The Reading Room

Radical Acceptance

Perhaps the biggest trage of our lives is that freedom is possible, yet we can pass our years trapped in the same old patterns…We may want to love other people without holding back, to feel authentic, to breathe in the beauty around us, to dance and sing. Yet each day we listen to inner voices that keep our life small.

Summary - Radical acceptance is a way of coping with lifes difficulties. It involves accepting your flaws and the things that you cannot change, without being judgmental about them. Western society is constantly criticizing itself and questioning its self-worth. Radical acceptance offers an antidote to this problem by helping people accept difficult emotions without judging themselves.

People Like Her

“What else do I not know about my wife”

Summary - I have held you every night for ten years and I didnt even know your name. We have a child together. A dog, a house. Who are you? Emma loves her husband Leo and their young daughter Ruby: shed do anything for them. But almost everything she’s told them about herself is a lie…

With a premise like that I thought I’d be sucked right in, but I wasn’t. It is described as a thriller on the front cover but I really don’t think this was a thriller, at least not the thriller you’re expecting. The first half is a slow build to figure out what secrets Emma has been keeping, I wish this had more character building, but it was all plot and not a very strong one if I’m being honest.

What the Fireflies Knew

Bonded by books…

When someone shares the amount of love you have for a particular book something special forms, a bookworm bond so to speak. Sandra and I bonded years ago over love for The Secret Life of Bees so when this book was marketed for fans of it we immediately knew we needed to read What the Fireflies Knew.

Summary - A dazzling and moving novel about family, identity, and race, What the Fireflies Knew poignantly reveals that heartbreaking but necessary component of growing upthe realization that loved ones can be flawed and that the perfect family we all dream of looks different up close.

Grant Park by Leonard Pitts Jr.

February #read bud read…

Leonard Pitts, Jr is an underrated author. Two of his other books, Freeman and The Last Thing You Surrender are all-time favorite reads of mine. His writing is among some of the best and I hope his books find a place on your TBR.

Summary - Grant Park is a page-turning and provocative look at black and white relations in contemporary America, blending the absurd and the poignant in a powerfully well-crafted narrative that showcases Pitts’s gift for telling emotionally wrenching stories.

Author Appreciation Post

Author Appreciation Post…

March 2019 - one of my early bud reads was Hum If You Don’t Know the Words and still semi new-ish to bookstagram. Bianca came to our final chat and answered questions and discussed Hum with us. Couldn’t believe this space existed where we just chat with authors!

May 2019 - received an ARC of If You Want to Make God Laugh and read with some of the people from the Hum group. Second time I was blown away by Bianca’s writing.

It's that time of year

It’s that time of year…

Over the years I have read a self-help book here and there but I recently found that this was not effective for me. I needed to read with intention so last year I researched and selected books that had a common theme (I choose a word for the year), all chosen to help me reach a goal.

This year my word/goal was “overcome.” I chose books to help me better understand the “why” of my past. I’ll share this post in my stories.

Book Notes

2022 #read Announcement…

I’ll be continuing my Read to Learn series in 2022. Here’s the schedule with short summaries of each book:

January - The New Jim Crow The New Jim Crow is a stunning account of the rebirth of a caste-like system in the United States, one that has resulted in millions of African Americans locked behind bars and then relegated to a permanent second-class statusdenied the very rights supposedly won in the Civil Rights Movement.

Picture this

Picture this…

It’s night time. Everyone in my house is asleep. It’s completely quiet. I reading Camilla’s Roses and got to a part that made me gasp so loud I thought I woke everyone up! Fortunately I didn’t so I kept reading because I couldn’t stop there! I read this book in one sitting, something I rarely do.

Bernice L. McFadden can write, y’all. If you’ve been following me for a bit you know that a small group of us have been reading through her backlist and not a single book so far has disappointed. Even in a short novel I connected to her characters and they ripped my heart out.

Voices in Summer by Rosamunde Pilcher

Pilcher perfect…

Summary - Newly married but convalescing after an operation, Laura Haverstock is forced to stay behind when her husband, Alec, departs on his annual sojourn to Scotland. So it is to Tremenheere–his family’s cottage on the Cornish coast–where she goes to rest. Secrets brought to light about Alec’s daughter, about jealous rivalries spawning malicious rumors and about Tremenheere’s power dispel her fears and bring her to understand the source of true love.

Praise Song for the Butterflies

After two DNFs, Bernice saved me!

My first two August books weren’t working for me so a little early for our chat next week, I decided to pick this trusted author

Summary - Abeo Kata lives a comfortable, happy life in West Africa as the privileged nine-year-old daughter of a government employee and stay-at-home mother. But when the Katas i lifestyle takes a turn for the worse, Abeos father, following his mothers advice, places her in a religious shrine, hoping that the sacrifice of his daughter will serve as religious atonement for the crimes of his ancestors. Unspeakable acts befall Abeo for the fifteen years she is enslaved within the shrine. When she is finally rescued, broken and battered, she must struggle to overcome her past, endure the revelation of family secrets, and learn to trust and love again.