by Barbara the Bibliophage | Nov 11, 2019 | RELAX: Memoir
Tara Westover tells the story of her unique upbringing in Educated. And that might be the most understated sentence ever used in a book review. Westover’s parents are Mormon, but also combined that faith with more fundamentalist beliefs. They stockpile weapons and...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | May 27, 2019 | RELAX: Historical Fiction
Kristin Lavransdatter is a Norwegian literature classic by Sigrid Undset. In fact, Undset is so revered that she won a Nobel Prize for Literature in 1928, after Kristin was published. But, let’s also clarify that this is actually a trilogy, now published as a 1100+...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Apr 22, 2019 | RELAX: Fantasy, Horror, Sci-Fi
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...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Apr 20, 2019 | RELAX: Historical Fiction
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...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Apr 14, 2019 | RELAX: Mystery-Thriller
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...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Apr 4, 2019 | RELAX: Mystery-Thriller
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...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Mar 29, 2019 | RELAX: Historical Fiction
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...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Mar 2, 2019 | RELAX: Historical Fiction, RELAX: Mystery-Thriller
Sujata Massey takes her readers back to 1920s Bombay, India in this intriguing legal mystery. Our heroine is Perveen Mistry, a young woman who’s broken with societal norms and gotten a law degree from Oxford. She’s working in the menial aspects of her father’s law...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Feb 28, 2019 | LEARN: Everything Else, RESIST: Feminism
Naomi Ragen is an acclaimed novelist, who wrote and produced this play set in an ultra-Orthodox Jewish family and community. Women’s Minyan is about Chana, a married mother of twelve, who leaves her home and family. Two years after she leaves, the play opens as Chana...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Feb 26, 2019 | RELAX: Memoir
Terese Marie Mailhot bares it all in her memoir, Heart Berries. Nothing’s off limits—abuse, mental illness, dysfunctional family and relationships. I often say that a good memoir lets me slide inside the author’s skin. This is a rough skin to spend time in, and I give...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Feb 1, 2019 | RELAX: Mystery-Thriller
This was my first venture into the Aimée Leduc series from Cara Black. So, I started with book one and took an armchair trip to the neighborhood in Paris called the Marais. Aimée is the owner of a small private detective agency in Paris. She’s the daughter of a French...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Jan 30, 2019 | RELAX: Historical Fiction
The Other Queen is everything I want in a Philippa Gregory book. Massive amounts of political scheming, told from three viewpoints, and details, details, details. I loved it. Gregory tells the story of when Mary Queen of Scots was imprisoned in Elizabethan England in...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Jan 23, 2019 | LEARN: Everything Else
Smoke Gets in Your Eyes & Other Lessons from the Crematory is an examination of death and the so-called death industry from Caitlin Doughty. By death industry she means how funeral homes, mortuaries, crematories, medical facilities and government agencies like...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Jan 17, 2019 | RELAX: Other Relaxation
In Unsheltered, Barbara Kingsolver mixes two story lines chapter by chapter. The first focuses on Willa Knox and her present-day family. The second focuses on Thatcher Greenwood, who lived in the same neighborhood as Willa in the 1870s. Both are faced with...
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