Blog Archives
Away from the City
Away from the City follows a single autumn leaf that slips free from its tree and rides the wind away from skyscrapers and cars to rivers, mountains, and a quiet meadow. The poem-style text paints each stop on that little journey. First, we see hills and streams, then an eagle, then a peaceful field where the leaf finally rests. At the end, there are real photos and short notes from the author about trips with family, including her mom, and how nature became a place of comfort and joy.
I really liked the writing style. It feels simple, but it has this musical beat that made me want to read parts out loud. Lines like “flip, flip, spin, spin” have a fun rhythm that kids can easily echo. I also enjoy the way the city and the wild places sit side by side. The language is very visual which goes well with the artwork on every other page of the book. The artwork captures a poignant, quiet transition between seasons, utilizing a striking contrast between the foreground and the background. The focal point is a singular maple leaf that seems to glow with an almost luminescent amber and green light, suggesting a lingering life force even after it has fallen. The artwork succeeds in evoking a mood of peaceful melancholy, beautifully balancing the delicate details of the leaf against a soft, impressionistic landscape.
The ideas underneath the words are impactful as well. The book is really about longing for quiet, space, and fresh air. As the leaf moves farther from the city, everything feels calmer and more alive at the same time. Then the last section with photos brings it all into real life. Seeing the author with loved ones at lakes and canyons, and reading about her mom finding peace in nature while living with ALS, gives the earlier pages a new weight.
I would recommend Away from the City for kids who enjoy gentle, poetic stories and for grownups who crave a nature break in the middle of a busy day. It would be lovely at bedtime, in a classroom, or on a road trip out of town. If you want a slow and thoughtful picture book that makes you want to take a walk outside, look around, and appreciate nature, this one is a sweet children’s book that will nudge you in that direction.
Pages: 34 | ASIN: B0GGJD96K6
A Life in Too Many Margins
S. E. Thomson’s A Life in Too Many Margins: Laughing Through the Labels is a whip-smart and emotionally stirring memoir that opens in a hospital room, David, chronically ill and exhausted, finally believed after months of dismissal, staring at the “beige hospital blanket” and coping with gallows humor as doctors confirm an omental infarction tied to Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome. From there, the book moves through a childhood and adulthood spent ricocheting between forced gender roles, neurodivergent masking, disability and medical trauma, and the slow, hard-earned assembly of a self, one chapter at a time, like a life rebuilt from receipts and radiology reports.
I liked the voice in this book. It’s not “funny” as decoration; it’s funny as a crowbar. In the prologue alone, the humor keeps snapping the seal on the airless jar of medical neglect: the hospital gown “afraid of commitment,” the Jell-O christened Gary, the pain described as a “damp grocery bag full of bees.” That comedic metabolism doesn’t dilute the suffering; it metabolizes it, turning indignity into something you can hold up to the light without going blind. I found myself laughing, then immediately feeling implicated, because the joke keeps pointing back to the systems and people who require disabled folks to audition for basic credibility.
I also didn’t expect the book to be so precise about the small origin-moments that become a lifelong weather pattern. The early sections about gender feel like being trapped in a brightly colored room where everything is a script you didn’t agree to learn; the “pink” isn’t just décor, it’s enforcement. And when the narrative arrives at pronouns later, quietly, almost offhand, in a classroom roll call, it lands with the force of a key finally fitting a lock: “Uh, I don’t care?” becomes the hinge that swings the door open. The moment David names it, I am transgender… I am a man, it’s rendered not as a glossy reveal, but as an “ohhhhhhh” that rearranges decades of memory in one night. That ordinariness is the point. Self-recognition isn’t always fireworks; sometimes it’s just the first time someone asks the right question in a room that doesn’t punish honesty.
This is for readers who gravitate toward memoir, humor, disability, neurodiversity, LGBTQ+, and trauma recovery narratives, especially anyone who’s ever been treated like a “case” instead of a person, or who wants a story that makes space rather than demanding palatability. If you like the sharp, self-protective candor of Jenny Lawson (or the laughter-through-the-bruises essay energy of Samantha Irby), Thomson’s voice will feel familiar. And when the book closes by insisting, without sentimentality, that if your body is falling apart and no one believes you, you should write it down because it might save someone else’s life, it doesn’t read like a slogan; it reads like a field note from a survivor.
