Elizabeth Strout’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel, Olive Kitteridge, tells the story of a strange and difficult woman from a quiet, cloistered community in Maine. The novel toggles back and forth from Olive’s own life to the lives of those around her–all the way from her husband to one of Olive’s former students whose memory of […]
Jen Wilkin’s Women of the Word equips ordinary women to study the Bible deeply, interpret it soundly, and apply it personally. The principles Wilkin shares may initially sound lofty, perhaps a little too theologically dense to some readers, but she breaks them down into plain, bite-size segments that are easy to digest. Wilkin’s desire, as […]
Someone please call the experts and ask them to explain what makes Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera such a popular and well-known classic, because the greatness of the novel is lost on me. While the writing is poetic and the topic of love is boundlessly explored, I found the characters revolting […]
The twenty stories bound together in The O. Henry Prize Stories for 2018 are also bound by some common characteristics, although they span a wide variety of settings, themes, and lengths. The stories are similarly peculiar and haunting, leaving indelible imprints on their readers, and often, a melancholy ache in their chests. Short stories as […]
I hardly know what to say about Midnight’s Children, because I’m convinced that I only barely understood it. Salman Rushdie’s novel swept me along in a frightening and gorgeous narrative that was so cut-up and pasted together, so detailed and comprehensive, so mystical and mysterious that I was far out of my depth. I let […]
In All Other Nights, author Dara Horn pulls back the curtain on a secret side of Civil War History and a hidden people who were tangled up in its dark mysteries. Horn imagines the Civil War and it’s bloody horrors through the eyes of the Jews–people who were often ostracized and looked down upon, but […]
Erin Morgenstern’s The Night Circus is a gorgeous, surreal piece of writing that carries its readers into a fully realized world of magic where anything is possible. The world of Morgenstern’s novel is fully original and delightful, but unfortunately the plot itself feels as thin as an illusion. In the late Victorian era, on opposite […]
I get a lot of comments (and some shocked looks or incredulous questions) when people hear how many books I read, especially as a stay-at-home-mom of two little kids. How many books a year? That’s crazy! How do you have time to read so much? Sometimes they’re asking rhetorically, but often, people really want to […]
Mike Novotny’s 3 Words That Will Change Your Life teaches a simple but powerful message that lives up to its inherent promise. “GOD is here” is a phrase with depths of transformative potential, and Novotny explains it with wisdom, frankness, and plenty of quirky humor. The premise of Novotny’s book is simple: the presence of […]
More Than We Remember, by Christina Suzann Nelson, is a touching story of friendship, forgiveness, and finding the strength to move forward. Faith in God plays a pivotal but natural role in the lives of Nelson’s protagonists–three women tied together by a tragedy that threatens to destroy them. Addison’s husband is involved in a tragic […]