Blog Archives
Pastor of Deception
Pastor of Deception by Eric S. Rodko is an autobiography about growing up with a father whose public identity as an ordained minister concealed a troubling life of dishonesty, manipulation, and criminal behavior. At the center of the story is Rodko’s complicated relationship with his father, John Weliczko, a man whose intelligence, education, and religious credentials made his conduct especially difficult to understand. Beginning with memories of his childhood in Connecticut during the 1970s, Rodko describes the confusion of having a father who was physically and emotionally distant, unpredictable in his attention, and increasingly mysterious in his activities. As Rodko grows older, his efforts to understand his father become intertwined with questions about trust, identity, loyalty, and faith. What makes the book particularly compelling is the unusual perspective from which the story unfolds. Readers experience the consequences of deception through the eyes of a son who desperately wanted an ordinary, loving relationship with his father. That emotional connection gives the narrative much of its strength and keeps the reader invested as troubling details gradually emerge.
I appreciated Rodko’s willingness to share the everyday experiences that shaped his life. He writes extensively about school, friendships, family traditions, college, work, and the challenges of growing into adulthood. These personal memories provide important context for understanding how his father’s behavior affected him over time. His mother, Lydia, is an especially significant presence throughout the memoir. Her determination to provide a stable, loving home, despite considerable personal hardship, brings warmth and emotional balance to the story. Rodko’s affection and admiration for her come through naturally, and their relationship becomes one of the book’s most meaningful elements. Another interesting feature is the inclusion of letters, cards, and other correspondence from his father. These documents offer readers a glimpse into the complicated family dynamics and allow them to consider the father’s words alongside Rodko’s recollections. The combination of personal storytelling and documentary material gives the memoir an investigative quality, occasionally making it feel like a true-crime narrative.
Rodko’s writing is conversational, candid, and remarkably detailed. He has a strong memory for conversations, locations, relationships, and seemingly ordinary moments that take on greater significance when viewed through the experiences of adulthood. His occasional humor is welcome, particularly when he recalls the awkwardness of adolescence or the unexpected situations he encountered as a young man. The book covers an enormous amount of personal history, and its attention to detail sometimes slows the pacing. Certain experiences and emotional concerns are revisited several times, while extended accounts of work, friendships, and family history create a leisurely narrative rhythm. Still, these passages contribute to the sense that Rodko wants readers to understand the whole person behind the extraordinary circumstances. His Christian faith is central to that understanding. Throughout the memoir, he explores the emotional and spiritual challenges of betrayal, the damage caused by misplaced trust, and the difficult relationship between forgiveness and personal boundaries. His religious reflections are sincere and deeply connected to his lived experiences.
Pastor of Deception will be especially meaningful to readers who appreciate autobiographies about complicated families, personal resilience, and the lasting influence of childhood relationships. People who have experienced estrangement, parental betrayal, or disappointment involving religious leaders may find particular relevance in Rodko’s story. Christian readers interested in personal testimonies about forgiveness, spiritual growth, and the practical challenges of living by faith will likely appreciate the book most. Readers drawn to true stories involving deception and white-collar crime will also find plenty to hold their attention, especially because the consequences extend so far beyond the individual responsible. I’d recommend this book most strongly to readers who enjoy reflective, faith-centered memoirs and are willing to spend time with a detailed account of one man’s experiences. Its greatest appeal lies in Rodko’s personal voice, his devotion to the people who supported him, and his thoughtful examination of how family relationships can shape an entire lifetime.
