Happy Lunar New Year one and all. May the Year of the Tiger bless you and your family this year. In celebration of this event, I’m sharing a review of the books Unbound Feet: A Social History of Chinese Women in San Francisco by Judy Yung and A Larger Memory: A History of Our Diversity […]

I thought the book was well-written, but I wasn’t on board with the pace of how things happened. I get that this was a fictional telling of a real woman’s life, and it’s presented as so from the beginning. However, it was hard for me to keep the details straight. I couldn’t quite place where […]

Although I haven’t read Harris’ previous book, The Servant Leader’s Manifesto (affiliate link), I would consider Be a J.E.D.I. Leader, Not a Boss a spiritual sequel. His corporate background informs his argument about where corporate interests can grow in a way that serves their employees and their stakeholders, and ultimately, themselves. As they say, write […]

I timed my reading of “A House of My Own” (paid link) by Sandra Cisneros so that I would finish it before I saw her speak via Zoom at the 2021 Las Vegas Book Festival for their NEA Big Read presentation. I ended up scoring a signed copy of “A House on Mango Street.” It’s […]

The novel was published in 1920 about 1870s New York society. It’s fascinating how one look, one casual phrase, could destroy a person’s entire reputation. I think that’s still true, but we can start over somewhere else and bounce back for the most part. If someone is ruined (the Beauforts, more so Regina than Julius, […]

Back when I was a wee little Gilly, my Ma got roped into a subscription for Reader’s Digest Condensed Books. This novel appeared in vol. 217 in 1995, when I was 12. I didn’t have the luxury of going to the library often as a child. Going to the library was a treat, because it […]

I have decided to elevate Ray Bradbury as the grandfather of my literary aesthetic: cinematic absurdist. I found an essay (an interview, really) in this book where he states “All my stories are cinematic. … I may be the most cinematic novelist in the country today. All of my short stories can be shot right […]

A Dirty Job (paid link) was my first Moore novel because I bought the e-book on sale. That novel inspired one of the short stories in my thesis, Electric Angels. It taught me that even if there are rules and your characters are the only ones who know how it works, it all works together. […]

You have cleverness, dexterity, and creativity—all of which powerfully combine when you are at risk—if you listen to your intuition. Gavin de Becker, the Gift of Fear I’ve meant to read this book for ages. I finally finished it with my Silent Book Club and burned through it during my WFH lunches. It’s so nice […]

Olivia Joules is a freelance journalist for the Sunday Times. Her editor has asked her to cover a fabulous Hollywood makeup line launch party. While there, she ends up catching the eye of the sexy Pierre Feramo, who may or may not be an Al-Qaeda terrorist. What follows is her adventures around the world. She […]