This story about a woman dealing with the intense love of her children who have now left home, along with going through menopause will bring out all of your emotions. It is a funny yet serious look at love of family and the need to be oneself. Will especially be enjoyed by those also dealing with aging parents.

Funny and at times surprisingly touching. Audio book misses out on a bunch of visials

This book is a collection of saying and very short tales that are meant to inspire and enhance a spiritual if not religious outlook. I was unimpressed. If you try, it’s not hard to find meaning in many events, and I think this author tried too hard and often ventured from spiritualism, that I would have been OK with, into religion, that I was not.

Now that I’m done, I can say it; What the heck was this? A person who was an editor and writer once told me that readers have to be able to like, empathize, or at least understand a character in order to be able to enjoy a book. In this book NONE of the characters are likeable, and what’s more they are all verbally abusive to one another; mother to child, child to father, sister to sister. Set in India, the mother keeps her teenage daughters locked in their rooms for most of their lives, supposedly to keep them safe, but then says things to them like “Your days are numbered” and “I wish you were dead”. And the book starts off with one of the daughters being approached by a man in town, and there is this whole back and forth between the two where he goes after her, then she goes after him, then he drives her home and……nothing. Nothing more is said about the relationship or what happened. I could not wait for this book to be done and then felt like I needed to wash.

A great exploration of the attention economy throughout history. It was a little slow in the first half, but that could just be my extremely deteriorated attention span. Last two chapters on the current state of affairs are excellent.

A great book

While I am not always a fan of his stories set in Scotland, I did enjoy this one. Isabel sets out to get a present for her husband for Valentine’s Day but in the process becomes entangled in a situation which looks like she will either need to renege on a promise or fail to help someone who is truly in need. But leave it to the philosopher in her to work out the right answer.

Guess who Mary Russell marries? Go on, guess! Nope, she marries Sherlock Holmes! And what a wonderful job this author does telling this tale. She crafts, for us, the background story of Mary, while keeping the personality of Holmes aligned during what would be an unlikely event for him. What a wonderful read!

While not my typical read, this book was OK and takes place in a dystopian world. Despite being quite dark, two characters do manage to find love and draw strength from that. What is really nice are the illustrations which are wonderfully done.

I would say that the central part of this book is solid and enjoyable, but some of the peripheral stuff I could do without, including names of many people who have little or nothing to do with the story. And maybe it is just me, but I found the ridiculousness of the names, virtually all of them, to detract from the serious central plot. There is a god story in here, but you just have to wait for it to rise to the top.