Pages: 448 | ASIN: B0HG3TBRPF
Lying in a Tomb: The Mummies of Guanajuato, Mexico: A Memoir
Lying in a Tomb, by Jeannette M. Potts, MD, invites you into a world where the dead have an extraordinary presence among the living, and where the greatest mysteries often have little to do with death. In this deeply personal memoir, Potts revisits her experience as a young American scholar who traveled to Guanajuato, Mexico, in 1983 to investigate the city’s naturally mummified bodies. Armed with a prestigious research grant, scientific curiosity, and an adventurous spirit, she entered a place steeped in history, superstition, religious tradition, and fascinating contradictions. What unfolds is an absorbing combination of personal history, cultural exploration, scientific inquiry, and intimate reflection. Potts brings an unusual perspective to her subject, shaped by her Mexican heritage, her early fascination with the mummies, and her subsequent career as a physician. Her curiosity is infectious, and her willingness to revisit the assumptions of her younger self gives the narrative an appealing sense of candor.
I liked the way Potts brings Guanajuato to life. Its winding alleyways, underground tunnels, colorful architecture, bustling markets, cemetery rituals, and lively celebrations become essential characters in her story. She captures the city’s relationship with death through vivid encounters, local legends, historical accounts, and the people who welcomed her into their lives. Her descriptions of the Museo de las Momias and the Santa Paula cemetery are especially compelling, combining the fascination of an investigator with the empathy of someone who recognizes the humanity behind every preserved body. Potts also explores the influence of the mummies on popular culture, from Ray Bradbury’s writing to Werner Herzog’s Nosferatu. Her discussions of burial customs, religious relics, and the ethics of displaying human remains add considerable substance to the narrative. Photographs, personal sketches, journal entries, and a thoughtfully curated musical soundtrack make the experience feel especially intimate.
Running alongside these discoveries is a personal story about youth, romance, identity, and the complicated ways people learn to understand themselves. Potts writes openly about navigating a society shaped by traditional gender expectations, family influence, and deeply entrenched attitudes toward women. Her experiences with love and an increasingly difficult relationship introduce a powerful emotional dimension to the memoir. There’s something particularly affecting about watching her younger self approach unfamiliar situations with confidence, vulnerability, and an eagerness to belong. Writing decades later, Potts can examine those experiences with the perspective of a woman who has spent a lifetime considering their meaning. Her voice moves comfortably between wit, tenderness, indignation, and thoughtful self-examination. The memoir’s episodic structure reflects the way memory works, with certain encounters gaining fresh significance as they’re considered alongside others. The result feels remarkably human, full of contradictions, unexpected humor, unsettling observations, and genuine affection for the people and places that shaped her.
What gives Lying in a Tomb its lasting resonance is Potts’s ability to connect the mysteries of human preservation with questions of dignity, autonomy, memory, and belonging. Her return to Guanajuato more than forty years after her original research adds another compelling dimension, allowing the perspectives of a curious young scholar and an experienced physician to coexist on the page. Throughout the book, she approaches difficult subjects with intellectual curiosity and a personal investment that makes them matter. Her concern for the individuals behind the museum’s famous exhibits is especially moving, as is her recognition that remembering someone carries responsibilities of its own. Rich in atmosphere, personal revelation, and cultural insight, this is a memorable memoir that encourages readers to consider how we honor the lives of others and make sense of our own. Lying in a Tomb gives the dead their humanity and the living a powerful reason to examine their own.
Pages: 431 | ASIN : B0H1J7314R
The Velvet Bow (And Other Dark Sh*t)
Peri R. Finkelstein has a complicated relationship with velvet, and that seemingly small detail becomes the perfect doorway into her remarkable memoir, The Velvet Bow. Born with Nemaline Rod Myopathy, a rare form of muscular dystrophy, Finkelstein has spent her life navigating medical challenges, societal expectations, and a world that often decides what she’s capable of before giving her a chance to speak. But give her that chance, and she’ll have plenty to say. Armed with biting wit, sharp observations, and a delightfully unapologetic personality, she takes readers through a collection of deeply personal stories that are as entertaining as they are revealing. From outrageous family mishaps and spectacularly awkward encounters to painful memories of discrimination and medical trauma, Finkelstein tells her story with an honesty that feels refreshingly human. Her personality jumps off the page, and before long, you feel like you’re listening to a fiercely opinionated friend who has finally decided to tell you everything.
