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Here is yet another tale of unsung heroism and the role of women being often discounted by both allies and enemies in times of war. Marie-Madeleine Fourcade was a beautiful Parisian socialite in her mid-20s at the start of World War II. She was a smart, independent minded person and was in the perfect position […]
This book is like a body positive dinner party your lovely fat self is invited to attend (and with any fat allies you wish to bring as your plus one). Expect laughs, advice, vulnerability, art and a lot of new mentor friends by the end of the night. Come as you are. Leave any negative […]
Everyone’s got one–a body, that is. Why not find out really interesting stuff about it: how it works, what this part does, what’s good for it, what’s not? That, I’m sure, is what Bill Bryson was thinking when he undertook to dissect (pardon the pun, couldn’t resist) the amazing container in which we all reside. […]
Fantastically compelling, quick read about one family’s explosive secrets coming out as DNA testing becomes available. The author is a specialist in genealogy and family research but he’s using it to solve the mystery of his own family. The author does a really nice job of sharing his emotions, as good as Dani Shapiro in […]
Rachel Maddow (of The Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC) has written the background story of our time, explaining why Vladimir Putin needed to hack our 2016 election and why Rex Tillerson became Secretary of State. She raises the curtain on the Resource Curse, the almost inevitable decline of democracy that follows the discovery of oil […]
A quick and easy-to-digest read about the making of a beloved classic film. Last week this tweet from Cary Elwes really got me thinking about this book again. The Princess Bride has been one of my all time favorite movies ever since my mom made me rent it (despite my eyerolls at the title) while […]
Gorgeous, elegiac book in which award-winning nature writer Sy Montgomery takes you on a dream safari with the world’s foremost expert on wildebeest, the keystone species for the whole Serengeti. The details of how the wildebeest shape and share the African plain are fascinating. Along the way, you also get to learn about many of […]
Wow! Casey Cep’s first book is an incredible read. Harper Lee was Truman Capote’s friend and research assistant on In Cold Blood. Many years later, Lee got very involved researching a series of murders in Alabama committed about 2.5 hours from her own home in Monroeville and told not only friends but the press that […]
Written in a conversational style, like listening to the friend who starts stories in the middle, this memoir is of the year Lorene and her family shared their home with her 100 year old grandmother, so they could help her as she came to the end of her life. The story wraps the reader in […]
It is a mystery to me that the author, who is celebrating her survival into her 40’s despite bad decisions that could have led to her drowning twice, strangulation by a stranger, deathly childhood illness, car accidents, robbery with deadly weapons and more, has titled her book with a quote from Sylvia Plath, the poet […]
