Book Reviews
Find book reviews and tips on blog posts below.
Two Novelists and an Author with her Grandson
Readers & Writers! I'm always on a reading spree, but today I pause to share some of my best finds with YOU! Novelist Alice Hoffman Reading Alice Hoffman's historical fiction is always a treat for me. Her prose glows as she probes the magic and mystery...
Take a Break with Liz Gauffreau’s Pleasant Haiku
I am pleased to be part of author Liz Gauffreau’s blog tour, Day 10. To date, I’ve read Distant Flickers to which Liz contributed a short story and reviewed two of her books, Grief Songs and now Simple Pleasures. Liz shows up regularly to comment on my blog posts....
Medical Musings and Playing with Words
Medical Musings and Playing with Words Mercifully, I’ve skated through more than seven decades of life with few aches and pains. Over the years, my sympathy for others has extended to sending get-well cards, making phone calls and hospital visits. Sympathy---that’s...
Book Club Mom Meets Mennonite Daughter
How do you listen to a podcast or Zoom interview? Sit and stare into space? Take a walk? Lounge on your couch? Chop vegetables for soup? Multi-task in some other way? Last month, Barbara Vitelli, also known as blogger Book Club Mom, interviewed me via Zoom. She was...
Craving Sleep: More Than 40 Winks
Do you crave sleep? Do you have a hard time going to sleep? Or, staying asleep? Falling Asleep Sleep is a sweet respite from the daily pressures of life. I treasure what Walt Whitman called the “free flight into the wordless, / Away from books, away from...
How to Watch a Hallmark Movie
Turn on Hallmark Channel Watch for Glamorous female character, with swirling, highlighted hair and bright eyes. Note two handsome hunks: One real-estate mogul, loaded but with zero personality The other, a poor artist (or writer) with heart of gold...
If We’d Open People Up
“If we’d open people up, we’d find landscapes." ~ Agnès Varda I found this provocative line in a book I read recently (You Could Make This Place Beautiful by poet Maggie Smith, whose life has been rooted in Ohio). Seeing this line in her memoir, my mind skipped...
Finding Treasures in Night of Miracles
I read to relax, to be entertained, and to learn something new. Learning something new is what happened recently as I turned the pages of Mary Pipher’s Writing to Change the World, a book chock-full of scholarly references and bunches of quotable lines, ending with...
Purple Balloon Announces Launch
https://youtu.be/H3lIVaUqzYk Launch Day! Find new book online through Amazon, IndieBound, Barnes & Noble or your favorite bookstore: Check out the "My Books" tab on this website. Or click HERE! Thank you! Blurb: Expect to laugh and cry and experience many...
How’s That Marriage Memoir Coming Along?
My press-proof copy of My Checkered Life arrived January 31, 2023. It was thrilling to open the package. https://youtu.be/UL9VfS3pn5I I found some errors in the press proof, so I submitted a revised version. If all proceeds as I hope, my print book will...
It began with a “Bam!” Dani’s Marriage Memoir
“Bam! I start, the dogs leap up. The windows rattle. The whole house shakes.” As Dani Shapiro's memoir begins, the author, warm and toasty in her office spies her husband “in the dead of winter, in the driveway wearing nothing but a white terry-cloth bathrobe, his...
East Meets West: Blend or Clash?
Yumiko Sekine, author of Simplicity at Home, grew up in northern Japan, learning traditional crafts and quilting from her mother and grandmother. Just as I did growing up in rural Pennsylvania, Yumiko appreciated quilting and hand-crafts. She still does, and so...
Marriage Memoir, An Update
“Go home and finish writing your new book. I want to read it!" Barbara and I are leaving our Monday morning Bible study. She is only half-kidding when she delivers this quip. Barbara has read Mennonite Daughter: The Story of a Plain Girl. She is looking forward to the...
Six Reasons to Visit Cross Creek, Florida
Cranes, roosters, snakes and an antique yellow Olds! These are among the attractions (or distractions) in Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Historic State Park, the home of the Pulitzer-Prize winning author of The Yearling, made into a movie by the same title. In late...
Cover Reveal! My Checkered Life
Take an intimate look into one couple’s fifty-plus-year marriage in author Marian Beaman’s My Checkered Life: A Marriage Memoir. Using a quilt motif, the author stitches together stories that make up the fabric of their daily lives: the clash of cultures, crisis in a...