Finkelstein has the ability to find humor in circumstances that would leave most people speechless. Her colorful nicknames for medical professionals, astonishing experiences with nurses, and descriptions of everyday disasters give the memoir an almost sitcom-like quality. Yet beneath the sarcasm is a perceptive young woman who understands the emotional cost of constantly having to prove her intelligence, independence, and worth. Finkelstein offers an intimate look at the realities of living with a physical disability, including the exhausting logistics of traveling, the vulnerability of depending on caregivers, and the loneliness that comes with being misunderstood. Her reflections on accessibility and the language people use around disability are especially compelling. She challenges readers to reconsider what it means to call someone inspirational and asks them to recognize the full person behind the wheelchair. These moments carry weight because they emerge from experiences she’s lived, sometimes at considerable personal cost.
What makes The Velvet Bow especially engaging is the sheer range of Finkelstein’s world. She’s a devoted Stevie Nicks fan, an ambitious academic, a passionate advocate, a dog lover, a fashion enthusiast, and a self-described introvert with enormous dreams. Her stories move through childhood, education, relationships, travel, family traditions, and professional accomplishments, each revealing another layer of her personality. Her parents and siblings bring their own brand of chaos and affection to the narrative, creating some of its funniest and most tender moments. There’s also a fascinating tension between Finkelstein’s desire for independence and the realities of a body that demands constant attention. She writes candidly about frustration, grief, ambition, insecurity, and the longing for experiences others take for granted. Those admissions give the book emotional depth and make her confidence feel earned. Readers will recognize something of themselves in her complicated relationship with belonging, expectations, and the pressure to become the person everyone else thinks they should be.
The Velvet Bow is a personal exploration of identity, autonomy, and the courage it takes to claim ownership of your own story. Finkelstein’s conversational writing style makes even difficult subjects approachable, while her willingness to share uncomfortable truths invites readers into experiences they might never otherwise understand. Her advocacy grows naturally from her storytelling, reminding us that inclusion begins with listening, respecting individual choices, and seeing people in all their complexity. There’s real warmth here, alongside justified anger, infectious humor, and a stubborn determination to live according to her own rules. Finkelstein has a gift for turning the seemingly ordinary details of her life into observations that linger long after the page is turned. With its distinctive voice and generous emotional range, this memoir celebrates a young woman discovering just how much of her story belongs to her. With razor-sharp wit, fearless vulnerability, and a spirit that refuses to shrink, The Velvet Bow reminds us that the most powerful way to change how the world sees you is to tell your story in your own voice.
Pages: 300 | ASIN: 1996944215
Spiritual Imagination
Questions for Werewolves recounts your experiences with bipolar disorder and severe depression while exploring the powerful influence of dreams, memories, mythology, and spiritual imagery. What inspired you to write your memoir, and how did you decide that your experiences with bipolar depression could become the foundation of a book?
I didn’t set out to write a memoir about bipolar disorder. In many ways, the book began as an attempt to make sense of experiences that had shattered my previous understanding of myself and the world.
During periods of depression, psychosis, grief, romantic disillusion, and spiritual emergency, I encountered dreams, images, and memories that refused to leave me. Some were terrifying, others beautiful, but all seemed to be asking something of me. Writing became a way of staying in conversation with those questions rather than simply dismissing them as symptoms or trying to forget them.
I think I knew the material had become a book when I realized that the questions I was wrestling with were not mine alone. Many people, whether they have experienced mental illness or not, know what it means to descend into darkness, lose their bearings, and search for meaning.
Ultimately, Questions for Werewolves is less a book about bipolar disorder than a book about what happened when my familiar world fell apart, and how dreams, myths, and spiritual imagination helped me find my way through the ruins.
What do you hope readers understand about the lived experience of bipolar depression that might not be conveyed through clinical descriptions alone?
