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The Book of Oded, Chapter 2
The Book of Oded, Chapter 2 tells the story of a young Israeli man whose life spins through love, identity, migration, and loss. It begins with Oded racing through Tel Aviv to share his green card news with his boyfriend, Gil, and then expands into a rich, heartfelt memoir about how their relationship began, how it grew, and how it changed when HIV entered their lives. The book follows Oded from his army days to his first years in Los Angeles, through joy, heartbreak, separation, friendship, and finally grief and spiritual acceptance. It becomes a story about love that keeps changing shape yet never quite disappears.
The writing feels relaxed and honest, like a friend sitting across from me telling me their story. I loved the humor tucked inside the pain. I laughed at the stories about Na’alei Kvasim slippers and the matching striped shirts at Shabbat dinner, little moments that make the book feel alive. Then the tone shifts and sinks when needed, especially in the phone call that delivers Gil’s diagnosis. I felt myself slow down as the story did, almost holding my breath at times. The simplicity of the writing makes the emotions stand out even more. There is no attempt to impress. It just speaks plainly, and that makes it powerful.
I also found myself moved by how the book tracks what love can become over the years. Oded does not hide the messy parts. He admits the silence, the drifting, the resentment, the guilt. That honesty made me trust him as a narrator. I could feel how love for Gil kept expanding even as their lives pulled apart, and how caring for someone can be both an anchor and a weight. The dream near the end, where Gil appears in white and disappears in a hug, was very emotional. It felt like closure that grew from feeling rather than logic, and I found myself sitting quietly after reading it.
This book feels perfect for anyone who likes real stories told without pretense. If you enjoy memoirs about love, identity, or resilience, you will probably connect with this one. It is also a meaningful read for anyone who has lost someone and is still figuring out what to do with the love that remains. I would happily recommend it.
Pages: 61 | ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0FVD1N895
Letters from the Sand
Letters from the Sand is a reflective military memoir that follows a soldier’s deployment to Iraq, told in vivid, sensory detail. The book moves from arrival in the desert, through the daily rituals of patrols, barracks life, cultural encounters, and the emotional weight of service. It reads like a series of lived moments stitched together: the heat, the dust, the camaraderie, the fear, the boredom, and the quiet resilience that keeps people going in a place where everything is stripped down to necessity. As a nonfiction war memoir, it captures both the grind and the humanity inside a deployment.
The writing is descriptive in a way that pulls you straight into the environment. Sometimes the detail is intense, but that felt honest. Deployment is overwhelming. I appreciated how the author didn’t rush through anything. He let the boredom breathe. He let the fear sit. Even the small rituals, like cleaning a rifle or sorting gear, were given space to matter. Those choices made the narrative feel grounded rather than dramatized.
What struck me most was how genuinely the book handled relationships. The people aren’t flattened into stereotypes. They’re messy, thoughtful, funny, irritating, and necessary. Watching those early, awkward introductions shift into something like family reminded me how much of military life is built on small gestures. I also liked how the author showed the mental shifts that happen over time, the way vigilance becomes second nature, and how the desert environment presses into everything, even your dreams. Some passages feel almost meditative, others blunt and raw. The mix worked for me. It felt like someone telling the truth without trying to polish it.
By the end, I found myself thinking less about the missions and more about the emotional residue of the experience. The book doesn’t preach. It doesn’t try to define service in grand terms. It just lets you live inside it for a while, long enough to understand why leaving is almost as disorienting as arriving. For readers who appreciate military memoirs that focus on lived experience more than strategy, this will resonate deeply. I’d recommend it to anyone curious about the human side of deployment, especially those who value slow, reflective storytelling that feels personal and unfiltered.
Pages: 201 | ASIN: B0G2335VNQ
A Reflection on My Life
Looking for Trouble is a vivid, unfiltered look at police work, city life, and the long road a person walks to find purpose, starting with your childhood in Baltimore and continuing through your career in law enforcement. Why was this an important book for you to write?
It was essential to write this book for several reasons. I wanted to leave a written account of my life for children and the rest of my family, so they could see what my life and upbringing were like and be inspired to accomplish their dreams when faced with seemingly insurmountable obstacles. I also wanted to provide a voice for crime victims so the world could see the impact of crime on their quality of life. I wanted to show the world the trials, tribulations, and triumphs that police officers experience while working in the line of duty. Lastly, I wanted to provide an ethical blueprint to guide police officers and managers facing enormous challenges.Â
How did you balance the need to be honest and authentic with the need to protect your privacy and that of others in your memoir?
One way I balanced this was by changing the names and physical descriptions of some characters. I provided a disclaimer at the beginning of the book to help accomplish that goal. Honesty and authenticity were fundamental to me. I wanted my readers to realize that police officers have feelings, emotions, and fears. However, despite those fears, we race toward trouble while other people run from it. I wrote the book in the first person so the reader could experience scenarios through my eyes and evaluate the critical choices that I had to make.
How has writing your memoir impacted or changed your life?
