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!
Rebecca Woolf — All of This (Book Review)
Rebecca Woolf creates a complex yet vulnerable tale in All of This: A Memoir of Death and Desire. How do these two topics intertwine, you ask? And Woolf answers this question in spades. Her marriage was far from perfect, but they stayed together. Then doctors diagnose...
Kali Fajardo-Anstine — Woman of Light (Book Review)
Kali Fajardo-Anstine delivers a portrait of womanhood in Colorado in her debut novel, Woman of Light. She tells the story of multiple women across three generations of an indigenous and mixed-race family. Moving back and forth across time, Fajardo-Anstine connects the...
Donna Jackson Nakazawa — Girls on the Brink (Book Review)
Donna Jackson Nakazawa does it again with her upcoming book, Girls on the Brink: Helping Our Daughters Thrive in an Era of Increased Anxiety, Depression, and Social Media. She blends real-life situations with scientific knowledge and analysis. And concluding the book...
Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury (Book Review)
Dandelion Wine is a masterwork in the art of connected stories or vignettes. In the hands of Ray Bradbury, small-town America in the summer of 1928 comes alive. Kids run free and adults sip glasses of dandelion wine on their porches. But there’s also an unsettling...
Melissa Gilbert — Two Memoirs about the Acting Life
Melissa Gilbert and I were born the same year—1964. So I relate to every pop culture reference in her books. We have similar perspectives about the world, despite our vastly different lives. She was a child actor on the long-running TV series Little House on the...
Jamie Raskin — Unthinkable (Book Review)
Congressman Jamie Raskin bares his soul in Unthinkable: Trauma, Truth, and the Trials of American Democracy. This combination of memoir and political history covers topics related to the health of this country. One is the crisis of mental illness in this country,...
Naomi Hirahara — Clark and Division (Book Review)
Naomi Hirahara offers historical fiction and intrigue in her 2021 book Clark and Division. The time is the middle 1940s, which means that the story begins in Manzanar, one of the many World War II Japanese internment camps. As the Ito family considers leaving the camp...
Ruth Ware — The Woman in Cabin 10 (Book Review)
Ruth Ware set her mystery, The Woman in Cabin 10, primarily aboard a small luxury cruise ship traveling into the fjords of Norway. Our main character is Lo Blacklock, a socially awkward London-based journalist. She scored a trip on the ship’s inaugural journey from...
Larry Kramer — The Normal Heart and The Destiny of Me (Review)
Larry Kramer created seminal works of gay rights and AIDS epidemic history in his deeply personal plays, The Normal Heart and The Destiny of Me. Both plays revolve around Ned Weeks, a gay man living and working in New York City in the 1980s. They are heartbreaking and...
Malcolm Nance — They Want to Kill Americans (Book Review)
Malcolm Nance presents a compelling case in his new book, They Want to Kill Americans: The Militias, Terrorists, and Deranged Ideology of the Trump Insurgency. And it couldn’t be more timely, with the January 6th hearings currently ongoing. Nance is a former US Navy...
Vanderbilt and Cooper: The Rainbow Comes and Goes (Book Review)
Gloria Vanderbilt grew up with every financial advantage a child in the early 20th century could want. Yet she didn’t have loving parents—one was dead and the other distant. Perhaps, as a result, having a close relationship with her youngest son, Anderson Cooper,...
Wild Seed by Octavia Butler (Patternist #1) — Book Review
Octavia Butler creates a fantastical story in Wild Seed, the first book of her Patternist series. The main characters are two immortals, living in Africa and America during the years leading up to the Civil War. Doro is a body-snatching, shape shifter who believes he...
Upgrade by Blake Crouch (Book Review)
Upgrade is Blake Crouch’s latest thriller and it focuses on using genetics for good or evil. Main character Logan Ramsay experiences both in the course of the story. As the son of a famous geneticist, he was a tangential part of an apocalyptic genetic failure. As a...
Adam Grant — Think Again (Book Review)
Adam Grant engaged my intellect and curiosity in his 2021 book, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know. Plus, I immediately told friends and acquaintances about it. In fact, I didn’t wait until I finished the book. It’s timely and relevant to people’s...
Mysteries with Purpose—Martin and McLain (Book Reviews)
Sometimes mysteries are whodunit stories—relatively straightforward missing person or homicide with some thrilling moments and twisty endings. But I read two mysteries lately with just a little more. In both cases, the authors included relevant issues from our...
Elizabeth Alexander — The Light of the World (Book Review)
Elizabeth Alexander crafts an elegiac memoir and tribute to her late husband, Ficre Ghebreyesus, in The Light of the World. In many ways their marriage was typical. First, they had a meet-cute, then some dating and relocating, then wedding and kids. Still, the...
Bookshop.Org Affiliate
Purchase My Book
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
Find Me on these Book-Related Sites
Recent Comments