Karen
Kate Bowler's cancer diagnosis when she was a young mother came as a shock. As a professor of theology who studies the Prosperity Gospel and its adherents, it also put her directly in the path of some of the toxic messages American society, and in particular some evangelical communities, send to people suffering adversity. Her memoir is a readable and somewhat lighthearted (given the topic) story about how she grappled with her illness amid the cognitive dissonance.
I read this for a book club.
Kate Bowler's cancer diagnosis when she was a young mother came as a shock. As a professor of theology who studies the Prosperity Gospel and its adherents, it also put her directly in the path of some of the toxic messages American society, and in particular some evangelical communities, send to people suffering adversity. Her memoir is a readable and somewhat lighthearted (given the topic) story about how she grappled with her illness amid the cognitive dissonance.
I read this for a book club.
Added to listEcologywith 10 books.
Added to listConservationwith 11 books.
Added to listExcellent Female Characterswith 31 books.
Set in the not-very-distant future, this is a novel about pulling Earth back from the brink of catastrophic climate change. The bureaucratic sounding Ministry for the Future is an agency of the UN, headquartered in Zurich, Switzerland, and tasked with figuring out how to accomplish that impossible seeming goal. It's headed by Mary Murphy, an Irishwoman with a strong memory of the Troubles, with staff from all around the world. Chapters are from the perspectives of many different people (and other entities!) experiencing changes. A few characters return repeatedly (Mary Murphy and her staff among them), while others pop up only once.
The opening chapter is a heart rending description of people in a town in India experiencing a catastrophic heat wave. I had to put the book down for a couple of days after reading it, but given the subject matter I was surprised that that was the hardest chapter to read. The story wrestles with whether drastic enough change can be brought about quickly enough without violence. Some of the chapters go quite in depth on banking and world economic systems and don't read like a novel at all. This is a wide ranging, kind of shaggy novel with an optimistic heart.
Set in the not-very-distant future, this is a novel about pulling Earth back from the brink of catastrophic climate change. The bureaucratic sounding Ministry for the Future is an agency of the UN, headquartered in Zurich, Switzerland, and tasked with figuring out how to accomplish that impossible seeming goal. It's headed by Mary Murphy, an Irishwoman with a strong memory of the Troubles, with staff from all around the world. Chapters are from the perspectives of many different people (and other entities!) experiencing changes. A few characters return repeatedly (Mary Murphy and her staff among them), while others pop up only once.
The opening chapter is a heart rending description of people in a town in India experiencing a catastrophic heat wave. I had to put the book down for a couple of days after reading it, but given the subject matter I was surprised that that was the hardest chapter to read. The story wrestles with whether drastic enough change can be brought about quickly enough without violence. Some of the chapters go quite in depth on banking and world economic systems and don't read like a novel at all. This is a wide ranging, kind of shaggy novel with an optimistic heart.
Alice and Eileen are two young Irish women who have been friends since college, now out making their way in the world. Alice is a novelist who has published two successful novels and has recently recovered from a mental breakdown. She's renting an old rectory in a seaside village 3 hours from Dublin. Eileen works for a literary journal and shares an apartment in Dublin with roommates. Part of this novel is the text of the long emails they exchange about how they're feeling about life, with existential questions like what one should do about the suffering of people living in deep poverty or under oppressive regimes. The rest of the novel follows Alice and Eileen as they navigate their relationships with young men Felix and Simon. Alice meets Felix, a warehouse worker who doesn't read novels, on Tinder. Although their first meeting is inauspicious, they keep meeting and surprisingly, Alice asks Felix to come with her on a work trip to Rome (and equally surprisingly, he agrees). Eileen has known and loved Simon since she was a young girl, but although they are close friends and occasionally have sex, they have never been in an acknowledged Relationship.
There are occasional romantic moments, but these relationships are spiky and uncomfortable. Alice and Eileen are smart and capable young women, but they are both uneasy with their places in the world and with the vulnerability that is necessary for "Relationships" to grow. The epistolary parts of the novel are the easiest to read, I think because Alice and Eileen are comfortable with representing themselves in writing, where they have control over how they come across. Their in person interactions with each other and with Felix and Simon are painful at times, because all their insecurities, resentments, and fears are so close to the surface. So, I admire this book, but it is not a cozy read.