Our Marriage with a Trip to the Emerald City
The Emerald City lies in the center of the Land of Oz, at the end of the yellow brick road in Frank Baum’s fabled story, The Wizard of Oz, first published in 1900. In the center of the city is the fairy-tale Palace where the redoubtable Wizard resides. ...
Laurie Buchanan: Fast-Paced with Plot Twists
Laurie, A Model of Re-invention Laurie left home as a young teen without completing high school, but then zoomed to her GED and later to a notable PhD. She has reinvented herself more than once during her lifetime. To date, she has authored four books,...
We Wrote a Novel!
Dolly Parton Singer, songwriter, entrepreneur, philanthropist Teams up with Novelist James Patterson Touted as the world’s best-selling author Tops in their fields, entertainer Dolly Parton and novelist James Patterson are two disparate artists who have...
Grandma Shirley and Amma Marilyn: Mindful Grandparents
What Amazon Says Loving our children's children well is an art--one we keep learning as they grow. Making memories and fostering relationships with our grandchildren in the midst of a fast-moving culture isn't easy, and a legacy that lasts isn't crafted...
Mr. Mitch Finds Chika: A True Story
My Review “Mister Mitch?,” Chika asks. ”Why didn’t you have babies?” I pause. “What do you mean?” “You said people brought you their babies, but you and Miss Janine didn’t have babies.” I’m writing your story, Chika. What does that have to...
Spicy, Sweet Scent of Hyacinths – Ahhh!
Excerpt from “Easter and Politics,” chapter 24 in Mennonite Daughter: The Story of a Plain Girl Two doors led into Grandma Longenecker’s kitchen. On this particular Sunday, we aimed for her back door. After Daddy parked our car alongside the back porch,...
Living on God’s Gifted Time: A Mennonite Pastor Speaks
Sociology professor receives a dire diagnosis He is stopped in his tracks He is also a Mennonite pastor How can he find a path forward? These four lines describe pastor and professor Conrad Kanagy, a Mennonite author who lives with his family in my childhood...
Ukraine: The Homeland of Ellie’s World
I received a copy of Elfrieda Schroeder's memoir, Ellie's World, about a month ago. Though eastern Europe was rumbling louder in the news in early February, I had no idea how timely her story would be considering the horrific events of this past week. ...
The Story of Jacques and Shorey
A few weeks ago, I took another trip to Fernandina Beach, Florida. This time with my friend and walking partner, Barbara. The historic district was dressed for fall, the temps cooler. A calm ambiance prevailed on Centre Street until we approached The Book Loft where...
Luci’s Turtle Heart with a Book Giveaway
Lucinda and Her Books I’ve featured Mennonite author Lucinda J. on my blog a few years ago. When her first book came out in 2017, the memoir Anything but Simple, her name was Lucinda J. Miller. You can read that post here. A few years ago, she married Ivan and changed...
Bobby: My Ideal Reader
Bobby Oliver read my book, Mennonite Daughter, and reviewed it the same week. Bobby is the ideal reader and reviewer, but he is certainly not my typical reader. Seven of the Amazon reviews of The Story of a Plain Girl are from men. Women are more apt than men to pick...
The Movie LAND and the Longenecker Acreage
In a super-sanitized theatre earlier this year, we viewed the movie LAND, the story of a lone women who seeks solace in nature to heal unbearable wounds BLURB (no spoilers!) From acclaimed actress Robin Wright comes her directorial debut LAND, the...
Between Heaven and Mirth: Where Fun is Always ON
This past year has been like a treadmill trek with the degrees of incline jacked up higher every (day, week, month). The news generally has been grim. Have you felt a need for lightness and joy? I certainly have! Goodreads Review: Between Heaven and...
What It’s Like to be a Bird
Do Birds Smell? Is this the same cardinal that was at my feeder last year? Can robins “hear” worms? Bird expert David Sibley answers frequently asked questions about the birds we see most often in What It’s Like to be a Bird. In a large-format volume displaying...
Mennonite Man Crafts a Valentine Menu
Mennonite Man, Willard Roth, reared on Iowa farmland, has a long career as Journalist Author Church leader World traveler . . . and always a Cook and Entertainer Mennonite Men Can Cook Too (2015) is a compilation...
Taking the Plunge: Liesbet Travels the Sea
Almost exactly one year ago this week, Liesbet, Mark, and Maya visited our home, via their RV Zesty. I wrote about our 4-hour visit HERE. Liesbet and I spent part of the time discussing her work-in-progress memoir, PLUNGE, here just a manuscript on her Tablet...
