the only woman to hold such a role. Brave, independent, and a lifelong rebel against her country's conservative, patriarchal society, Marie-Madeleine Fourcade was temperamentally made for the job. Her group's name was Alliance, but the Gestapo dubbed it Noah's Ark because its agents used the names of animals as their aliases. Marie-Madeleine's codename was Hedgehog.

No other French spy network lasted as long or supplied as much crucial intelligence as Alliance--and as a result, the Gestapo pursued them relentlessly, capturing, torturing, and executing hundreds of its three thousand agents, including her own lover and many of her key spies. Fourcade had to move her headquarters every week, constantly changing her hair color, clothing, and identity, yet was still imprisoned twice by the Nazis. Both times she managed to escape, once by stripping naked and forcing her thin body through the bars of her cell. The mother of two young children, Marie-Madeleine hardly saw them during the war, so entirely engaged was she in her spy network, preferring they live far from her and out of harm's way.

In Madame Fourcade's Secret War, Lynne Olson tells the tense, fascinating story of Fourcade and Alliance against the background of the developing war that split France in two and forced its citizens to live side by side with their hated German occupiers.]]> 464 Lynne Olson Beth 4 My advice would be to read rather than listen, I had trouble with the names.]]> 4.19 2019
author: Lynne Olson
name: Beth
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/30
date added: 2024/08/30
shelves: audio-books, espionage, history, non-fiction, war
review:
Fascinating history of the French resistance to the Nazi invasion of France and the brave women and men who risked and sometimes gave their lives to free France.
My advice would be to read rather than listen, I had trouble with the names.
]]> 128940 196 Sandra Dallas 0312147015 Beth 4 3.77 1995
author: Sandra Dallas
name: Beth
average rating: 3.77
book published: 1995
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/29
date added: 2024/08/29
shelves: audio-books, family, motherhood, relationships, girlfriend-books, historical-fiction
review:
Fun story about a women's quilting circle in Kansas during the dust bowl. A bit of a mystery twist
]]> 58671463
Never knowing his parents, eleven-year-old Stewie Little and his brother have been raised on a farm by their older sister. Stewie steadfastly tends the chickens left by his beloved late grandmother. And every day Stewie goes door to door selling fresh eggs from his wagon—a routine with a surprise just around the corner. It’s his new customer, Marilyn. She’s prickly and guarded, yet comfortably familiar—she reminds the grieving Stewie so much of the grandmother he misses more than he can express.

Marilyn has a reason for keeping her distance: a secret no one knows about. Her survival tactic is to draw a line between herself and other people—one that Stewie is determined to cross. As their visits become more frequent, a complicated but deeply rooted relationship grows. That’s when Stewie discovers how much more there is to Marilyn, to her past, and to challenges that become more pressing each day. But whatever difficult times lie ahead, Stewie learns that although he can’t fix everything for Marilyn or himself, at least he’s no longer alone.]]> 304 Catherine Ryan Hyde 154202157X Beth 4 family, relationships 4.35 2022
author: Catherine Ryan Hyde
name: Beth
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/21
date added: 2024/08/21
shelves: family, relationships
review:
I'm never disappointed in a Catherine Ryan Hyde book. This is a lovely, feel-good story.
]]> 10914 Sometimes finding your own voice
is a matter of listening to the heart....
Jodi Picoult's powerful novel portrays an emotionally charged marriage that changes course in one explosive moment....For years, Jane Jones has lived in the shadow of her husband, renowned San Diego oceanographer Oliver Jones. But during an escalating argument, Jane turns on him with an alarming volatility. In anger and fear, Jane leaves with their teenage daughter, Rebecca, for a cross-country odyssey charted by letters from her brother Joley, guiding them to his Massachusetts apple farm, where surprising self-discoveries await. Now Oliver, an expert at tracking humpback whales across vast oceans, will search for his wife across a continent -- and find a new way to see the world, his family, and himself: through her eyes.]]> 346 Jodi Picoult 0743431014 Beth 2 3.21 1992
author: Jodi Picoult
name: Beth
average rating: 3.21
book published: 1992
rating: 2
read at: 2024/08/14
date added: 2024/08/15
shelves: audio-books, family, favorite-authors, motherhood, relationships
review:
Very disappointing. Unnecessary graphic sex and lack of morals and much less of the interesting factual information I have come to look forward to in Picoult's novels. Her storytelling is still spot on, but if her trend will be in this direction, sadly, I won't be looking for any more of her books.
]]> 208840291 From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Braiding Sweetgrass, a bold and inspiring vision for how to orient our lives around gratitude, reciprocity, and community, based on the lessons of the natural world.

As indigenous scientist and author of Braiding Sweetgrass Robin Wall Kimmerer harvests serviceberries alongside the birds, she considers the ethic of reciprocity that lies at the heart of the gift economy. How, she asks, can we learn from indigenous wisdom and the plant world to reimagine what we value most? Our economy is rooted in scarcity, competition, and the hoarding of resources, and we have surrendered our values to a system that actively harms what we love.