Pages: 229 | ASIN : B0FL6XG768
Glimpses of Grace
Glimpses of Grace is a slim book of personal essays that traces Judith Bowen’s life from childhood memories, through motherhood and a long career in occupational therapy, into the tender, uncertain terrain of aging and vision loss. Each essay lingers on a moment that could easily be overlooked: a lizard in the Texas sun, an anxious night waiting for an adopted daughter to arrive at JFK, a blue parakeet chirping in a retirement home, a solo trip to Chicago when her eyesight is failing. What ties these scenes together is her search for “glimpses of grace,” small flashes of connection, courage, and meaning that show up in ordinary days, in loss, in illness, and in the simple kindness of other people. The book is both a life story and a gentle meditation on how we learn to see differently when our literal sight starts to fade.
The writing is straightforward and visual, almost like sitting in a quiet room while someone pulls out old photographs and tells you the stories behind them. Bowen keeps her language simple, and that choice works well with the material. The scenes at the orphanage and in those early days with Mary, her adopted daughter, hit me hard. They felt calm on the surface and very raw underneath, which is not easy to pull off. The essays about her dogs and neighbors could have turned cute or saccharine, but the details save them: the wet blue toddler shoes, the towel over a beloved dog’s face, the way a neighbor’s glasses slip down his nose when he is scared about his wife. The pacing is unhurried, yet that slower rhythm also gives the book its reflective, almost prayerful mood.
What I enjoyed most was how Bowen writes about losing her sight and asking for help. Those chapters could have been technical or grim. Instead, she treats each new limitation as an invitation to another kind of connection. She lets a former student teach her Tejano dance in class. She talks with a young Algerian airport escort about teaching. She trusts strangers to walk her back when she gets turned around on Chicago streets. There is faith in the book, and a sense of the sacred, but it is held lightly, through images and encounters rather than sermons. The theme of “grace” is spelled out clearly for readers. Even with that, the honesty about fear, fatigue, and grief keeps the ideas grounded. She never pretends that transformation is easy, only that it is possible.
I would recommend Glimpses of Grace to readers who like reflective, real-life stories rather than plot-driven narratives. If you are caring for aging parents, living with illness or disability, adjusting to retirement, or trying to make peace with a life that has not gone in a straight line, this book will probably feel like good company. Folks who enjoy spiritual memoirs that are gentle rather than dogmatic, and anyone who believes that small, ordinary moments can change us, will find a lot here. It is quiet, warm, and steady, and for the right reader, that will be exactly what is needed.
Pages: 123 | ASIN : B0FL6XG768
Ya Gotta Eat!
Ya Gotta Eat! is a cozy hybrid of family memoir and community cookbook, where Catherine Ring Saliba braids together Italian, Syrian, and old-school New England dishes with stories about the people who cooked them and the kids who grew up eating them. Recipes for things like lamb-bone spaghetti sauce, Christmas lasagna, kibbeh, koosa, bacon rolls, and corned beef and cabbage sit alongside memories of her scientist father whose mantra gives the book its title, long-ago tablecloths, nursing-school nights in snowy Vermont, and grandchildren circling the kitchen. It feels less like a polished “chef” book and more like being handed the family recipe box and a stack of photo albums at the same time.
I really fell for Saliba’s voice. She talks the way a good home cook talks in the kitchen, with side comments and little detours and a lot of humor. She admits when something is fussy, when she cheats, when she never mastered mashed potatoes. I liked how often she lets herself wander for a page before getting to the “official” recipe, like the story about her father’s grapes before stuffed grape leaves, or the rant about the IRS and that catastrophic turkey wing before the lemony wing recipe. Those bits made me feel oddly cared for. I could hear the clatter of pans, the low family chatter in the background, the sense that food is what you reach for when you do not quite know how else to love people. The writing is simple, sometimes rambly, but it has a warm pulse.
I also felt a lot of affection for the way she treats the recipes themselves. They are specific enough to cook from, yet they keep a loose, older style that trusts the reader. There is plenty of “a dab of butter,” “a big scoop,” “as much as you like,” and jokes about not remembering why the wooden spoon matters, only that it does. The dishes can be rich and old-fashioned, full of bacon, lamb bones, George Washington seasoning, and long-simmering pots. For me, that gave the book real character and a strong sense of era and place. I sometimes wished for clearer cues on yield, timing, or substitutions, especially when she leans on products that are not as common now or skips steps a beginner might need spelled out. The balance tilts more toward “let me tell you how we do it in this family” than toward test-kitchen precision.
I would recommend Ya Gotta Eat! to readers who like cookbooks with a personal, lived-in feel and to home cooks who already know their way around a stove and want to add some deeply nostalgic Italian and Syrian American dishes to their rotation. It is a great fit for people who cook to remember their own families. If you are happy to read family stories, dog-ear pages, and let the house smell like sauce for hours, this book feels like good company.