Alice and Eileen are two young Irish women who have been friends since college, now out making their way in the world. Alice is a novelist who has published two successful novels and has recently recovered from a mental breakdown. She's renting an old rectory in a seaside village 3 hours from Dublin. Eileen works for a literary journal and shares an apartment in Dublin with roommates. Part of this novel is the text of the long emails they exchange about how they're feeling about life, with existential questions like what one should do about the suffering of people living in deep poverty or under oppressive regimes. The rest of the novel follows Alice and Eileen as they navigate their relationships with young men Felix and Simon. Alice meets Felix, a warehouse worker who doesn't read novels, on Tinder. Although their first meeting is inauspicious, they keep meeting and surprisingly, Alice asks Felix to come with her on a work trip to Rome (and equally surprisingly, he agrees). Eileen has known and loved Simon since she was a young girl, but although they are close friends and occasionally have sex, they have never been in an acknowledged Relationship.
There are occasional romantic moments, but these relationships are spiky and uncomfortable. Alice and Eileen are smart and capable young women, but they are both uneasy with their places in the world and with the vulnerability that is necessary for "Relationships" to grow. The epistolary parts of the novel are the easiest to read, I think because Alice and Eileen are comfortable with representing themselves in writing, where they have control over how they come across. Their in person interactions with each other and with Felix and Simon are painful at times, because all their insecurities, resentments, and fears are so close to the surface. So, I admire this book, but it is not a cozy read.
Because her mistress shows her off to her dinner guests, Luzia Cortado's "milagritos," little pieces of magic that make her life of drudgery as a kitchen maid a bit easier, get her noticed by a nobleman who is trying to win the favor of King Philip of Spain. She gains a patron and is entered in a contest for holy magicians, the winner of which will be presented as a gift to the King. In preparation, her patron's servant (or familiar) Santangel, who is a striking man with white hair, light eyes, and a presence that strikes fear in people's hearts, gives her lessons in how to develop her magic.
Everyone in this book has a very human longing for something--a better social position, a more secure life, a life with beauty and pleasure in it, a chance to be powerful, love, what have you. The longing propels them, but it doesn't lead them where they expect or hope to go. This fact of life is explicit in the story. It's Valentina's longing that gets everything started, and at the end almost everyone's life has been completely altered.
The Familiar turned out to be more of a romance than I expected, but it's well written, with an unusual plot. I enjoyed the historical setting of late 16th century Spain, with the shadows of King Philip, Elizabeth I of England, and the Inquisition.
Because her mistress shows her off to her dinner guests, Luzia Cortado's "milagritos," little pieces of magic that make her life of drudgery as a kitchen maid a bit easier, get her noticed by a nobleman who is trying to win the favor of King Philip of Spain. She gains a patron and is entered in a contest for holy magicians, the winner of which will be presented as a gift to the King. In preparation, her patron's servant (or familiar) Santangel, who is a striking man with white hair, light eyes, and a presence that strikes fear in people's hearts, gives her lessons in how to develop her magic.
Everyone in this book has a very human longing for something--a better social position, a more secure life, a life with beauty and pleasure in it, a chance to be powerful, love, what have you. The longing propels them, but it doesn't lead them where they expect or hope to go. This fact of life is explicit in the story. It's Valentina's longing that gets everything started, and at the end almost everyone's life has been completely altered.
The Familiar turned out to be more of a romance than I expected, but it's well written, with an unusual plot. I enjoyed the historical setting of late 16th century Spain, with the shadows of King Philip, Elizabeth I of England, and the Inquisition.
This biography of Virginia Hall tells an amazing story of a tough, independent young American woman who was out to blaze a trail for herself in the 1930s working abroad for the State Department when she suffered a disabling accident that effectively ended any chance she might have had to become a diplomat. However, she went on to distinguish herself working for first British and then American intelligence during World War II by organizing and aiding the French Resistance as an undercover agent. She endured physical and emotional hardships living in occupied France, evaded capture by the Gestapo and the French police in spite of their best efforts to find her, and was instrumental in helping to liberate France from the Nazis. There are many edge-of-your-seat moments, both for Virginia Hall herself, and for her many comrades who weren't able to evade capture. The book has an index, end notes, and a bibliography, plus photos.
