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Libby Copeland — The Lost Family (Book Review)

by Barbara the Bibliophage | Mar 19, 2022 | LEARN: Everything Else

Libby Copeland considers all the ways consumer DNA testing has changed our lives in The Lost Family: How DNA Testing is Uncovering Secrets, Reuniting Relatives, and Upending Who We Are. She interviews scientists, career genealogists, ethicists, and lots of regular...

The Shape of Sound by Fiona Murphy (Book Review)

by Barbara the Bibliophage | Mar 12, 2022 | LEARN: Medical Memoir

Fiona Murphy focuses her lyrical memoir, The Shape of Sound, on her experience with hearing and deafness. We follow her memories of childhood up until the present. So, we learn about her ongoing denial of being deaf in one ear. She analyzes how and why she hid her...

Scorpica (The Five Queendoms, #1) by G.R. Macallister (Book Review)

by Barbara the Bibliophage | Feb 21, 2022 | RELAX: Fantasy, Horror, Sci-Fi

Scorpica is everything I want in epic fantasy—world-building that still makes characters the focus of the story. G.R. Macallister creates entrancing characters in places I’ll never forget. She’s billed this as book one of a new series—The Five Queendoms—and I’m...

Emily St. John Mandel — Station Eleven (Book Review)

by Barbara the Bibliophage | Jan 25, 2022 | RELAX: Fantasy, Horror, Sci-Fi

Emily St. John Mandel wrote Station Eleven in the early 2010s and published it in 2014. So this is technically a backlist choice. However, with the pandemic-related storyline and the recent HBO adaptation, Station Eleven is more relevant than ever. I’ll review both...

Garrett Graff — The Only Plane in the Sky (Book Review)

by Barbara the Bibliophage | Sep 1, 2021 | LEARN: Everything Else

Garrett M. Graff created a heart-wrenching book with The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of 9/11. Since the author intended this to be an oral history, I listened to the audiobook which has a large cast of narrators. About five minutes in, during one of the...

Sasha Geffen — Glitter Up the Dark (Book Review)

by Barbara the Bibliophage | Aug 19, 2021 | LEARN: Everything Else

Sasha Geffen writes a captivating musical and social history in Glitter Up the Dark: How Pop Music Broke the Binary. Not only do they* capture the magic of music through the decades, they also explain how a plethora of performers broke through the limitations of...

S. A. Cosby — Blacktop Wasteland (Book Review)

by Barbara the Bibliophage | Jul 26, 2021 | RELAX: Mystery-Thriller

S.A. Cosby is a master of suspense and thrills in his 2020 novel, Blacktop Wasteland. He combines intensity, rapid pacing, and a command of the sentence that boggles my mind. This is a heist thriller, and its action sequences sizzle like hot metal on pavement at 120...

Sarah McBride — Tomorrow Will Be Different (Book Review)

by Barbara the Bibliophage | Jun 22, 2021 | RELAX: Memoir

Sarah McBride covers a wide variety of topics in Tomorrow Will Be Different: Love, Loss, and the Fight for Trans Equality. But given the complexity of gender identity and McBride’s own path, it’s not surprising. This was also a perfect pick for Pride Month. It fits...

Anne Fadiman — The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down (Book Review)

by Barbara the Bibliophage | Jun 11, 2021 | LEARN: Chronic Illness, RESIST: Social Justice

Author Anne Fadiman combines multiple narratives in her fabulous ethnography The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures. Most importantly, it’s both an immigration and a medical story of one Hmong...

Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai — The Mountains Sing (Book Review)

by Barbara the Bibliophage | May 20, 2021 | RELAX: Historical Fiction

Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai is a celebrated Vietnamese poet. With the release of her 2020 book, The Mountains Sing she’s also a novelist. The book is an intimate view of the Tran family and their struggles across decades and generations. Nguyễn uses two story lines to shape...

Liz Moore — Long Bright River: A Mystery About Mothering and Addiction (Book Review)

by Barbara the Bibliophage | May 11, 2021 | RELAX: Mystery-Thriller

Liz Moore writes a tribute to unconventional motherhood in her 2020 novel Long Bright River. Or maybe my mind is just on that topic with the recent Mothers’ Day holiday. Either way, the story here centers around two sisters, Kacey and Michaela (Mickey) Fitzpatrick....

Isabel Wilkerson: Caste (Book Review) — A Racial Justice Must Read

by Barbara the Bibliophage | May 4, 2021 | RESIST: Social Justice

Isabel Wilkerson writes about devastating history in Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents. It’s long, intense, and absolutely necessary to read. Thinking of the social and societal issues around race as based in a complicated caste system makes perfect sense. And...

Elizabeth M. Norman — We Band of Angels (Book Review)

by Barbara the Bibliophage | Mar 12, 2021 | LEARN: Everything Else

Elizabeth Norman delivers everything I want from narrative nonfiction in her 2000 book We Band of Angels: The Untold Story of American Nurses Trapped on Bataan by the Japanese. It’s engaging and obviously well-researched, including many interviews with the women...

The Language of Threads from Gail Tsukiyama—Women of the Silk Book #2 (Book Review)

by Barbara the Bibliophage | Feb 18, 2021 | RELAX: Historical Fiction

The Language of Threads is a continuation of Gail Tsukiyama’s excellent book Women of the Silk. I’m glad to have read both in sequence, which immersed me in the main character’s entire life.  In the first book, Pei is taken from her small China village, sold to work...

Gail Tsukiyama — Women of the Silk delivers Historical Fiction set in China (Book Review)

by Barbara the Bibliophage | Feb 11, 2021 | RELAX: Historical Fiction

In Women of the Silk, a 1991 book from Gail Tsukiyama, times are hard. It’s China in the late 1920s and especially in the small villages nature and politics affect everyone. Our main character is a young girl named Pei. As the story opens, she’s about six, and her...

Shuggie Bain — a Heartbreaking Debut from Douglas Stuart (Book Review)

by Barbara the Bibliophage | Feb 9, 2021 | RELAX: Historical Fiction

Shuggie Bain, the debut novel from author Douglas Stuart is a gut punch on nearly every page. It’s the story of a kid growing up in Glasgow, Scotland during the 1980s. He’s the youngest of three kids born to an alcoholic mother. His older siblings have a different...
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