Membaca

Dear Readers It's drizzling outside, which totally matches my #currentmood. Pigs in blankets, all the mince pies and a festive Baileys or five are distant memories. You know the drill - it's January. Everyone's banning booze (terrible idea) or cutting carbs (impossible). To add to the misery pile, my plans to seduce the man of my dreams at the stroke of midnight flopped spectacularly.  I'm Izzy. I don't just need a New Year resolution, I need a whole new life. And I need YOU. My dreary life is about to get a total makeover - it's my 'Year of Saying Yes'. And this is where you come in. It's up to you to #DareIzzy. I'm saying yes to your challenges, no matter how nuts, adventurous or wild they are. The sky's the limit - I'm at your mercy, readers!  Wish me luck. I have a feeling I'm going to need it.  Love Izzy x   I found myself only one book away from meeting my yearly goodreads target and I knew I wouldn't have time to finish a f...

Fiction Making certain we’re not certain THE PEOPLE OF THE BROKEN NECK By Silas Dent Zobal 352 pp. Unbridled Books Reviewed by Dennis C. Rizzo Shell shock. Battle fatigue. It’s had many names over the years. Now we know it as PTSD. Silas Dent Zobal peels back the layers of Dominick Sawyer, ex-Ranger, ex-husband, and father to two tweens whom he is afraid of losing. The People of the Broken Neck brings us into a desperate struggle of one person to protect his family. From whom or what remains uncertain until the last chapter. Zobal builds strong characters and gives each enough instability to create doubt in our minds. We might see the distancing and sparring between son, Clarke, and father as a natural component of teen years. We might see the dreams and nightmares of the daughter, Kingsley, as part of the uncertainty she is facing. We might look at Dominick and see a scared, yet protective parent – or a deeply disturbed veteran steeped in paranoia. Charlie, the diligent FBI agent, ple...

Hollywood movies are Beth's passion. She hopes her life will always be filled with 'movie moments', where things like serendipity and fate happen every day. Her boyfriend Danny has always been the embodiment of her perfect Hollywood hero - though after seven years together the initial silver-screen romance has settled into something more predictable.  And then, one morning at work, Beth receives an anonymous delivery of a take-out coffee cup with a cryptic message suggesting a meeting at Tiffany's. From there, she is given a series of clues directing her to some of NYC's most popular landmarks - a treasure hunt using unique rom-com-related prompts perfect for a movie-lover like Beth to decipher. And Beth is forced to wonder: has Danny realised their relationship needs a boost - or could it be that charming new work colleague Ryan, with his intense gaze, flirtatious smile and almost encyclopaedic movie knowledge, wants to sweep her off her feet? And how would she fee...

Nonfiction Heart and soul and guts WHISPERIN’ BILL ANDERSON: An Unprecedented Life in Country Music By Bill Anderson and Peter Cooper 298 pp. The University of Georgia Press Reviewed by Diane Diekman Bill Anderson, 79, is the only songwriter in history who has written songs that charted in seven consecutive decades. From “City Lights” by Ray Price in 1958 to “Country” by Mo Pitney in 2015, his music continues to thrive. With the help of renowned country music historian Peter Cooper. he tells the story of his music and its place in his life. Anderson was 19 and beginning his music career at a small radio station when a stifling hot August night drove him out of his hotel room and up to the roof with his guitar. “This particular night there wasn’t a cloud in the sky,” he writes.  I began looking up at what seemed like a million stars above and down on what few lights there were in Commerce, Georgia, and I wrote:   ‘The bright array of city lights, as far as I can see / The great...

A Wretched and Precarious Situation: In Search of the Last Arctic Frontier by David Welky New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2017 [2016]. Reviewed by Kenn Harper In late June of 1906 Robert Peary stood on a mountain top on Ellesmere Island and surveyed Nansen Sound, still ice-covered, to the west, and beyond it a land that he called Jesup’s Land, which we know today as Axel Heiberg Island. And to the northwest? Much later he wrote, “… northwest it was with a thrill that my glasses revealed the faint white summits of a distant land…” A few days later, having crossed Nansen Sound with his two guides, Iggiannguaq and Ulloriaq, he climbed Cape Thomas Hubbard. From there, he later wrote, “… with the glasses I could make out apparently a little more distinctly, the snow-clad summits of the distant land in the north-west, above the ice horizon…. in fancy I trod its shores and climbed its summits, even though I knew that that pleasure could be only for another in another season.” Thus, on R...

Today it is my stop on the blog tour for The Food of Love which is Amanda Prowse new release that everyone is currently talking about, I am thrilled to be sharing my review with you all today.   Freya Braithwaite knows she is lucky. Nineteen years of marriage to a man who still warms her soul and two beautiful teenage daughters to show for it: confident Charlotte and thoughtful Lexi. Her home is filled with love and laughter. But when Lexi’s struggles with weight take control of her life, everything Freya once took for granted falls apart, leaving the whole family with a sense of helplessness that can only be confronted with understanding, unity and, above all, love. In this compelling and heart-wrenching new work by bestselling author Amanda Prowse, one ordinary family tackles unexpected difficulties and discovers that love can find its way through life’s darkest moments. Amanda Prowse is back with another poignant read that will pull at the heart strings and stay on your mind l...

Nonfiction Fusing of psyches THE FUTURE TENSE OF JOY By Jessica Teich 277 pp. Picador Reviewed by Sue Ellis The Future Tense of Joy is an engaging account of author Jessica Teich’s long journey to emotional well being. She begins by describing her over-reaction to her eldest daughter’s bid for more personal freedom, how it brought up memories of herself at the same age. To a past, she writes, that would not stay put. At sixteen, Teich had been drawn into a secret and abusive relationship with a man at the dance studio where she took lessons. She never told anyone, and had never come to terms with what happened to her or the fact that her parents failed to protect her. Early on, Teich introduces a woman she refers to as Lacey, a stranger she read about and whose life, according to the obituary, nearly paralleled her own. Both women were highly educated, both Rhodes scholars, and both appeared to have the world by the tail. The following excerpt sums up Teich’s feelings about the simila...