12 Christmas Writing Prompts
Wendy Jayne Scott, my author friend from New Zealand, offers writing prompts to engage young people in storytelling by firing up their imaginations (ages 6-up) Here are 3 examples from her book of 12 prompts: It’s Christmas Eve, and you’re supposed to be tucked...
Eating from Sarah’s Tree of Life
Sarah Klassen is a Canadian poet novelist storyteller with Mennonite roots Sarah is 88 years old. Recently Sarah has published her second poetry collection, The Tree of Life, a gem of a book, glowing with color like sunlight filtered through stained glass. ...
I Didn’t See that Coming: My 2020 Schedule
The book promotion part of my life started out robust in early 2020. My calendar was chock full of goodies, bulging with Ways to engage with readers and market Mennonite Daughter. Here is what January looked like . . . Then came February . . . How...
Girl, Wash Your Face
Rachel Hollis is In your face Real Relevant Author Rachel Hollis' story is a rags to riches narrative, the heroine moving from Weedpatch (actual name!), California, to luxurious Bel Air, near Hollywood. Her book, published by Thomas Nelson in 2018, is also a...
Cherry Ames and Curious George, What Do They Have in Common?
Do You Remember the Bobbsey Twins Books? Recently I read Jennifer Weiner’s novel, Mrs. Everything, which alluded to iconic books and products of the 1950s, like the Bobbsey Twins, Almay soap, Prell shampoo and Ship ‘n Shore blouses. Overall, her book is not a...
A Cat Tale: How do you Accommodate?
Crista: Will you come over and feed the kitties while we are gone for a few days? I have a cat sitter coming in during the day for the wet food, but it would help if you did the night feeding. We are taking the kids to Savannah during spring break. Mom (me): Why sure!...
Do You Have 2020 Vision?
Do you have 20/20 Vision? I hope so, but if not, maybe you get by with a little help from your friends, as I do: Eyeglasses help So does my ophthalmologist Artist Monet suffered from cataracts in both eyes, but still produced lovely impressionistic...
Fred, Bunny, Eva and I Reckon with Forgiveness
What do Fred Rogers, Ruth Graham, Eva Kor, and I have in common? Read on to find out! During the 2019 holiday season, “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” has played in theatres all across the nation. The movie is a tribute to Fred Rogers, the legend of children’s...
Time Flies and You are the Pilot
This weekend some of us set our clocks back and hour, theoretically regaining the hour we lost last spring. It's the spring-ahead/fall behind herky-jerky phenom we never quite get used to. Either way, the rhythms of our lives are temporarily interrupted until we catch...
Meeting Readers: The Joys of a Book Tour
Hands down, meeting readers on tour has been the highlight of the entire memoir publishing and launching business. But first, the launch party in Jacksonville, Florida! Hosted by my trusty Southern Friends, Judy Davis and Carolyn Stoner at Deerwood Country Club, the...
Memoir Marketing: My Story in Pictures, Part I
Marketing my memoir marks a significant milestone to all that has gone before: Beginning a blog, learning to know other authors, writing reviews for their books. Then, with my own book Writing drafts Revising Developmental Editing Copyediting Layout and Design...
Secrets of a Spool of Blue Thread
Among the relics of my sewing days, I found just one blue spool of thread. Otherwise, I have the basics for mending: black, white, and beige. Once an avid sewer, never a full-fledged seamstress, I made dresses, little boy suits, pinch-pleated drapes – even my...
7 Tips: Forest Bathing
Forest Bathing: Taking in the natural world through one’s senses How to: Forest-Bathe Savor sights, sounds, follow your nose as you head into the forest or park. Listen to the tap-tap-tap of a beak on wood or the two-tone note of a birdcall. Walk...
Rachel Held Evans and My Brother Mark
Rachel Held Evans died on May 4, 2019 at age 37. She left behind a grieving husband Dan, two small children, and a host of admirers including me. She was the author of four books; I read her first one. Her untimely death ignited a public outcry. The Washington Post...
Lets Eat Grandma
My Grandma liked to cook and she liked to eat. She has a starring role in my memoir, spotlighted in two chapters: Grandma’s Bountiful Table and Easter & Politics. Everyone had a seat at her table. I treasure time I spent preparing meals with her and having her...
Chopped! Writer as Sous-Chef
What to Do When You are Sick of Writing (or any other brain-sucking activity) Just ask Caroline Carlson, who wrote The Door at the End of the World, a book I won (by the luck of the draw) for commenting on L. Marie's website. Woo Hoo! Here is Caroline's...