Writing a memoir gave me a reflection on my life. I was able to witness my own growth and identify good and destructive patterns of behavior that I was unconscious of. I learned that my upbringing shaped many of the decisions I made. That is something that I was previously unaware of. I learned many lessons about my life and resilience that I had never considered.
The book has made me a better and more analytical person. I have become more empathetic to the challenges of others.
What do you hope is one thing readers take away from your story?
I hope readers gain a greater appreciation for the enormous sacrifices police officers make to enhance the safety and quality of life for people in the community.
Author Links: GoodReads | Website | LinkedIn | Amazon
During Maurice’s 20-year career, he memorialized his cinematic transformation from a rookie patrolman to a relentless, battle-hardened police veteran. While mastering the art of “Looking for Trouble, “Maurice soared through the ranks and was promoted to Lieutenant. The police veteran graphically describes his action-packed career. Maurice was forced to examine and reconcile his upbringing as he operated in the shadows immersing himself in a lifestyle that he spent his entire life trying to avoid. While battling drug dealers, murderers, and robbers, another battle emerged and expanded beyond the streets.
Some of his fiercest battles extended to the halls of the Criminal Investigations Division and the Narcotics Enforcement Division. Maurice believed his career was in free fall, but a crisis shook the community. Against the odds, Maurice emerged as the lead investigator of an FBI Safe Streets Homicide Task Force, creating the biggest challenge of his career. Maurice was confronted with the same drug dealer whom he clashed with while a patrol officer. The drug dealer ascended to become a Kingpin while Maurice became a detective. Maurice worked frantically to stop the killings, trying to nab the most dangerous and elusive Drug Kingpin in county history, suspected of 12 murders.
Dark Agent, The Memoirs of L.W. Kwakou Casselle: Global Service & Sacrifice
Dark Agent follows L. W. Kwakou Casselle from his childhood in Liberia, where he witnessed a coup and the unraveling of a nation, through a turbulent youth in North Las Vegas, into the discipline of military school, then onward to Hampton University, the U.S. Army, and finally a 22-year career with the Diplomatic Security Service. The book moves through war zones, global manhunts, the halls of the White House, and the quiet pain of family sacrifice. What makes the story stand out is not only the danger. It is the deep thread of service that carries Casselle through each chapter of his life.
As I read, I kept feeling pulled in by the writing. It has a clean, straightforward style that makes even the hardest scenes easy to follow, yet the emotion behind those scenes hits with real force. Moments like the armed confrontation in Liberia on the family porch, or his mother walking into a crack house to get her stolen briefcase, feel almost too vivid, and I found myself pausing to let the weight settle. The ideas running through the book are familiar, such as resilience and duty, but they come from such specific lived experience that they feel brand new. The blunt honesty shook me. I liked how the author never tried to polish his past. He simply opened it up and let it breathe.
What also surprised me was how strongly the family story held the whole book together. Casselle writes about his parents, his siblings, and later his own children with a tenderness that sits right beside the scenes of conflict. I felt a real ache when he described the loss of his father, and I felt a sort of quiet pride as he pushed his way through the rough corners of his youth. The book does not try to be symbolic or lofty. It just feels human. And that honesty makes the bigger themes land with more punch. Service feels less like a slogan and more like a lived promise. Sacrifice feels personal instead of abstract.
I found Dark Agent to be a powerful and surprising memoir. I would recommend it to readers who enjoy true stories about grit and growth, as well as those curious about the unseen world of U.S. diplomatic security work. It also fits anyone who likes memoirs that mix pain with hope and still come out standing. The book carries hard truths, but it carries them with heart, and that is what makes it worth reading.
Pages: 332 | ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0G4SPWJWP
From a hod to an odd EM wave
From a Hod to an Odd EM Wave follows D. A. Weston’s life from a rough start in postwar Britain to a long, winding career in engineering and research. The book moves through building sites, radio repair shops, mental-health research labs, nuclear facilities, and international consulting work. Along the way, Weston meets people who are brilliant, kind, petty, tragic, and sometimes heroic. His memoir mixes personal anecdotes with technical curiosities, plus emotional reflections on war, ethics, science, and the strange places a career can lead. It feels like a tour through the human side of engineering, full of sharp memories and surprising turns.
I found myself pulled in by the plainspoken honesty in his stories. He writes in a way that feels like the reader is sitting across from someone who has lived five lifetimes and is finally ready to talk. Some scenes hit hard. The thalidomide children, the chaotic fights in the lab, the grim humor around radiation work, and the quiet sadness of patients stuck in outdated psychiatric systems. Other parts feel warm and almost nostalgic. His delight in radios and tape recorders, his pride in small technical victories, his awe at mentors who believed in him. At times I laughed, then suddenly felt my stomach drop. The emotional swing made the book feel alive, even when the writing wandered.