The one thing that disappointed me was that at times the tone of the book was a little too much like a fan magazine. I thought the facts spoke well enough for themselves that I didn't need to be told repeatedly in so many words what a hero she was, and that sexism held her back in her career. Otherwise, highly recommend this book about a war hero I had never heard of before.
This biography of Virginia Hall tells an amazing story of a tough, independent young American woman who was out to blaze a trail for herself in the 1930s working abroad for the State Department when she suffered a disabling accident that effectively ended any chance she might have had to become a diplomat. However, she went on to distinguish herself working for first British and then American intelligence during World War II by organizing and aiding the French Resistance as an undercover agent. She endured physical and emotional hardships living in occupied France, evaded capture by the Gestapo and the French police in spite of their best efforts to find her, and was instrumental in helping to liberate France from the Nazis. There are many edge-of-your-seat moments, both for Virginia Hall herself, and for her many comrades who weren't able to evade capture. The book has an index, end notes, and a bibliography, plus photos.
The one thing that disappointed me was that at times the tone of the book was a little too much like a fan magazine. I thought the facts spoke well enough for themselves that I didn't need to be told repeatedly in so many words what a hero she was, and that sexism held her back in her career. Otherwise, highly recommend this book about a war hero I had never heard of before.
This novel is a genre bender. Or maybe it would be better to say it has some of almost every genre in it. It has prose narrative from almost every perspective, in different styles, from a doctor's case notes to true crime tabloid, and plenty of third person omniscient that flows along so seamlessly that you might forget that you are reading as you are mesmerized by the stories of a house on a plot of land in the western Massachusetts woodlands and the succession of people (and animals and insects) who lived there over the years since colonization. There is poetry, song, photography, thwarted romance, and an unabashed ghost story. Some of this sits together a little awkwardly. When you start to get comfortable in one section of the book, look out, because you are about to be unseated and it may take you a while to settle in again. I found the end pulled everything together for me, though, so the disparate parts made a convincing, beautiful, slightly melancholy whole.
This novel is a genre bender. Or maybe it would be better to say it has some of almost every genre in it. It has prose narrative from almost every perspective, in different styles, from a doctor's case notes to true crime tabloid, and plenty of third person omniscient that flows along so seamlessly that you might forget that you are reading as you are mesmerized by the stories of a house on a plot of land in the western Massachusetts woodlands and the succession of people (and animals and insects) who lived there over the years since colonization. There is poetry, song, photography, thwarted romance, and an unabashed ghost story. Some of this sits together a little awkwardly. When you start to get comfortable in one section of the book, look out, because you are about to be unseated and it may take you a while to settle in again. I found the end pulled everything together for me, though, so the disparate parts made a convincing, beautiful, slightly melancholy whole.
This family drama concerns the Madigans, an 21st centurt Irish family whose four children are coming home from far flung places to visit their mother, Rosaleen, for Christmas. Rosaleen has hinted that she is going to sell the house they all grew up in, so there is some consternation among the siblings, Dan, Emmet, Constance, and Hanna. We get to see the siblings as children together, and then individually as adults, before we see them back together as a family. We see their weaknesses and faults, their attempts to manage their relationships with their mother and siblings, and where the family rifts are. Rosaleen is a formidable character herself, with the power to raise storms within her family and then quiet them. If you like complex family relationships, this is a great book for you.
This family drama concerns the Madigans, an 21st centurt Irish family whose four children are coming home from far flung places to visit their mother, Rosaleen, for Christmas. Rosaleen has hinted that she is going to sell the house they all grew up in, so there is some consternation among the siblings, Dan, Emmet, Constance, and Hanna. We get to see the siblings as children together, and then individually as adults, before we see them back together as a family. We see their weaknesses and faults, their attempts to manage their relationships with their mother and siblings, and where the family rifts are. Rosaleen is a formidable character herself, with the power to raise storms within her family and then quiet them. If you like complex family relationships, this is a great book for you.
