by Barbara the Bibliophage | Feb 28, 2021 | RELAX: Historical Fiction
Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk is a stroll down memory lane, created by Kathleen Rooney. If you’re curious about the life of women in various decades of the twentieth century, this is for you. Especially if you love melodic language and poetry. Lillian is 84, or...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Jan 23, 2021 | LEARN: Medical Memoir
Ruth Coker Burks writes about her experiences caring for HIV/AIDS patients in All the Young Men: A Memoir of Love, AIDS, and Chosen Family in the American South. She wasn’t a nurse or other health care provider. She was just a young woman with a big heart and buckets...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Dec 31, 2020 | RELAX: Other Relaxation
Jacqueline Woodson does it again with Red at the Bone. In my opinion, there’s no other living author that imbues so much emotion and grace into so few pages. This story is all about family and self-realization at any age. It’s a story of Melody, a teen whose parents...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Dec 31, 2020 | RELAX: Fantasy, Horror, Sci-Fi
The Garden of Promises and Lies by Paula Brackston is book three in her Found Things series. It’s a little bit romance, a solid dash of historical fiction, and a lot of time traveling hijinks. Our heroine Xanthe Westlake partners with her mother Flora in an antique...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Dec 31, 2020 | RELAX: Fantasy, Horror, Sci-Fi
From Native American author Stephen Graham Jones, The Only Good Indians is horror painted on the unsettled background of reservation life. It also bends the time, space, and being continuums. In other words, you’ll need to suspend all disbelief and just go with it. So...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Dec 16, 2020 | RELAX: Other Relaxation
In the debut novel from Rachel Mans McKenny, The Butterfly Effect, Greta Oto is more a spiny caterpillar than beautiful butterfly. Even though she’s an entomology graduate student, specializing in the winged creatures. She’s not socially comfortable in most...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Nov 26, 2020 | LEARN: Everything Else
Reading My Own Words by Ruth Bader Ginsburg is like dipping my toe into the world of judges and legal briefs. It’s a marginally vast compilation of lectures, briefs, interviews, and other writings from the Supreme Court Justice. They begin early in life—with a school...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Nov 18, 2020 | RESIST: Politics
Watching real-life strongman moves while reading Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present from Ruth Ben-Ghiat is both surreal and chilling. But given that the book’s publication date was also the U.S. Election Day, comparisons are inevitable. At least to one of the...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Nov 15, 2020 | RESIST: Politics
Dave Cullen offers the inspirational journey of the students from Margery Stoneman Douglas High School (MSD) in Parkland: Birth of a Movement. Before you think it’s all “happy happy joy joy,” you should know the stories include dark times as well as light. Of course,...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Nov 10, 2020 | RELAX: Mystery-Thriller
These two satisfying thrillers follow more of Gwen Proctor and her family, which still comprises her teenage son and daughter and now adds a trusted male friend and love interest. If you remember from my recent reviews, she fights vicious Internet trolls and stalkers...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Oct 26, 2020 | RELAX: Mystery-Thriller
Rachel Caine and her main character Gwen Proctor know how to create tight-as-a-drum tension throughout this series based in rural Tennessee. In the first book, Gwen moves to Stillhouse Lake, near the small town of Norton, TN after leaving a long string of other...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Oct 3, 2020 | RESIST: Politics
Rage by Bob Woodward is the combination of rage-inducing, all the rage, and full of rage. Woodward’s on every interview show (at least on the channels I watch). He’s getting his message out and selling books, for gosh sakes. Plus of course, time is short before...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Sep 8, 2020 | RESIST: Social Justice
As defined by Robin DiAngelo, White Fragility refers to both a book and a behavior. In her subtitle, “Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism,” we learn the simplest definition of the behavior. White people see race through a completely different lens,...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Sep 6, 2020 | RESIST: Politics
Nick Capodice and Hannah McCarthy host a show and podcast called Civics 101 on New Hampshire Public Radio. This experience makes them uniquely qualified to write A User’s Guide to Democracy: How America Works. It’s a 21st century primer on everything about U.S....
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Aug 16, 2020 | RESIST: Social Justice
James Forman combines relevant experience and the ability to organize and present recent history. His 2017 book Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America is an exposition of origins and consequences of policing and legal decisions. In fact, he divides...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Aug 8, 2020 | RESIST: Feminism
The good news is you only have to wait until Tuesday 8/11 to read Entitled: How Male Privilege Hurts Women from author Kate Manne. There is absolutely no better time to get the run down on male privilege, since it’s loud and proud all over social media and the news....
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