Meanwhile, the serviceberry’s relationship with the natural world is an embodiment of reciprocity, interconnectedness, and gratitude. The tree distributes its wealth—its abundance of sweet, juicy berries—to meet the needs of its natural community. And this distribution insures its own survival. As Kimmerer explains, “Serviceberries show us another model, one based upon reciprocity, where wealth comes from the quality of your relationships, not from the illusion of self-sufficiency.”]]> 112 Robin Wall Kimmerer 1668072246 Beth 0 to-read 4.38 2024
author: Robin Wall Kimmerer
name: Beth
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 48132 My Family and Other Animals was intended to embrace the natural history of the island but ended up as a delightful account of Durrell’s family’s experiences, from the many eccentric hangers-on to the ceaseless procession of puppies, toads, scorpions, geckoes, ladybugs, glowworms, octopuses, bats, and butterflies into their home.]]> 273 Gerald Durrell 0142004413 Beth 3 took me a bit to get into the narration, but once in I quite enjoyed it. It may be better in print, although Spiro's conversations would be missed! I don't normally look for series and did not realize this is part of one, but at some point, if I remember, I will look for the next.
What a quirky family! I loved the freedom Gerry has to explore and collect his animal pets and specimens.
Jessica F. I think you would like this one from a natural point of view although not a social one. ]]> 4.19 1956
author: Gerald Durrell
name: Beth
average rating: 4.19
book published: 1956
rating: 3
read at: 2024/08/08
date added: 2024/08/09
shelves: animal-stories, audio-books, family, humor, memoir, relationships
review:
3 1/2 or even 3/4
took me a bit to get into the narration, but once in I quite enjoyed it. It may be better in print, although Spiro's conversations would be missed! I don't normally look for series and did not realize this is part of one, but at some point, if I remember, I will look for the next.
What a quirky family! I loved the freedom Gerry has to explore and collect his animal pets and specimens.
Jessica F. I think you would like this one from a natural point of view although not a social one.
]]> 35068849 Kari Byron—former host of the wildly popular, iconic cult classic MythBusters—shows how to crash test your way through life, no lab coat required.

Kari Byron’s story hasn’t been a straight line. She started out as a broke artist living in San Francisco, writing poems on a crowded bus on the way to one of her three jobs. Many curve balls, unexpected twists, and yes, literal and figurative explosions later, and she’s one of the world’s most respected women in science entertainment, blowing stuff up on national television and getting paid for it! In Crash Test Girl, Kari reveals her fascinating life story on the set of MythBusters and beyond. With her signature gusto and roll-up-your-sleeves enthusiasm, she invites readers behind the duct tape and the dynamite, to the unlikely friendships and low-budget sets that turned a crazy idea into a famously inventive show with a rabid fanbase.

The truth is, MythBusters was never meant to be a science show. But attaching a rocket to a car, riding a motorcycle on water, or lighting 500 pounds of coffee creamer on fire requires a decent understanding of chemistry, physics, and engineering. Thus, the cast and crew brought in the scientific method to work through each problem: Question. Hypothesize. Analyze. Experiment. Conclude. And as Kari came to learn in her own life, not only is the scientific method the best approach for busting myths, it’s also the perfect tool for solving everyday issues, including:

Career · Love · Creativity · Setbacks · Money · Sexuality · Depression · Bravery

Crash Test Girl reminds us that science is for everyone, as long as you’re willing to strap in, put on your safety goggles, hit a few walls, and learn from the results. Using a combination of methodical experimentation and unconventional creativity, you’ll come to the most important conclusion of all: In life, sometimes you crash and burn, but you can always crash and learn.]]> 254 Kari Byron 0062749781 Beth 3 Interesting story, entertainingly read by the author. Byron shares some wild experiences and the lessons she has learned along the way]]> 3.92 2018
author: Kari Byron
name: Beth
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2018
rating: 3
read at: 2024/07/28
date added: 2024/08/09
shelves: audio-books, memoir, relationships
review:
3 1/2
Interesting story, entertainingly read by the author. Byron shares some wild experiences and the lessons she has learned along the way
]]> 123036004 A four-year-old Mi’kmaq girl goes missing from the blueberry fields of Maine, sparking a tragic mystery that haunts the survivors, unravels a community, and remains unsolved for nearly fifty years.

July 1962. A Mi’kmaq family from Nova Scotia arrives in Maine to pick blueberries for the summer. Weeks later, four-year-old Ruthie, the family’s youngest child, vanishes. She is last seen by her six-year-old brother, Joe, sitting on a favorite rock at the edge of a berry field. Joe will remain distraught by his sister’s disappearance for years to come.

In Maine, a young girl named Norma grows up as the only child of an affluent family. Her father is emotionally distant, her mother frustratingly overprotective. Norma is often troubled by recurring dreams and visions that seem more like memories than imagination. As she grows older, Norma slowly comes to realize there is something her parents aren’t telling her. Unwilling to abandon her intuition, she will spend decades trying to uncover this family secret.