The parts that lingered most for me were the stories that touched on moral courage. Rudy’s escape from Auschwitz and his fight to warn the world. The reminders that science is done by flawed people who can steal credit, cut corners, or act with unexpected kindness. Weston never hides his own missteps either. That humility made me trust him more. Sometimes the prose felt abrupt, but I didn’t mind. It matched the way memories surface in real life. The mix of technical curiosity and human vulnerability kept me hooked.
From a hod to an odd EM wave is ideal for readers who enjoy memoirs with grit and candor, especially those curious about science and engineering from the inside. It is raw, personal, and full of feeling. I recommend it to anyone who likes hearing about life told straight from the heart and who does not mind a ride that goes from light to heavy and back again.
Pages: 223 | ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0G9C9R31N
Ida Chatfield
The book follows the life of Ida Chatfield and tells her story from childhood on the Missouri River to her disappearance in Aspen in 1886. It mixes historical records with imagined moments that fill in the spaces between the facts. It feels like a full life unfolding, even though her real life ended at only eighteen. The book also weaves in real news articles that reported her missing and later confirmed her death. The mix of truth and imagination gives the whole thing a strange and lingering weight.
While reading, I often felt pulled into Ida’s voice. The writing felt warm at times and then cold in a way that mirrors frontier life. I found myself caring for Ida as if she were someone I’d once known. Her memories of Nebraska and Colorado felt vivid and earthy. The sadness around the deaths in her family hit me harder than I expected, especially the loss of her sister Jennie. The author sits close to Ida’s emotions and lets her tell the story in a plain and honest way. That plainness worked on me. It made the mystery of her final night feel personal.
The book pushes you to think about how people in the past were misunderstood, especially women. It shows how easily a person’s life can be shaped and misshaped by the stories others tell. The newspapers tried to fit Ida into neat explanations that never felt right. Reading those old clippings frustrated me. They felt careless and quick to judge, and it hurt to see how little room she had to define herself. At the same time, the fictional pieces brought her back to life with softness and patience. I loved that contrast because it made me think about how we all want to be remembered for who we were, not for the blur of a headline.
By the end, I felt a quiet ache for Ida and for every forgotten person whose life was cut short or brushed aside. The book works for readers who enjoy historical nonfiction but want more heart in the telling. It also works for readers who crave a mystery that will never be perfectly solved yet still offers something meaningful. I would recommend it to anyone who loves frontier history, family stories, and character-driven tales filled with emotion.
Pages: 280 | ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0FHJVCV7V
Losing Mom
Losing Mom, by Peggy Ottman, is a memoir about a daughter walking with her mother through the last stretch of her life. The story moves through medical crises, small moments of grace, old family rhythms, and the shifting power dynamic between parent and child. It opens with years of near misses, each one convincing Ottman that maybe her mother would never actually die, and then follows the final days with an honesty that feels both intimate and strangely universal. At its heart, it is about love, caretaking, and the long letting go that comes when a parent fades.
The writing is simple, direct, sometimes almost breathless in the way it tumbles forward. That works for this kind of memoir. The scenes of crisis feel sharp because they are told the way we remember trauma, in fragments and quick flashes. I appreciated how she didn’t try to polish herself into some perfect caretaker. She shows the guilt, the second-guessing, the resentment, the deep tenderness. Her relationship with her sisters adds texture, too. They each carry different responsibilities, and you can feel the family history in every conversation.
What struck me most was the author’s honesty about fear. The fear of losing her mom, yes, but also the fear of doing the wrong thing, of missing a sign, of not being strong enough. Those moments felt very emotional. Some scenes hit hard, like when she speaks nonsense during what might be a stroke. Other moments are quiet, almost gentle, like the nurse patiently washing her mother’s hair. The memoir doesn’t try to turn grief into something tidy. It lets it stay messy and human, which makes it more powerful.
By the end, Losing Mom feels like a long exhale. It doesn’t offer big lessons. Instead, it gives you the feeling of having walked alongside someone through something real. I’d recommend Peggy Ottman‘s story to anyone who gravitates toward memoirs that deal with caregiving, aging parents, and the complicated love that sits underneath family stories. Readers who value emotional honesty over dramatic storytelling will appreciate it most. This is a memoir that keeps you thinking, especially if you’ve ever watched someone you love slowly slip away.
Pages: 300
Literary Titan Book Award: Fiction
The Literary Titan Book Award honors books that exhibit exceptional storytelling and creativity. This award celebrates novelists who craft compelling narratives, create memorable characters, and weave stories that captivate readers. The recipients are writers who excel in their ability to blend imagination with literary skill, creating worlds that enchant and narratives that linger long after the final page is turned.
Award Recipients
Talthybius by Jessie Holder Tourtellotte and Nathaniel Howard
Golem Mine by Donald Schwartz
A Trail in the Woods by Mallory O’Connor
Messenger of the Reaper Part 2 by Jimmy Straley
Missing in Lincoln Park by Staci Andrea
Medusa: Or, Men Entombed in Winter by Kyle Farnworth
Visit the Literary Titan Book Awards page to see award information.
LITERARY TITAN 