Walking Crooked, Writing Straight
“Nana, let’s go for a walk!” Ian was tired of being penned up inside while his older brother worked in our yard. “Of course!" I tell him. Squirrels scamper, cardinals cheer. Even though the sky is misty gray, the earth looks and sounds alive. Eleven year...
My Heritage, DNA, and Dani Shapiro
“I wonder what a DNA test would show. My dad’s Scotch-Irish I think and my mother is full-blooded German. But maybe some other genes are mixed in there,” my husband mused. “Well, there’s one sure way to find out. Get a DNA test,” I replied. And so for Christmas 2018...
Mennonites Don’t Dance
Maybe Mennonites Dance Now But they Didn’t in the 1950s In Lancaster County, PA In her nineties, my mother jived to music on iTunes from my iPod. But she was dancing with her hands and heart, not her feet. Her heart? Yes, she was probably recalling Daddy...
Matryoshka Dolls and Your Great-Grandmother
Did you know the name Matryoshka means “little matron,” or “mother” in Russian? Do you have a set of nesting dolls? My friend, Kathy Gould, who manages a charity fund ministering to families and children in Ukraine, gave me these dolls years ago. They enjoy...
Do Mennonites Laugh?
My Mennonite parents laughed very little, except when relatives and friends tickled their funny bones. They took the business of parenting very seriously. Other relatives lit up with a sense of humor: I carry an image of my Grandma Fannie and Aunt Ruthie once slapping...
The Velveteen Daughter and My Memoir Title Reveal
A Real Book “What is REAL?” asked the Rabbit. “Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?” “Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,” he asked, “or bit by bit?” It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It...
What Editing Looks Like: A Peek into Memoir
I’ve been writing memoir for 3 ½ years now, three more if you count years spent blogging snippets that have become memoir chapters.. Truthfully, I’m ready for this part of the process to end. And it will soon. The Tricky Mind Since 2015, I’ve taken memoir-writing...
Memoir Progress: Peaks and Valleys
Writing a book is a long, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven by some demon one can neither resist nor understand. ~ George Orwell Orwell is right about the...
The Tricky Mind: Writers’ True Confessions
Why Do Writers Write? What About Writers’ Block? What is Hypergraphia? Dr. Alice Flaherty answers these questions and more as she investigates the mysteries of the writer’s mind. Both a medical doctor (MD from Harvard Medical School) and a PhD from MIT,...
The Boy Who Grew Too Small: Author Cliff Tells Why
Author Cliff narrates the story of his creating The Boy Who Grew Too Small . . . The Dream One night I dreamed about a boy who started shrinking because he began smoking. Why such a dream, you ask? I had just learned that the Florida legislature had won a case...
Roz Chast: Cartoonist and Caregiver
Roz Chast knows about funny She uses a feeble font style Her figures have faint lines Sometimes her humor is subtle Other times blatant as a siren A New Yorker cartoonist since 1978, Chast plays her fears for laughs, taming anxiety with humor. Oy...
Anything But Simple: Luci Miller’s Mennonite Life and Book Giveaway
I write about my love affair, my sprawling close family, the unusual and intriguing people God brings into my life, and funny stuff. Once in a while I write about being Mennonite. That’s how Lucinda J. Miller (Luci for short) introduces herself on her blog. Luci is a...
Mennonite Meets Mr. Right
Her Story The title for Rhoda Janzen’s latest memoir, Mennonite Meets Mr. Right, could be recast as Egg-Head Mennonite Intellectual Meets Pentecostal Hunk Mitch. I succumbed easily to her comic style, which engaged me while reading her first memoir, Mennonite in a...
7 Ways to Stay Young: Nuns Reveal Their Secrets
Whoopi Goldberg is no nun, but she played one in Sister Act, where she befriended three other nuns all named Mary and made the convent’s choir into a rollicking, soulful act. Dr. David Snowdon obviously is no nun either. He’s not even a monk. But he is an...
Louisa Adams’ Moving Adventure
Remember the Beverly Hillbillies? The Clampetts strike oil in the Ozarks and move to Beverly Hills in a rags-to-riches sitcom of the 1960s. Of an entirely different era and social class, diarist Louisa Catherine Adams, wife of the 6th American President, John...
A Rollicking Review: Marie Kondo’s Tidy Book and a Messy View
In last week's post Paring Down and Tidying Up, I referred to Marie Kondo's New York Times best-selling book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying up. Her book has sold over 5 million copies and is being translated into 40 languages. I promised you a review and here it...