For readers of The Vanishing Half and Woman of Light, this showstopping debut by a vibrant new voice in fiction is a riveting novel about the search for truth, the shadow of trauma, and the persistence of love across time.]]> 307 Amanda Peters 1646221958 Beth 5 Excellent narration in the audio edition.]]> 4.04 2023
author: Amanda Peters
name: Beth
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2024/08/06
date added: 2024/08/06
shelves: audio-books, family, racial-relationships, relationships
review:
I avoided this book for a while, afraid it might be graphic, but I really enjoyed it. The story is told alternately by Rutie, the missing girl, and Joe, her next older brother. There is quite a bit of time mashing, but it is very well written, and I really loved it. Similar feeling to The Lowering Days, mostly because of location and Indigenous connection, I guess.
Excellent narration in the audio edition.
]]> 84119 The Horse and his Boy is a stirring and dramatic fantasy story that finds a young boy named Shasta on the run from his homeland with the talking horse, Bree. When the pair discover a deadly plot by the Calormen people to conquer the land of Narnia, the race is on to warn the inhabitants of the impending danger and to rescue them all from certain death.]]> 224 C.S. Lewis 0439861365 Beth 4
How often do we make our way through danger or hard times and must acknowledge we made it through because of HIM.

"Aslan was gone. But there was a brightness in the air and on the grass, and a joy in their hearts,which assured them that he had been no dream. "


On to Prince Caspian]]> 3.92 1954
author: C.S. Lewis
name: Beth
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1954
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/03
date added: 2024/08/03
shelves:
review:
Shasta describes his journey through Tha mountains along a steep drop off, unseen in the dark: " What luck that I hit it!--at least it wasn't luck at all really, it was Him. And now I'm in Narnia."

How often do we make our way through danger or hard times and must acknowledge we made it through because of HIM.

"Aslan was gone. But there was a brightness in the air and on the grass, and a joy in their hearts,which assured them that he had been no dream. "


On to Prince Caspian
]]> 77058 320 Dick Francis 0399136703 Beth 4 3.95 1991
author: Dick Francis
name: Beth
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1991
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/08/01
shelves: audio-books, mystery, pandemic
review:

]]> 103250 304 Dick Francis 0425198774 Beth 3 I miss getting a new Dick Francis book each October]]> 3.87 1981
author: Dick Francis
name: Beth
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1981
rating: 3
read at: 2024/07/24
date added: 2024/07/24
shelves:
review:
Twice read :-) (at least)
I miss getting a new Dick Francis book each October
]]> 134991320 0 Ursula K. Le Guin Beth 4 family, sci-fi
some good quotes:
" No cook was so talented that he could make dessert without the makings" true about just about anything ;-)

"The human being likes to be challenged, seeks freedom in adversity"

" Where were the workshops? The factories, the farmers, the craftsmen, the miners, the weavers, the chemist, the carvers, the dyers, the designers, the machines? Where were the hands of the people who made ( things) Out of sight. Somewhere else behind walls. the people in the shops were either buyers or sellers. They had no relation to the things but that of possession."

"...it was joy they were both after--the completeness of being. If you evade suffering, you also evade the chance of joy. Pleasure you may get, or pleasures, but you will not be fulfilled. You will not know what it is to come home." (2 Nephi 2:11)]]> 4.34 1974
author: Ursula K. Le Guin
name: Beth
average rating: 4.34
book published: 1974
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/21
date added: 2024/07/21
shelves: family, sci-fi
review:
I wish I had paid more attention to the time line and paid attention to which planet Shevek was on in each chapter.

some good quotes:
" No cook was so talented that he could make dessert without the makings" true about just about anything ;-)

"The human being likes to be challenged, seeks freedom in adversity"

" Where were the workshops? The factories, the farmers, the craftsmen, the miners, the weavers, the chemist, the carvers, the dyers, the designers, the machines? Where were the hands of the people who made ( things) Out of sight. Somewhere else behind walls. the people in the shops were either buyers or sellers. They had no relation to the things but that of possession."

"...it was joy they were both after--the completeness of being. If you evade suffering, you also evade the chance of joy. Pleasure you may get, or pleasures, but you will not be fulfilled. You will not know what it is to come home." (2 Nephi 2:11)
]]> 203098721 Brand new from the #1 bestselling author of The Last List of Mabel Beaumont comes a powerful story of memory, loss, love, and new beginnings�

When Shelley Woodhouse wakes up in hospital from a coma, the first thing she says is that her husband must be arrested.

He’s the reason she’s in here. She knows it. She remembers what he did. Clearly as anything.

But there are things Shelley has forgotten too, including parts of her childhood. And as those start to come back to her, so do other memories. Ones with the power to change everything.

But can she trust these new memories, or what anyone around her is telling her? And who is the mysterious hospital volunteer who brings her food and keeps making her smile? Is it possible to find your future when you're confused about your past?]]> 298 Laura Pearson 1785136429 Beth 4 Great narration.]]> 4.17 2024
author: Laura Pearson
name: Beth
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/20
date added: 2024/07/20
shelves: audio-books, family, relationships
review:
A very compelling story about a very sad statistic of our society.
Great narration.
]]> 23664710 “Why is this town called Mother’s Rest?â€�

That’s all Reacher wants to know. But no one will tell him. It’s a tiny place hidden in a thousand square miles of wheat fields, with a railroad stop, and sullen and watchful people, and a worried woman named Michelle Chang, who mistakes him for someone else: her missing partner in a private investigation she thinks must have started small and then turned lethal.

