The Other Boleyn Girl... One of the most wrenching stories I have read in a while. This book both compelled & disturbed, but all the while held my attention. When Mary Boleyn comes to court as an innocent girl of fourteen, she catches the eye of Henry VIII. Dazzled by the king, Mary falls in love with both the golden prince and her growing role as an unofficial queen. However, she soon realizes just how much she is a pawn in her family’s...

Let The Great World Spin... Colum McCann has worked exquisite magic with Let the Great World Spin, a novel of electromagnetic force that defies gravity. It’s August 1974, a summer when Watergate and the Vietnam War make the world feel precarious. A stunned hush pauses New York City as a man on a cable walks repeatedly between the World Trade Center towers. This extraordinary feat becomes the touchstone for ten stories that briefly submerge...

It ain’t all about the cookin’... A few years back I read the Paula Deen Biography It Ain’t all About The Cookin’ Paula is a self made Food Network star, restauranter, author, & merchandise mogul. However her life has had some big bumps. In her book she speaks openly & candidly about her abusive husband, money troubles, crippling anxiety disorder, & her hard work to get where she is, all born out of a bag lady business. I loved...

Followed – Mahatma Gandhi... “Be the change that you wish to see in the world.” “Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.” “Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.” “Where there is love there is life.” “7 DEADLY SINS Wealth without work Pleasure without conscience Science without humanity Knowledge without character Politics...

Rough Magic by Paul Alexander... Sylvia Plath  became infamous after her suicide  in 1963 and is celebrated for her poetry and semi-autobiographical, The Bell Jar. Plath’s troubled life gives Alexander much to interpret  as he  creates a water color portrait of a great  American poet. Alexander achieves this feat by “conducting some three hundred individual interviews with people who knew Plath” who he states ” a number of...

Women of the Beat Generation: The Writers, Artists... Jack Kerouac and William S Burroughs were not the only “beats”. Not as widely know as their male counterparts, Diane di Prima, Anne Waldman, and Madeline Gleason were all instrumental to the beat movement. Knight’s book attempts to rectify this oversight by profiling these women and others of the Beat generation and publishing samples of their work. Just as the men did, these women wrote poetry, went...