As a person with lived experience, I’ve come to reclaim the term madness in the spirit of the Mad Studies movement. That word feels honest to my experience. While medical explanations have their place, I’ve never felt that what happened to me could be fully explained by brain chemistry or disordered cognitive thinking alone.
There are profound dimensions of soul, spirit, and mysticism involved. In my own case, recovery began when I learned to listen to and honor the voices and images that emerged from the depths, rather than trying to suppress or ignore them. Once I gave them a meaningful place in my life, and in my dream diaries, they no longer invaded me. Instead, as I worked with them, they helped me engage with difficult realities such as family trauma, grief, romantic disillusionment, and the violent legacies of my father’s war.
At the same time, I want to acknowledge that psychiatric interventions can play a role in medium-term stabilization and support. However, from a patient rights perspective, I believe medical treatment should always respect a person’s dignity, moral autonomy, and right to informed consent, rather than being imposed through coercion. I also believe patients should have the right to calibrate, over time, the extent to which medical interventions remain central to their care.
How did your encounters with different spiritual traditions, including Christianity, Haitian Vodou, and Eastern philosophy, influence your understanding of the experiences you describe?
My mother, in her youth, converted from Buddhism to Catholicism. So already, as a child, I was immersed in the background of my mother’s Taiwanese Buddhism, which embodies philosophical, animist, and shamanic aspects. My mother also had what Westerners might consider a superstitious side, and accorded great weight to images in dreams.
What is an image? What makes an image true? When do creative images become something more than personal expression, fantasy, allegory or myth?
Encounters with different traditions helped me make sense of my experiences. Rather than seeing my imagery as purely private, I began to recognize transpersonal aspects of them in collective visions of the sacred, especially those associated with the Divine Feminine. I found resonances across Hispanic Christianity, Islamic Sufism, Taiwanese Buddhism, and many other traditions, even where their orthodox doctrines differ.
Some of the most important influences for me, however, were Indigenous and diasporic traditions such as Native American spirituality and Haitian Vodou. They offered ways of relating to dreams, spirits, land, and voices that are often marginalized within modern Western worldviews.
I should add there is a danger in identifying too quickly with the luminous aspects of spiritual experience while bypassing its darker dimensions, which are not necessarily evil. A central theme of my writing is therefore descent rather than ascent: the idea of katabasis, a journey into the underworld where one is stripped of certainties, undone, and ultimately remade.
In that descent, conventional identities, boundaries, and orthodoxies can no longer be relied upon. This is why the Greek myths of the underworld and sacred wildness, especially the mysteries associated with Persephone, Dionysos, and Artemis, have been so important to me. They offer powerful images of transformation through surrender to the unknown, rather than transcendence through escape from it.
What have you learned about the relationship between creativity and psychological suffering, and how do you avoid romanticizing the very real difficulties of mental illness?
In a paradoxical way, madness forces psychological suffering into the open, creating a terrain of intense and often dangerous encounter. I would never romanticize that experience or the very real suffering and self-harm it can involve.
Earlier this year, I spoke at the Too Mad to Be True conference in Belgium about how “the ways we name the black can kill us.” That idea emerges directly from my own life. When we have no imaginal language for what we are experiencing, despair can begin to feel like the whole truth.
For me, that is the real antagonist in the book. Not madness itself, but the loss of relationship to the darkness. The inability to imagine our way through it.
I don’t believe madness itself is inherently creative. But it can disrupt our habitual assumptions and show powerful images of loss, transformation, and renewal. The creative task is not to glorify the suffering, but to engage those images and voices more wisely, drawing on them as resources for healing and growth.
As I write near the end of the book: “The soul blooms in winter. It blooms red upon the pages of a divine mystery, as in a black light we cannot see.” For me, that image speaks not to the value of suffering itself, but to the possibility of meaning, transformation, and, dare I say, resurrection emerging from our darkest seasons.
