Welcome!
I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t reading at least one book. I devour them, make time for them, hunt for bargains, and love to talk with other readers like you.
When I was trying to sum up my favorite 2016 reads, I realized I read mostly in three categories: books I learn from, books I use to relax, and books that are about resisting patriarchy, racism, and the status quo. So, that’s how I’m organizing my blog posts here. (I hope you’ll check out my favorite 2017 and 2018 reads also.)
I’m also the author of the Amazon best-selling Kick Pain in the Kitchen, about how to find holistic pain relief.
Find me at Goodreads and on the Litsy app as BarbaraTheBibliophage!
Book Review: Pickle’s Progress by Marcia Butler
Pickle's Progress is a quintessential modern New York City novel. In it, Marcia Butler gives us identical twin brothers and the women in their lives. But it’s much more dysfunctional and convoluted than that. Fundamentally, that’s a good thing. Butler’s taut writing...
Book Review: Folded Wisdom by Joanna Guest
Joanna Guest compiles and discusses the myriad notes she and her brother received from their dad, Bob. He created a note—with both writing and art—every day during most of their school years. Bob is an artist, a philosophic thinker, but most of all, he’s a dad. And...
Book Review: The Paragon Hotel by Lyndsay Faye
In The Paragon Hotel, Lyndsay Faye brings us a character nicknamed Nobody. She’s actually Alice James, but is skilled at disappearing into the corner of a room or a street. She uses some disguise, but mostly changes voices and attitudes to blend in. It’s a skill she...
Book Review: The Bonjour Effect by Julie Barlow and Jean-Benoit Nadeau
Freelance journalists Julie Barlow and Jean-Benoit Nadeau moved with their daughters to Paris for a year to write this book. As native Quebecers they were already fluent in French, and in fact had already lived in Paris some years earlier. And yet, they found that the...
Book Review: There There by Tommy Orange
There There by Tommy Orange wasn’t the book I’d hoped it would be. Where Heart Berries was a deep dive in one woman’s psyche, There There is a shallow dip into the lives of many, many characters. That they both center on the varied experiences of Native Americans in...
Book Review: We Love Anderson Cooper by R.L. Maizes
R.L. Maizes tells stories of discovery, haunting, and the everyday rhythms of life. Her writing is by turns eloquent, poignant, and groaningly funny. And her characters are as unique as you’ll find in contemporary short stories.Maizes’ tales feature teenagers, grown...
Book Review: The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller
Madeline Miller tells a story replete with Greek gods, kings, warriors, battles, and death. And yet what it’s really about is the love between Achilles and Patroclus. Both young men are high born princes. Achilles is also half god, with a human father and goddess...
Book Review: The Little Shop of Found Things by Paula Brackston (Found Things #1)
In the first of a new series from Paula Brackston, Xanthe Westlake and her mother Flora move to small town Marlborough to rebuild their lives. Flora bought the property and stock from a now-deceased fellow antiques dealer and retailer. He left the place in a pretty...
Book Review: The Exile by Gregory Erich Phillips
Gregory Erich Phillips takes on a main character very different from himself in The Exile. First, Leila del Sol is a woman. Second, she’s a Colombian immigrant living and working in Phoenix, Arizona. But they both work in the chaotic bubble-bursting mortgage loan...
Book Review: The Mermaids Singing by Val McDermid
After listening to her nonfiction book, Forensics, reading Val McDermid’s psychological thriller series was an easy choice. I liked her detailed writing style, and was glad to see it here also. The Mermaids Singing is told from two points of view. First we have the...
Book Review: Dark of the Moon by John Sanford (Virgil Flowers #1)
I’ve been a fan of John Sanford mystery / thrillers for many years. My brother-in-law introduced me to the Prey series, featuring Lucas Davenport, back when there were just a few books in the series. Dark of the Moon is Sanford’s first entry in a spin-off series...
Book Review: Promised Land by Martin Fletcher
Martin Fletcher, veteran Middle East reporter, crafts an historical fiction story set in 1960’s Israel. His main characters are brothers Arie and Peter Nesher, along with Tamara, a young refugee from Cairo. In truth, the brothers are refugees as well. Peter escaped...
Book Review: Unmentionable by Therese Oneill
Apparently, I get easily depressed these days. I thought Therese Oneill’s book, Unmentionable, was funny. Until it was just overwhelmingly sad and depressing. Sometimes history can be like that, though. And this book focuses on various parts of women’s lives in the...
Book Review: Where The Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
Delia Owens crafts a genrebusting debut novel. It’s primarily a Bildungsroman—coming of age story. But Owens throws in elements of romance, adds a treatise on nature, plus a strong mystery and courtroom procedural.Her main character Kathryn Danielle Clark, nicknamed...
Book Review: Shortest Way Home by Pete Buttigieg
Mayor Pete Buttigieg (pronounced “boot-edge-edge”) is just five days younger than our youngest son. If that doesn’t make me feel old, I don’t know what would. But I think he makes up for lack of years in genuine smarts and concrete executive experience. (Mayors and...
Book Review: The Firebird by Susanna Kearsley
I’ve been a big fan of Susanna Kearsley for several years. I discovered her not long after I powered my way through the Outlander books. And I felt like her writing had a similar vibe—what I call historical fiction with a twist. In the case of The Firebird, the twist...
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I will definitely recommend Kick Pain in the Kitchen to my patients: Those who are looking to avoid pharmaceutical treatment and those who want to combine western medicine with alternative therapies.
Jane A. Swartz
ARNP, MSN, Rheumatology Nurse Practitioner
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