Reacher has no particular place to go, and all the time in the world to get there, and there’s something about Chang . . . so he teams up with her and starts to ask around. He thinks: How bad can this thing be? But before long he’s plunged into a desperate race through LA, Chicago, Phoenix, and San Francisco, and through the hidden parts of the internet, up against thugs and assassins every step of the way—right back to where he started, in Mother’s Rest, where he must confront the worst nightmare he could imagine.

Walking away would have been easier. But as always, Reacher’s rule is: If you want me to stop, you’re going to have to make me.]]> 428 Lee Child 0593073894 Beth 2 3.93 2015
author: Lee Child
name: Beth
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2015
rating: 2
read at: 2024/07/15
date added: 2024/07/16
shelves:
review:
The bad guys were just too evil
]]> 65215014 From Emmy-award winning actor, author, comedian, producer, and director Henry Winkler, a deeply thoughtful memoir of the lifelong effects of stardom and the struggle to become whole

Henry Winkler, launched into prominence by his role as “the Fonzâ€� in the beloved Happy Days, has transcended the role that made him who he is. Brilliant, funny, and widely regarded as the nicest man in Hollywood (though he would be the first to tell you that it’s simply not the case, he’s really just grateful to be here), Henry shares in this achingly vulnerable memoir the disheartening truth of his childhood, the difficulties of a life with severe dyslexia, the pressures of a role that takes on a life of its own, and the path forward once your wildest dream seems behind you.

Since the glorious era of Happy Days fame, Henry has endeared himself to new generations with roles in such adored shows as Arrested Development, Parks and Recreation, and Barry, where he’s been revealed as an actor with immense depth and pathos, a departure from the period of his life when he was so distinctly typecast as the Fonz that he could hardly find work.

Filled with profound heart, charm, and self-deprecating humor, Being Henry is a memoir about so much more than a life in Hollywood and the curse of stardom. It is a meaningful testament to the power of sharing truth and kindness and of finding fulfillment within yourself.]]> 246 Henry Winkler 1250888093 Beth 4 4.10 2023
author: Henry Winkler
name: Beth
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/07
date added: 2024/07/16
shelves:
review:
Fun to have Henry Winkler share his story.
]]> 72855100
The oldest sister, Maureen, yearns for a private retreat for her family before her children leave for college. The middle sister, Lydia, see the proceeds from a quick sale as the only solution to her overwhelming debt. Tyra, the youngest, longs for redemption after her drug conviction broke the family apart.

Over the course of a crisp Pacific Northwest spring, these three women who think they have nothing in common will try to once again become what they once were to each other: a family.]]> 9 Heidi Hostetter Beth 3 3.00 2015
author: Heidi Hostetter
name: Beth
average rating: 3.00
book published: 2015
rating: 3
read at: 2024/06/01
date added: 2024/07/03
shelves:
review:

]]> 45722349 Various Beth 3 3.60
author: Various
name: Beth
average rating: 3.60
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2024/06/27
date added: 2024/07/03
shelves:
review:
Some I liked , some not so much...
]]> 54785498 * A New York Times Editors' Choice * Publishers Weekly Best Nonfiction Books of 2021 *

I am not talking about surviving. I am not talking about becoming human, but about how I came to realize that I had always already been human. I am writing about all that I wanted to have, and how I got it. I am writing about what it cost, and how I was able to afford it.

Jan Grue was diagnosed with spinal muscular atrophy at the age of three. Shifting between specific periods of his life--his youth with his parents and sister in Norway; his years of study in Berkeley, St. Petersburg, and Amsterdam; and his current life as a professor, husband, and father--he intersperses these histories with elegant, astonishingly wise reflections on the world, social structures, disability, loss, relationships, and the body: in short, on what it means to be human. Along the way, Grue moves effortlessly between his own story and those of others, incorporating reflections on philosophy, film, art, and the work of writers from Joan Didion to Michael Foucault. He revives the cold, clinical language of his childhood, drawing from a stack of medical records that first forced the boy who thought of himself as "just Jan" to perceive that his body, and therefore his self, was defined by its defects.

I Live a Life Like Yours is a love story. It is rich with loss, sorrow, and joy, and with the details of one life: a girlfriend pushing Grue through the airport and forgetting him next to the baggage claim; schoolmates forming a chain behind his wheelchair on the ice one winter day; his parents writing desperate letters in search of proper treatment for their son; his own young son climbing into his lap as he sits in his wheelchair, only to leap down and run away too quickly to catch. It is a story about accepting one's own body and limitations, and learning to love life as it is while remaining open to hope and discovery.]]> 272 Jan Grue 0374600783 Beth 5 3.82 2018
author: Jan Grue
name: Beth
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/07/03
shelves: audio-books, memoir, non-fiction, relationships
review:
Made me realize how much I take my physical body for granted. Jan Grue shares his experience living with the physical challenges of a muscular disorder that confines him to a wheelchair for much of the time. Grue is honest and forthright, no whining here.
]]> 33916024
Lois is no baker, but she could use a roommate, even if it is a needy colony of microorganisms. Soon, not only is she eating her own homemade bread, she’s providing loaves daily to the General Dexterity cafeteria. The company chef urges her to take her product to the farmer’s market, and a whole new world opens up.