Author Links: GoodReads | Website | Amazon
The Trouble with Courage
Roy Taylor’s The Trouble with Courage is a lively and heartfelt memoir of childhood, family, and the unpredictable business of growing up in the Alaskan wilderness during the 1950s. Told through the eyes of young Roy, the book follows the Taylor family as they navigate life in Valdez, a remote frontier town where ordinary activities can quickly become extraordinary adventures. Roy and his brother James are curious, mischievous boys whose days are filled with explorations, experiments, and occasional brushes with disaster. Their father, Andrew, is an adventurous minister and determined dreamer who believes few problems are beyond solving with enough ingenuity and hard work. Their mother, Louela, brings practicality, warmth, and a healthy dose of skepticism to the family’s ambitious undertakings. Together, they make an unforgettable group of personalities. Taylor captures the excitement of childhood discovery while exploring the complicated relationship between courage, good judgment, and the desire to prove oneself. It’s an entertaining family story with plenty of humor, genuine danger, and thoughtful observations about what it takes to live an unconventional life.
Taylor has the ability to bring the Alaskan frontier to life. His descriptions of towering snowdrifts, brutal storms, icy rivers, and rugged mountains create a vivid sense of a place that’s both beautiful and unforgiving. The wilderness becomes an active presence in the family’s daily life, constantly presenting challenges that demand creativity, persistence, and sometimes sheer stubbornness. Taylor has a particular gift for turning everyday experiences into memorable stories. Whether he’s describing an ill-advised childhood experiment, an ambitious project undertaken by his father, or an encounter with the unpredictable natural world, he finds humor in situations that must have been considerably less amusing at the time. His attention to practical details, from repairing equipment to preparing food and making do with limited resources, gives the narrative an appealing authenticity. Readers can almost feel the cold creeping through the walls and smell the wood smoke drifting through the family home.
I was enthralled with the complicated portrait of family life beneath all the adventure. Andrew Taylor is a fascinating character, a man of remarkable resourcefulness, deep religious conviction, generosity, and occasionally questionable judgment. Roy clearly admires his father, but his growing awareness of the contradictions in adult behavior gives the memoir much of its emotional depth. Louela provides an equally important perspective, balancing her husband’s enthusiasm with common sense and concern for their children’s well-being. The relationship between Roy and James is another highlight, full of brotherly competition, shared secrets, affection, and the kind of impulsive decisions only young boys could consider reasonable. Faith plays a significant role throughout the story, influencing the family’s values, relationships, and understanding of hardship. Taylor’s conversational storytelling style makes these experiences approachable, though his fondness for detailed descriptions and extended anecdotes occasionally slows the pace. Even so, those details help preserve the distinctive rhythms of frontier family life.
The Trouble with Courage explores how children learn to distinguish bravery from recklessness, independence from disobedience, and confidence from misplaced certainty. Taylor approaches these questions with humor, affection, and the perspective of someone looking back on a childhood filled with remarkable experiences. There’s a strong sense of nostalgia throughout the memoir, but also an appreciation for the sacrifices, uncertainties, and emotional complexities that accompanied his family’s dreams. The book will especially appeal to readers who enjoy true stories of frontier living, wilderness adventures, and American family life in the mid-twentieth century. Those interested in homesteading, resourcefulness, and the history of Alaska will find plenty to appreciate, as will readers who enjoy memoirs shaped by Christian faith and family relationships. It’s also a rewarding choice for anyone who remembers a childhood spent exploring, testing boundaries, and learning lessons the hard way. Taylor offers an affectionate, often funny account of a family whose adventures illustrate just how much courage can be required to pursue a dream, especially when everyone involved has a different idea of what that dream should look like.
It Starts With Respect
Another Day in Post-Racial America reflects on the lives and deaths of individuals whose encounters with police officers or vigilantes became part of America’s national conversation about race. What inspired you to bring your personal experiences and essays together in this memoir?