Pages: 268 | ASIN : B0GDZB8RGG
The Ancient Moon Goddess, Crushed by Patriarchy, Buried by Judaism, Hidden in Christianity
The Ancient Moon Goddess by Dale W O’Neal tells a bold story. The authors argue that early humans saw menstrual blood as “moon blood” and as the raw stuff of life, so the first religion centered on a powerful moon Goddess. From there, they follow a long “blood trail” through Stone Age animism, sacrificial rituals, castration and circumcision, and then into Hebrew scripture and finally Christianity, where the Goddess gets pushed underground but never quite disappears. The book mixes myth analysis, archeology, and close readings of biblical texts to claim that many familiar doctrines about sin, sacrifice, and salvation grew out of this older Goddess religion.
The core idea was gripping and unsettling for me. The link between menstrual cycles and the moon seems obvious once they lay it out, and the way they build a whole religious worldview from that simple pattern has real power. I felt drawn in when they described ancient people living in a “spirit-filled” world, where every hill and river had a soul and where the moon’s waxing and waning set the rhythm for life, death, and rebirth. Their account of how sacrificial systems grow from imitation of the moon’s self-emptying cycle hits hard emotionally, because it turns grim stories of blood and death into a kind of tragic misunderstanding of nature rather than pure cruelty.
The writing is clear, direct, and often vivid, and the authors do a good job explaining ideas like sympathetic magic, animism, and “as above, so below” in plain language. The personal backstory of Dale O’Neal’s exit from evangelical Christianity gives the project emotional weight and makes the stakes of the argument feel very real, especially when he wrestles with doctrines of hell, female subordination, and blood atonement. The tone carries a clear, unapologetic conviction that readers may find energizing, and its strong critique of patriarchy keeps the argument sharp and focused. The authors write with such confidence in their perspective that the book often feels like a manifesto, which will especially appeal to readers who prefer bold, decisive interpretations over cautious academic debate.
I would recommend this book to readers who are curious about the deep roots of biblical religion, who enjoy mythic thinking, and who feel ready to question standard church teachings about sacrifice, sin, and gender. I think it will especially resonate with ex-believers, feminist readers, fans of Joseph Campbell or Marija Gimbutas, and anyone who likes bold “big picture” narratives about religion’s origin and evolution. For me, it was a provocative and emotionally charged read that I will keep turning over in my mind for a long time.
Pages: 322 | ASIN : B0FRN9PNXL
The Man in the Dam
Andrea Barton’s The Man in the Dam is a contemporary cozy-style mystery set around Mansfield and Lake Eildon in Victoria’s High Country, where journalist Jade Riley is meant to be writing a feel good arts piece about a local production of The Importance of Being Earnest. Instead, she wakes after a tense night with her partner Brett, spots a body in the property’s paddock dam, and the week turns into a knot of interviews, small-town suspicion, and a mystery that widens beyond that first death into family history and hidden motives.
What I liked most is how Barton anchors the book in everyday texture before letting the plot accelerate. The opening has that sharp, slightly painful intimacy of real life: Jade replaying a relationship argument, noticing mess on the counter, trying to steady herself, and then the sudden wrongness of seeing “something” in the water that becomes a person. The writing is clean and easy to move through, with lots of forward motion. And I enjoyed the author’s playful structural choice to use song titles for chapters, plus the nod to a playlist, which fits the creative-arts thread without turning the novel into a gimmick.
Barton’s bigger swing, though, is the way she braids “performance” into everything: the literal theatre production, the public masks people wear in a small town, and the private selves they protect when grief and money and reputation start pressing in. That theme lands because it shows up in character choices, not speeches. Jade is a journalist, so she has a believable reason to ask questions, notice tells, and keep pushing even when it gets uncomfortable. I also appreciated that the story doesn’t stay simple. It adds layers of family backstory and a second mystery that turns the book into something closer to a puzzle box, where one answer opens the next door and you start wondering how far back the damage really goes.
I’d recommend The Man in the Dam to readers who like character-driven mysteries with a strong sense of place, a community cast, and an investigation that feels like it’s happening over cups of coffee and awkward conversations rather than car chases. If you enjoy amateur-sleuth stories, theatre and arts settings, and mysteries that mix present-day danger with long shadows from the past, you’ll have a very good time with The Man in the Dam.
Pages: 310 | ASIN : B0GGWHFPY9
Escala’s Wish
Escala’s Wish is a high fantasy novel set in the world of Valla, framed as a story told by Wigfrith Foreverbloom, a gnome bard performing in a Dunwell tavern. He recounts how Escala Winter, a mischievous pixie princess from the Court of Dreams, breaks sacred fey law when she kisses a mortal man to see what love feels like, triggering death, a looming magical punishment called the Wane, and a chain of events that threatens both the fey realm and the mortal world. Around that one impulsive choice the book weaves trials, family secrets, political schemes between fey courts, and a slow, painful reckoning with what it costs to try to fix a mistake.