When Lois comes before the jury that decides who sells what at Bay Area markets, she encounters a close-knit club with no appetite for new members. But then, an alternative emerges: a secret market that aims to fuse food and technology. But who are these people, exactly?]]> 259 Robin Sloan 0374203105 Beth 3 The narration was fantastic.]]> 3.73 2017
author: Robin Sloan
name: Beth
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2017
rating: 3
read at: 2024/06/22
date added: 2024/06/23
shelves:
review:
Not sure how to classify this book. I liked the first half but then it went down a rabbit hole.
The narration was fantastic.
]]> 6414097
What was lost will be found...

Washington DC: Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon is summoned at the last minute to deliver an evening lecture in the Capitol Building. Within moments of his arrival, however, a disturbing object - gruesomely encoded with five symbols - is discovered at the epicentre of the Rotunda. It is, he recognises, an ancient invitation, meant to beckon its recipient towards a long-lost world of hidden esoteric wisdom.

When Langdon's revered mentor, Peter Solomon - philanthropist and prominent mason - is brutally kidnapped, Langdon realizes that his only hope of saving his friend's life is to accept this mysterious summons and follow wherever it leads him.

Langdon finds himself quickly swept behind the facade of America's most historic city into the unseen chambers, temples and tunnels which exist there. All that was familiar is transformed into a shadowy, clandestine world of an artfully concealed past in which Masonic secrets and never-before-seen revelations seem to be leading him to a single impossible and inconceivable truth.

A brilliantly composed tapestry of veiled histories, arcane icons and enigmatic codes, The Lost Symbol is an intelligent, lightning-paced thriller that offers surprises at every turn. For, as Robert Langdon will discover, there is nothing more extraordinary or shocking than the secret which hides in plain sight...]]> 18 Dan Brown 0739319175 Beth 3 adventure, audio-books
"If we as humans can grasp this one truth, the world will change over nite...the power of human thought grows exponentially with the number of people who share that thought." Katherine Solomon.]]> 3.61 2009
author: Dan Brown
name: Beth
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2009
rating: 3
read at: 2014/08/07
date added: 2024/06/23
shelves: adventure, audio-books
review:
Typical Brown, so if you don't need anymore Robert Langdon, don't bother. I don't imagine the masons would appreciate his disclosures of their ceremonies...might be touchy for endowed LDS also. He seems to get so close to truth, then veers a bit...and misses the mark. Someday he will say, as will so many others, "Hey, I should have known that!"

"If we as humans can grasp this one truth, the world will change over nite...the power of human thought grows exponentially with the number of people who share that thought." Katherine Solomon.
]]> 59345236
Known for her childhood role as Laura Ingalls Wilder on the classic NBC show Little House on the Prairie , Melissa Gilbert has spent nearly her entire life in Hollywood. From Dancing with the Stars to a turn in politics, she was always on the lookout for her next project. She just had no idea that her latest one would be completely life changing.

When her husband introduces her to the wilds of rural Michigan, Melissa begins to fall back in love with nature. And when work takes them to New York, they find a rustic cottage in the Catskill Mountains to call home. But “rusticâ€� is a generous description for the state of the house, requiring a lot of blood, sweat, and tears for the newlyweds to make habitable.

When the pandemic descends on the world, it further nudges Melissa out of the spotlight and into the woods. She trades Botox treatments for DIY projects, power lunching for gardening and raising chickens, and soon her life is rediscovered anew in her own little house in the Catskills.]]> 288 Melissa Gilbert 1982177187 Beth 4 3.39 2022
author: Melissa Gilbert
name: Beth
average rating: 3.39
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/01
date added: 2024/06/11
shelves:
review:
I never read the Little House Series, but I enjoyed the Television Show. It was fun to listen to Gilbert tell her story, once I got used to the sound of her voice.
]]> 112975105 333 Mitch Albom 0062406655 Beth 5 4.54 2023
author: Mitch Albom
name: Beth
average rating: 4.54
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2024/06/11
date added: 2024/06/11
shelves:
review:
Mitch Albom does it again. A truth based novel of the Holocaust that brings it practically up to our day. Frighteningly realistic.
]]> 20814020
Maisie Dobbs isn't just any young housemaid. Through her own natural intelligence and the patronage of her benevolent employers, she works her way into college at Cambridge. When World War I breaks out, Maisie goes to the front as a nurse. It is there that she learns that coincidences are meaningful and the truth elusive. After the War, Maisie sets up on her own as a private investigator. But her very first assignment, seemingly an ordinary infidelity case, soon reveals a much deeper, darker web of secrets, which will force Maisie to revisit the horrors of the Great War and the love she left behind.]]> 11 Jacqueline Winspear Beth 4 audio-books, mystery, war 3.64 2003
author: Jacqueline Winspear
name: Beth
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2003
rating: 4
read at: 2020/04/08
date added: 2024/06/10
shelves: audio-books, mystery, war
review:
I don't generally like to get involved with a series, but I really like Maisie and I will probably look for her next adventure.
]]> 895410 448 Beth Gutcheon 0060539062 Beth 3 This book verges on being an epic novel in that it covers generations as well as global events. Almost too much. Probably would be bread than listened to, but the narration was excellent.