The murder of Trayvon Martin left me emotionally shattered. It was so unjust—a teenager walking to the store to buy a snack, only to be pursued and gunned down upon his return to his father’s gated community, as if he had no right to be there. And the punishment for that was death. Can you imagine your own child walking home and being told by a neighbor that he doesn’t belong? And then that neighbor shoots and kills him? To many white Americans, that might seem unfathomable. To Black Americans, it is an everyday truth they live with.
It is also the truth I have lived with for over fifty years since meeting my husband during our freshman year of college. I had been writing about my experiences of being interracially married in a racist America since 2010, when I first started my blog. Obama’s election had caused an atmospheric change in American politics. As a political junkie, I became a close observer of these shifts and predicted a massive backlash to what the media had prematurely started calling a “post-racial America.”
Then a chance encounter pulled so hard at my heart strings, I consider it a life-defining moment. My husband and I were out having lunch, and I looked over to see Sybrina Fulton, Geneva Reed-Veal, Gwen Carr, Lucy McBath, and Maria Hamilton sharing a table in the very same restaurant. I was entirely overcome by emotion. It is unbearable to lose a child to sickness or an accident—but what depth of despair must you feel when you lose a child simply because of the color of their skin? Yet, throughout the history of this country, Black women have endured that loss over and over.
Seeing these courageous women in person steeled my resolve. They took their unimaginable sorrow and turned it into fierce activism. They did it not for themselves, but for the millions of families they hoped would never have to feel the pain of losing a child viewed through a racist lens—in a country that has failed miserably at reconciling its past racial history and righting the codified systems that benefit some while disadvantaging others. When I got home that day, after having a good cry because I had been too emotional to offer my condolences to those mothers in person, I made a decision. I would finally bring my blog posts and essays together into a cohesive memoir to honor them the only way I knew how.
What have your experiences raising a multiracial family taught you about the challenges of navigating different racial and cultural expectations?
Inside my home, I’ve learned that living in and navigating multicultural/multiracial spaces is easy if you keep an open mind. That’s equally true in the workplace, in schools, and in the larger world. It starts with respect and a willingness to understand that the way you were raised and the cultural lens through which you learned about the world aren’t the only ways. Being open-minded allows you to truly see and accept other perspectives, enhancing your own life and understanding of the world, while introducing you to new possibilities and experiences.
Out in the world, however, it can be incredibly difficult. We routinely ran into judgmental people who made it their business to tell us they thought we shouldn’t be together. We faced socioeconomically impactful decisions that were made based entirely on how a particular person felt about our interracial relationship, like when we tried to buy our first home and the seller thought we’d ruin the neighborhood and refused to sell to us. Those biased decisions hurt us in ways a lot of people don’t think about—housing, jobs, and even our physical safety, particularly my husband’s. Imagine forty men ganging up on your fiancé because they didn’t think a Black man should be with a white woman. That happened to me. They assaulted him because of me. I pushed my little 5’2” body into the fray to try to stop them, endangering myself, too. That’s what we have to negotiate, even now as seniors, like when a carful of young people tried to run us down in a theater parking lot. For Black Americans, the most mundane activities can turn unpleasant and, worse, dangerous.
How did the changing social and political climate during the Obama and Trump administrations influence the subjects and perspectives you explored in your essays?
As early as the 1980s, I could feel a societal sea change growing. The vital progress made during the 1950s,’60s, and ’70s in terms of race and gender equality, labor rights, and family-oriented workplace benefits—like paid maternity leave—was systematically being dismantled. Nixon had engineered the Southern Strategy and invited the Southern segregationist Democrats into the Republican Party. Reagan tackled unions and workers’ rights when he dissolved the air traffic controllers’ union, while simultaneously mainstreaming racially coded political propaganda through tropes like the “welfare queen.”
