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, 2018, 2019, and 2020 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!
Cole Kazdin — What’s Eating Us (Book Review)
Cole Kazdin combines memoir and narrative nonfiction in her upcoming book, What’s Eating Us: Women, Food, and The Epidemic of Body Anxiety. It’s an excellent reflection of life with an eating disorder. But it’s also much more. For example, Kazdin investigates aspects...
Arca by G.R. Macallister (The Five Queendoms #2) — Book Review
Arca is the second book in G.R. Macallister’s Five Queendoms series. It follows the main characters of her first book in the series, Scorpica, which was one of my 2022 favorites. These women are grappling with the changes happening in the queendoms. As rulers and...
Trust by Hernan Diaz (Book Review)
Trust by Hernan Diaz is everything I want in a historical fiction novel. And it’s no wonder the book landed on so many “best of 2022.” Diaz writes from four interconnected points of view while telling the story of a financial wizard and philanthropist. Set in the...
Alias Grace — Margaret Atwood (Book Review)
Alias Grace is a character study written by Margaret Atwood. It also focuses on the burgeoning world of alienists, who pioneered the study of the mind, mental health, and psychology as we know it today. Just for good measure, Atwood throws in mysterious killings. This...
Dawn — Octavia Butler (Lilith’s Brood #1)
Dawn, the first in Lilith’s Brood or Xenogenesis trilogy, is excellent Afrofuturism. It’s also Octavia Butler at her best. Although published in 1979, Butler envisions a future for the Earth that’s not just possible but probable. And amid the futuristic story, she...
Red London by Alma Katsu (Book Review)
Red London, the newest Red Widow mystery from Alma Katsu, is set in a world that is both post-Putin and post-Ukrainian war. It focuses on the relationship of Russia's new (and fictional) government with its oligarchs. And, of course, on Russia’s relationship with the...
Emma Straub — This Time Tomorrow
Emma Straub crafts a time-travel story for everyone who’s ever lost a loved one in her new book, This Time Tomorrow. As the story opens, we meet Alice. She’s a born-and-bred New Yorker with a famous author for a father. She works at the tony private school she...
Wendi Aarons — I’m Wearing Tunics Now (Audiobook Review)
Wendi Aarons is a blogger, humorist, mom, and unabashed woman over 50. The recently published memoir, I’m Wearing Tunics Now: On Growing Older, Better, and a Hell of a Lot Louder, is an excursion into her Austin, Texas, life. It’s also laugh-out-loud funny, especially...
Dark Celebrations by Calvin Demmer
I read Dark Celebrations during the Halloween spooky season, but Calvin Demmer’s flash fiction collection is appropriate for horror fans to celebrate all year long. He takes typical holidays and events and turns them into extraordinary—and gory—celebrations. Honestly,...
Ruth Emmie Lang — The Wilderwomen
Ruth Emmie Lang explores family relationships with a solid dose of magical realism in her new book, The Wilderwomen. It’s a sweet and engaging exploration of sisterhood and the complications inherent in mother-daughter connections. Lang’s primary voices are two...
Two Months of Witches
Books about witches are the perfect fit for fall. I dusted off my copies of Alice Hoffman’s Practical Magic series and embarked on a two-month project. Then I read a brand-new book from Megan Giddings with a unique and thought-provoking witchy premise. Combining all...
Prince Lestat by Anne Rice (Vampire Chronicles #11)
Lestat de Lioncourt, arguably the world’s most famous fictional vampire, deals with turmoil among his kindred in Prince Lestat, the eleventh entry into Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles. Because of her death last year, it’s a sentimental choice for me. Rice centers the...
Bianca Marais — The Witches of Moonshyne Manor (Book Review)
Bianca Marais creates a feminist witch story for the 21st century in The Witches of Moonshyne Manor. It’s about a group of 80-something witches trying to reverse events from thirty years ago. And they’re also trying to save their property from being bought by a bunch...
Sara Gruen — At the Water’s Edge (Book Review)
At the Water’s Edge by Sara Gruen is tepid historical fiction with unlikable characters in this fish out of water novel. Three feckless and privileged young Americans travel to a village in the Scottish Highlands to find the Loch Ness monster. Because of the journey,...
Mad Honey by Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Finney Boylan (Book Review)
Mad Honey is a compulsively readable novel by two of my favorite authors, Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Finney Boylan. It’s about two single moms in small-town Adams, New Hampshire, and their high school-age kids. Olivia is a beekeeper and entrepreneur. Her son Asher is...
Keri Blakinger — Corrections in Ink (Book Review)
Keri Blakinger tells her harrowing story about addiction to drugs and disordered eating in her memoir, Corrections in Ink. She lands in prison and reconstructs her experience from scribbled journals kept on purloined paper that miraculously survived the cruelty of...
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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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