**spoiler alert**

I was so very disappointed that Anna Bee Sydney became her mother.]]> 3.41 2005
author: Beth Gutcheon
name: Beth
average rating: 3.41
book published: 2005
rating: 3
read at: 2024/05/25
date added: 2024/06/01
shelves: audio-books, family, historical-fiction, motherhood, relationships, holocaust
review:
3 1/2 stars
This book verges on being an epic novel in that it covers generations as well as global events. Almost too much. Probably would be bread than listened to, but the narration was excellent.

**spoiler alert**

I was so very disappointed that Anna Bee Sydney became her mother.
]]> 63241104 In this beautiful and moving novel about family, love, and growing up, Ann Patchett once again proves herself one of America’s finest writers.

In the spring of 2020, Lara’s three daughters return to the family's orchard in Northern Michigan. While picking cherries, they beg their mother to tell them the story of Peter Duke, a famous actor with whom she shared both a stage and a romance years before at a theater company called Tom Lake. As Lara recalls the past, her daughters examine their own lives and relationship with their mother, and are forced to reconsider the world and everything they thought they knew.

Tom Lake is a meditation on youthful love, married love, and the lives parents have led before their children were born. Both hopeful and elegiac, it explores what it means to be happy even when the world is falling apart. As in all of her novels, Ann Patchett combines compelling narrative artistry with piercing insights into family dynamics. The result is a rich and luminous story, told with profound intelligence and emotional subtlety, that demonstrates once again why she is one of the most revered and acclaimed literary talents working today.]]> 309 Ann Patchett 006332752X Beth 4 I loved Lara's feelings towards her daughters and her satisfaction with the life she chose.
Our youngest son played the narrator in Our Town when he was a senior in high school, so that cinnection brought back many good memories.]]> 3.92 2023
author: Ann Patchett
name: Beth
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/06/01
shelves: audio-books, family, relationships
review:
Would have been 5 stars except for one choice.
I loved Lara's feelings towards her daughters and her satisfaction with the life she chose.
Our youngest son played the narrator in Our Town when he was a senior in high school, so that cinnection brought back many good memories.
]]> 113877384
Following the deaths of her husband and son, Helen Cartwright returns to the English village of her childhood after living abroad for six decades. Her only wish is to die quickly and without fuss.

Helen retreats into her home on Westminster Crescent, becoming a creature of routine and habit. Then, one cold autumn night, a chance encounter with an abandoned pet mouse on the street outside her house sets Helen on a surprising journey of friendship.

Sipsworth is a reminder that there can be second chances. No matter what we have planned for ourselves, sometimes the world has plans of its own. Simon Van Booy’s lyrical storytelling is a delight even as it will fill your heart.]]> 240 Simon Van Booy 1567927947 Beth 4 Just plain fun fiction 4.11 2024
author: Simon Van Booy
name: Beth
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/13
date added: 2024/05/14
shelves: animal-stories, audio-books, relationships
review:
Just plain fun fiction
]]> 59904786 She can’t recall what started her collection. Maybe it was in a fragment of conversation overheard as she cleaned a sink? Before long (as she dusted a sitting room or defrosted a fridge) she noticed people were telling her their stories. Perhaps they always had done, but now it is different, now the stories are reaching out to her and she gathers them to herâ€�

When Janice starts cleaning for Mrs B â€� a shrewd and tricksy woman in her nineties â€� she meets someone who wants to hear her story. But Janice is clear: she is the keeper of stories, she doesn’t have a story to tell. At least, not one she can share.

Mrs B is no fool and knows there is more to Janice than meets the eye. What is she hiding? After all, doesn’t everyone have a story to tell?]]> 386 Sally Page Beth 4 Love the Mycroft references.]]> 4.07 2022
author: Sally Page
name: Beth
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/11
date added: 2024/05/11
shelves: audio-books, family, relationships
review:
What a fun story! Held one star back because of the unnecessary swearing. Why do writers feel they have to have all their characters use profanity? Other than that, this is a delightful book. The narrator was excellent. It has a clever plot and satisfying conclusion .
Love the Mycroft references.
]]> 18888928
Michael Steeb is an aimless twenty-one-year-old pot farmer in Central California in the 1980s. He has no real plans or interests
until the day he connects with memories of a life that seems to belong to someone else. That “spiritâ€� is Walter, a young American soldier killed in World War II.

Michael’s task is the near-impossible: to lead Walter’s family to closure and peace, to deliver the real truth behind Walter’s Purple Heart, and to somehow achieve the forgiveness absent for so many years so Walter can move on. Michael sets out to find Walter’s best friend Andrew, and Mary Ann, the fiancĂ©e Walter left behind. Mary Ann recognizes Walter in Michael immediately. But Andrew sets out to prove that Michael is the worst sort of con man.