By 2008, Obama’s election was secured, and hope for a better America was pervasive. But I knew the pendulum would swing in the other direction, and the backlash would be massive. The rise of Trump was no surprise. His brand of campaigning, and later, his leadership and policies, ushered in a new level of racial division, a rabid gun culture, cruelty, and an “us vs. them” ethos that ensured the backlash got national traction. Seeing someone like Roger Stone, who was on Nixon’s team in the 1970s, show up again in grand fashion on Trump’s campaign team perfectly illustrates the throughline and connectivity of each era. It might have taken them decades to orchestrate this new America, but here we are. However, almost twenty years after Obama’s election, the pendulum is swinging back to finding a more decent America with the results of the 2026 mid-term election being reported.
How do you hope the book contributes to readers’ understanding of empathy, personal responsibility, and the challenges involved in addressing racial inequality?
As Americans, we need to be stewards of everyone in this country. The divisive concept of “enemies within” is a political strategy to win votes; it does nothing to make this country a better place for its citizens. I often use the saying: A rising tide lifts all boats. Every single child in America should feel safe. They should have a decent home to go to, nutritious meals to eat, and a school with adequate resources so they can thrive and learn.
As people, we have to see each other—not as a skin color, not as an ideology, and most certainly, not as vermin, but as human beings. Only then can we effectively address the systemic inequalities still operating in this country, allowing the tides to lift all of our citizens.
Author Links: GoodReads | Facebook | Website | Amazon
Mostly, it changed how I see my past.
It Happened. Make of It What You Will is a witty, heartfelt memoir about travel, independence, and the wonderfully unpredictable moments that make life memorable. How did writing the book change the way you think about the seemingly ordinary incidents that become lasting memories?
Mostly, it changed how I see my past. I was surprised which moments I remembered as if they happened yesterday, and which were simply gone. Memory works like a scattered jigsaw puzzle. You look for the edges first, and then the rest starts to fit.
My trip around the Iberian Peninsula was the edge. It could just as well have been something else. That’s why I don’t see the book as a memoir or a travel journal. The journey is only the frame. The picture is made of everything that fell into place around it.
How has traveling independently influenced your understanding of yourself and your ability to adapt to unfamiliar situations?
I had travelled alone before, and I’d be lying if I said it’s easy. It isn’t. You put a few things on the scales. On one side, dealing with everything by yourself, with no support. On the other, time for attention, and seeing everything around you with your own eyes. Every journey makes me feel more capable, and more sensitive to the world.
Your stories often find humor in frustrating or unpredictable situations. How has humor influenced the way you respond to life’s challenges?
Humour is a shield and a life support at the same time. The alternative is negative feelings, and those destroy. I prefer to build.
What do you hope readers discover about the value of curiosity and paying attention to the details of everyday life?
Not what they discover, but whether they discover it at all. At the pace we live now, we don’t stop anymore. Attention is fading, and it is the essence of life.
Author Links: GoodReads | Website
In these pages, a white peacock crosses a country road, passengers refuse to cooperate at a toll gate, a flamenco dancer seems to set the floor on fire, a dinner arrives under a glass cloud of smoke, a raft built from logs claims the Pacific, a castle wakes the desire to draw again, a night in the Basque hills turns every breath into a negotiation, and a man stops breathing exactly at four in the morning.
Joanna Potepa, a Polish visual artist, writes in still frames: short, precise, open scenes where ordinary life changes angle without asking permission. Her gaze does not chase morals or neat explanations. It observes roads, rooms, animals, objects, losses, accidents and absurdities with the attention of someone who knows a life can transform in silence.
Moving between Spain, the United Kingdom and Poland, this book draws an intimate map of motion, memory and attention.
It is what happened. Geometry of almost.
Literary Titan Gold Book Award: Nonfiction
The Literary Titan Book Award recognizes outstanding nonfiction books that demonstrate exceptional quality in writing, research, and presentation. This award is dedicated to authors who excel in creating informative, enlightening, and engaging works that offer valuable insights. Recipients of this award are commended for their ability to transform complex topics into accessible and compelling narratives that captivate readers and enhance our understanding.
Award Recipients
Visit the Literary Titan Book Awards page to see award information.
