Books

I didn’t expect to like this book. I started it only because the author is a fellow board member at RCWMS and reading it seemed like the congenial thing to […]

I wish God’s Hotel were a book with pictures. No matter how precise Victoria Sweet’s descriptions, the world her words conjure is difficult to imagine. A hospital that looks more like a […]

It seems like every time I turn around these days I run into another story about vaccination. To me the message seems clear: everyone without a contraindicating medical issue should […]

I’m usually skeptical about film adaptations of my favorite books, but after laughing and crying my way through reading Wild last fall, I was thrilled to learn the film was coming out […]

Those unfamiliar with the breadth of contemporary poetry may be surprised when they crack the cover of Claudia Rankine’s Citizen: An American Lyric. A collage of prose poems, short essays, and images, Citizen often […]

If any of your New Year’s resolutions include creative and artistic pursuits, you’ll find a welcome companion in Martha Jane Petersen’s Imaging My Inner Fire: Finding My Path Through Creating Art. […]

Last fall, a small group of women at RCWMS read The New Jim Crow together over several weeks. This was after the shooting of Michael Brown, before decisions by grand juries not […]

“In embracing the messiness of feminism as a lived, embodied thing, rather than stopping short with an abstract concept or ideology, Gay creates space to embark on a wider conversation, […]

Lately, every time I go online I see another article by or about Leslie Jamison. Her essay collection, The Empathy Exams, which won the Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize, was released this […]

I just finished Rebecca Solnit’s luminous new book, The Faraway Nearby. It is so brimming with breathtaking passages that I am tempted to just line up quotations so that you can […]

Rev. Angie Wright’s Love Has No Borders: How Faith Leaders Resisted Alabama’s Harsh Immigration Law is a visual and written record  of public protests by Alabama faith leaders after their state legislature […]

“What would this world be like without dogs?” asks Mary Oliver in her newest collection of poems, Dog Songs.  I, for one, do not wish to ever know the answer to […]

I first encountered Ann Patchett when my book club chose her third novel, The Magician’s Assistant, for our monthly conversation. This quirky novel about Sabine, the widowed assistant to her magician […]

In terms of possessions and money, what do you really need to live a good life?  How much is enough? If you have less stuff, can you do more with […]

“It’s 1968 and four young, talented Australian Aboriginal girls learn about love, friendship and war when their all girl group The Sapphires entertain the US troops in Vietnam.” (IMDB) The Sapphires, […]

“It’s small, it’s surprising, and it’s a little profane, but it’s the real thing” (p. 162). Lutheran pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber uses these words to speak of the way that the reign of […]