Narrated in large part by Walter from beyond the grave, WALTER'S PURPLE HEART is a fast-paced war drama and a deeply felt romance, with a unique twist on the prospect of multiple lives. Catherine Ryan Hyde paints an enduring portrait of a life prematurely lost, and the endless ripples of consequence to those who loved him, in a microcosm that sheds light on the true gravity of war.

This "Classic Catherine" Anniversary Edition includes a new Author's Note by Catherine Ryan Hyde.]]> 306 Catherine Ryan Hyde Beth 4 As usual CRH delivers a great story with people you come to care about. ]]> 4.11 2002
author: Catherine Ryan Hyde
name: Beth
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2002
rating: 4
read at: 2024/04/06
date added: 2024/05/01
shelves: audio-books, family, historical-fiction
review:
I'm not sure how to tag this one. It's not really historical fiction or fantasy or time travel...but has a bit of each genre in it.
As usual CRH delivers a great story with people you come to care about.
]]> 65137920 The Keeper of Stories meets The Lost Apothecary in this evocative and charming novel full of mystery and secrets.

‘The thing about books,â€� she said ‘is that they help you to imagine a life bigger and better than you could ever dream of.â€�

On a quiet street in Dublin, a lost bookshop is waiting to be found�

For too long, Opaline, Martha and Henry have been the side characters in their own lives.

But when a vanishing bookshop casts its spell, these three unsuspecting strangers will discover that their own stories are every bit as extraordinary as the ones found in the pages of their beloved books. And by unlocking the secrets of the shelves, they find themselves transported to a world of wonder� where nothing is as it seems.]]> 432 Evie Woods 0008609209 Beth 5 4.03 2023
author: Evie Woods
name: Beth
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2024/05/01
date added: 2024/05/01
shelves: audio-books, family, historical-fiction, relationships, time-travel
review:
Not really time travel, but the timeline travels....a touch of fantasy, many literary references. Just a fun read (or listen)
]]> 75302956
When acclaimed naturalist Sy Montgomery and wildlife artist Matt Patterson arrive at Turtle Rescue League, they are greeted by hundreds of turtles recovering from injury and illness. Endangered by cars and highways, pollution and poachers, these turtles—with wounds so severe that even veterinarians would have dismissed them as fatal—are given a second chance at life. The League’s founders, Natasha and Alexxia, live by one creed. Never give up on a turtle.

But why turtles? What is it about them that inspires such devotion? Ancient and unhurried, long-lived and majestic, their lineage stretches back to the time of the dinosaurs. Some live to two hundred years, or longer. Others spend months buried under cold winter water.

Montgomery turns to these little understood yet endlessly surprising creatures to probe the eternal question  How can we make peace with our time? In pursuit of the answer, Sy and Matt immerse themselves in the delicate work of protecting turtle nests, incubating eggs, rescuing sea turtles, and releasing hatchlings to their homes in the wild. We follow the snapping turtle Fire Chief on his astonishing journey as he battles against injuries incurred by a truck.

Hopeful and optimistic,  Of Time and Turtles  is an antidote to the instability of our frenzied world. Elegantly blending science, memoir, philosophy, and drawing on cultures from across the globe, this compassionate portrait of injured turtles and their determined rescuers invites us all to slow down and slip into turtle time.]]> 288 Sy Montgomery 0358458188 Beth 5 4.04 2023
author: Sy Montgomery
name: Beth
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2024/04/26
date added: 2024/05/01
shelves: audio-books, animal-stories, favorite-authors, nature, non-fiction, relationships
review:
I love Sy Montgomery and turtles. ;-}
]]> 32307358 This an alternate cover for B01LY7FD0D

Robert Langdon, Harvard professor of symbology and religious iconology, arrives at the ultramodern Guggenheim Museum Bilbao to attend a major announcement--the unveiling of a discovery that "will change the face of science forever." The evening's host is Edmond Kirsch, a forty-year-old billionaire and futurist whose dazzling high-tech inventions and audacious predictions have made him a renowned global figure. Kirsch, who was one of Langdon's first students at Harvard two decades earlier, is about to reveal an astonishing breakthrough . . . one that will answer two of the fundamental questions of human existence.

As the event begins, Langdon and several hundred guests find themselves captivated by an utterly original presentation, which Langdon realizes will be far more controversial than he ever imagined. But the meticulously orchestrated evening suddenly erupts into chaos, and Kirsch's precious discovery teeters on the brink of being lost forever. Reeling and facing an imminent threat, Langdon is forced into a desperate bid to escape Bilbao. With him is Ambra Vidal, the elegant museum director who worked with Kirsch to stage the provocative event. Together they flee to Barcelona on a perilous quest to locate a cryptic password that will unlock Kirsch's secret.