The frame with Wigfrith on stage works for me: he jokes with the crowd, pauses to explain fey lore or theology, then dives back into Escala’s story, and those breaks give the epic parts some breathing room. The chapters are short and snappy, so even though the book is long, it never felt like a slog. Some of the worldbuilding sections, like the detailed explanation of how different kinds of fey come into being or how the Courts of Dreams, Nightmares, and Twilight work, are still pretty dense, but because they are delivered in Wigfrith’s voice, with little asides and running jokes, it felt more like listening to a talkative friend than reading a rulebook.
What I liked most, though, was how personal the story feels under all the magic. Escala starts out as this curious, slightly spoiled pixie who just wants the kind of love story her parents had, and her playful stunt ends in blood on the grass and the death of her best friend. The book keeps circling that wound: her guilt, her grief, and the way everyone around her responds to it. Her father, Rowan, is torn between his duty to the Court of Dreams and his love for his daughter, and that tension gives the big fantasy stakes some real emotional weight. When the story leans into those family relationships and into Escala’s growth from naive troublemaker to someone who has to make terrible, sacrificial choices, it really lands. At times, the quippy banter and tavern humor brush up hard against serious scenes like parental death or questions of divine justice, and the shift can feel a little quick, but overall, the mix of heartache, sarcasm, and wonder feels honest.
If you like character-driven high fantasy, especially stories that feel inspired by tabletop campaigns, this will probably hit the spot. It has magic systems, fey politics, and a looming cosmic order called the True Cycle, but at its core, it is a coming-of-age fantasy about a pixie trying to live with the consequences of one reckless wish and figure out what love and responsibility really mean. Readers who enjoy long series, tavern tales, and found-family adventuring will have a lot of fun here. If you want a fantasy novel that lets you laugh, wince, and maybe tear up a little while a bard talks to you like you are sharing a table in the back of the inn, Escala’s Wish is worth your time.
Pages: 662 | ASIN : B0G1XRP6DW
Tales of Spooner Pond: Supernatural Tales of Unforgettable Characters and Peculiar Gifts
In Tales of Spooner Pond, by Terry Rasner, a girl named Pippy Natalie Hyland discovers her “dreams” are less pillow-fog and more passport: she’s being called from ordinary North Star Ridge into Spooner Pond, a lush otherworld populated by talkative animal-humans (“palimals”) and overseen by Truggles, a towering, dog-and-panda-like guardian who insists she can learn to travel back and forth, and even bring a few friends along. The book opens with a domestic alarm (a bedroom wall turned into a map, furious parents, a counselor visit) and quickly widens into episodic adventures where strange gifts appear, loyalties form, and the geography of wonder becomes almost tactile.
What hooked me first wasn’t the premise, portal fantasies are a well-trod trail, but the particular grain of the telling: Pippy’s voice can be earnest, snarky, and suddenly luminous in the same breath. The adults are drawn with a kid’s exacting fairness (my favorite detail is how her father “towered…like a stout oak tree,” which is both affectionate and indicting), and that tension gives Spooner Pond a real narrative job: it’s not just escapism, it’s relief-pressure, a place where a child can feel chosen instead of merely managed. Even the language invents its own little rituals, “noggin nudger” moments, like the story is quietly training you to adopt its private vocabulary.
Once the “palimals” take the stage, I found myself smiling at how the book refuses to sand down its oddities. Kitty Joe, the oversized cat with his chewy idiolect and disconcerting carnivore pride, is both cuddly and feral; he’s the kind of character who can purr in your arms and, two sentences later, remind you he’d prefer his breakfast with a crunch. And the set pieces have a fable-like clarity, Barney becoming “Feathers,” learning to glide and then “fly” by turning ears into wings, is delightfully implausible in the way childhood logic can be: if you want it badly enough and you practice hard enough, anatomy negotiates. I admired the book’s stubborn commitment to its own cadence, unembarrassed, a little eccentric, and often genuinely sweet.
Terry Rasner’s YA novel feels best aimed at middle-grade readers (and read-aloud families) who like fantasy, portal fantasy, supernatural adventure, and magical creatures with a dash of moral weather, patience, courage, and loyalty, threaded through the spectacle. If you loved The Chronicles of Narnia, Spooner Pond offers a similarly sincere invitation, just with fur, oddball slang, and gifts that arrive sideways. Tales of Spooner Pond is a warm and peculiar pocket-universe where the weird feels like a kind of truth.
Pages: 288 | ASIN : B0G6VKNV2Q