A Lunchables and An Invisible Thread
I bought this portable meal, a Lunchables, to give to a homeless person. So why is it still sitting in my refrigerator? Last week I planned to give this lunch to the next person I saw holding a “Hungry & Homeless – Will you Help?” sign as I waited in my car for...
Going Male: Amish Romance Novels
Cool Amish guys have replaced the dreamy looking girl with a huge covering and plain dress popular on the cover of some Amish romance novels. The images have done a flip. Now the young Amish-man with suspenders and broadfall pants and straw hat takes center stage....
Purple Passages: Secrets of Grimke House, Charleston
"Heidi, would you mind stopping by 329 East Bay Street before we leave town?" We were on our way out of Charleston during our recent road trip, and my niece Heidi graciously agreed to stop her SUV long enough for me to catch a snapshot of the Grimké House basking in...
Moments of Discovery # 6: Whip up Recipes, Stir in Imagination
Clearing out a house after death is a sacred act, yet no amount of holiness assigned to this task can dismiss the back-breaking, shoulder-aching, neck-craning job of sorting, recycling, and passing on to others the possessions of a loved one. Aside from clothing and...
Grandmother Kayaks from Maine to Guatemala for the Children at the Dump
Grandmother Kayaks from Maine to Guatemala for the Children at the Dump These were the words in my invitation to a reception promoting Project Safe Passage honoring Dr. Deb Walters' efforts to raise funds via her Kayak trips. A stellar professional career behind her,...
Acquainted with Grief: Author Elaine Mansfield Speaks
January 28, 2014 - It is six months to the day since Mother passed away. I feel melancholy now. Maybe the cold weather has something to do with it, but more and more I miss the warmth of our Saturday morning long-distance phone calls and sitting around her dining room...
Sue, Sarah, and Handful: Reviewing The Invention of Wings
Sue Monk Kidd, best known for her debut novel, The Secret Life of Bees, has published her third novel, the acclaimed The Invention of Wings (2014). My Review A full-page spread advertising Sue Monk Kidd's latest work of historical fiction recently appeared in the New...
7 Things I’m Thankful For
My secret joys (and struggles) show up in my gratitude books. You can see some of them here. But my list this week has sprung from my 9-day trip to Pennsylvania to visit family and take care of Mother’s house in mid-November 2014. In her devotional book One Thousand...
Playing Tag, The 2014 WIP Tour: Who’s Next?
On the playground of Rheems Elementary School, Red Rover, Hide and Seek and Tag were standard fare. I wrote about fun at recess in a blog post last September entitled Games We Played. In the blog world, I have been tagged in the 2014 Work in Progress (WIP) Blog Tour,...
Dancing to a Different Tune: Kathy Pooler’s Memoir
Kathy and I are not old friends. In fact, our friendship is rather recent as we have explored each other’s blog posts early this year, discovering that we both were developing our writing skills after long, satisfying careers, hers in medicine and mine in education....
The R-Word and You
A grande dame of British theatre, Judi Dench, spoke with Anderson Cooper just before the release of the movie The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel in 2012 making crystal clear she has no plans to rest...
Marriage to a Difficult Man: Part II
Sarah's Flair for House-keeping She was the kind of woman who took the trouble to tie her hair with a ribbon for breakfast when many wives came down tousled; who spent an extra minute to stamp a design on a block of home-churned butter; who knew how to give a flourish...
Marriage to a Difficult Man: Part 1
In case you thought I would be writing an exposé about my difficult marriage to artist Cliff, you'd be wrong. I may write about my own marriage at some point, but it would have a different title. The marriage under the microscope is that of Sarah Edwards to the famous...
Kathy Pooler and Independence Day: Her Story of Freedom
This July, my friend and author Kathy Pooler will be celebrating Independence Day in a big way launching her memoir in early July. The book's title Ever Faithful to His Lead: My Journey Away from Emotional Abuse hints at the road Kathy has traveled from victim to...
Where the Magic Happens
I am happy to introduce a new writer to these pages, Mary Gottschalk. Actually you have already visited Mary's website if you read my recent post on her blog Flying the Coop: Leaving Mennonite Land. But though she is new to my blog, Mary is certainly not a new author,...
A Year of Biblical Womanhood: Rachel Held Evans’ Secrets Divulged
This evening my alma mater, Eastern Mennonite University, is hosting author Rachel Held Evans, one of the foremost thinkers and writers in evangelical circles today who has appeared on Oprah and The View and spotlighted by NPR, the BBC and The Washington Post. Her...