Navigating the dark corridors of hidden history and extreme religion, Langdon and Vidal must evade a tormented enemy whose all-knowing power seems to emanate from Spain's Royal Palace itself . . . and who will stop at nothing to silence Edmond Kirsch. On a trail marked by modern art and enigmatic symbols, Langdon and Vidal uncover clues that ultimately bring them face-to-face with Kirsch's shocking discovery . . . and the breathtaking truth that has long eluded us. Origin is stunningly inventive--Dan Brown's most brilliant and entertaining novel to date]]> 482 Dan Brown Beth 2 3.87 2017
author: Dan Brown
name: Beth
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2017
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2024/04/24
shelves:
review:
Best thing about it was listening to Paul Michael read it to me. He's probably my favorite narrator. He makes any book better than it is.
]]> 181840754 An exhilarating and emotional novel about grief, hope, friendship, and taking life one beautiful and spontaneous day at a time by New York Times bestselling author Catherine Ryan Hyde.

Freakishly smart. That’s the unwelcome box Ru Evans is put into for life. After all, she taught herself Euclidean geometry at age seven, has an eidetic memory, and is about to enter college at thirteen years old.

Boarding at a house near campus 150 miles from home, Ru meets seventeen-year-old Gabriel, an outsider himself who, like Ru, has trouble making friends—until they form a fast sibling-like bond. Finding a relatable someone in the world to talk to is a first for both of them.

But when Ru’s mother dies and the threat of living with her miserable aunt looms, Ru hatches an escape. It’s an impulsive road trip that takes Ru and Gabriel from California to Canada, where Ru can fulfill her ultimate to see Atlantic puffins in the glorious wild.

Mile by mile, Ru discovers the joy of friendship, found family, dark night skies, and the aurora borealis, and she basks in going from being a smart person to just a person. Though she knows they’ll be in trouble when they’re caught, for the short time they are navigating twist by twist of an unknown road, the freedom is liberating, and she is living for what feels like the first time.]]> 269 Catherine Ryan Hyde 166250442X Beth 0 to-read 4.38 2024
author: Catherine Ryan Hyde
name: Beth
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 34569203
All hope, life, and mankind hinges on one momentous the last week of the Savior’s mortal life. With characteristic clarity and insight, best-selling author and renowned gospel teacher David J. Ridges walks us through Christ’s final days in mortality, reminding us that Easter is, above all, a celebration of God’s love for us.]]> 24 David J. Ridges 1462127665 Beth 0 to-read 4.91
author: David J. Ridges
name: Beth
average rating: 4.91
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 63922274 A sweeping, heart-stopping epic of a young woman's journey to becoming, set against the harsh beauty of mid-century Colorado

On a cool autumn day in 1948, Victoria Nash delivers late-season peaches from her family's farm set amid the wild beauty of Colorado. As she heads into her village, a disheveled stranger stops to ask her the way. How she chooses to answer will unknowingly alter the course of both their young lives.

So begins the mesmerizing story of split-second choices and courageous acts that propel Victoria away from the only home she has ever known and towards a reckoning with loss, hope and her own untapped strength.

Gathering all the pieces of her small and extraordinary existence, spinning through the eddies of desire, heartbreak and betrayal, she will arrive at a single rocky decision that will change her life forever.

Go as a River is a heart-wrenching coming-of-age story and a drama of enthralling power. Combining unforgettable characters and a breathtaking natural setting, it is a sweeping story of survival and becoming, of the deepest mysteries of love, truth and fate.]]> 320 Shelley Read 1954118236 Beth 3 4.20 2023
author: Shelley Read
name: Beth
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/04/18
date added: 2024/04/18
shelves: audio-books, family, racial-relationships, motherhood, historical-fiction
review:
three and a half stars. It took me a while to adjust to the narrator. A story of prejudice, family disfunction and motherhood, with a few holes .I wonder about the veracity of transplanting an entire orchard, but I have never researched it so maybe, who knows?
]]> 39218350
Maid explores the underbelly of upper-middle class America and the reality of what it’s like to be in service to them. “I’d become a nameless ghost,â€� Stephanie writes about her relationship with her clients, many of whom do not know her from any other cleaner, but who she learns plenty about. As she begins to discover more about her clientsâ€� lives-their sadness and love, too-she begins to find hope in her own path.

Her writing as a journalist gives voice to the "servant" worker, and those pursuing the American Dream from below the poverty line. Maid is Stephanie’s story, but it’s not her alone..

An alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780316505116 can be found here.]]> 289 Stephanie Land Beth 4 I was disappointed that she didn't continue to visit Wendy when she could no longer pay Stephanie to clean for her.
]]> 3.81 2019
author: Stephanie Land
name: Beth
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2024/04/06
date added: 2024/04/16
shelves: audio-books, family, motherhood, memoir, relationships
review:
This memoir covers single motherhood, poverty, determination and consequences. I applaud Land's continual fight to care for herself and her daughter. Her story is a reminder that it is not our place to judge anyone whose moccasins we have not walked in and in a world that does not owe us a living, it is fair and okay to use any and all resources available to help us to survive and to improve our own situation. I liked reading about her clients who were caring and supportive of her in a difficult situation and didn't like to read about the ones who looked down on her, or didn't see her at all.
I was disappointed that she didn't continue to visit Wendy when she could no longer pay Stephanie to clean for her.

]]>