Thank you, Book Bub! This book was featured in a recent daily email and at first I thought it sounded too treacly and maudlin, but after sampling it on Amazon, I downloaded the book for cheap and raced through it in a day. The prose is lyrical without being flowery or overblown and the scope of the novel felt very cinematic. Following seemingly disparate characters in different time periods, this book explores the ways we are connected to each other and to the world.  I […]

Wow. I just. Wow. This book held me in it’s thrall from the moment I read the first lines: Lydia is dead. But they don’t know this yet. Lydia, the favorite daughter of James and Marilyn Lee is missing early one spring morning. There’s denial, upset, worry, then panic until Lydia is found at the bottom of the lake. The story skips ahead and back, crisscrossing along the lives of the Lee family, beginning with the unlikely romance and marriage of James, a Chinese-American graduate student and […]

Set after the First World War in suburban London, Frances and her mother are having a rough go of it. Her two brothers were lost to that conflict and not long after her father died, revealing serious financial issues. To keep their home, the women must take in “paying guests”, a young married couple. Eventually Frances embarks on a torrid affair with the wife, Lillian. It doesn’t end well. Though I loathe the over use of the term “spoiler”, I respect its power. There will […]

  Ever since Ron embodied Hellboy for Guillermo del Toro (and oh my did he ever!) I have been interested in this indiosyncratic actors career. As his popularity rose with his turn as Clay Morrow on Sons of Anarchy, I found his demeanor and presence in interviews to be quite unexpected. Thoughtful, soft-spoken, intelligent but still little brash and rough around the edges. This book encompasses those aspects and more. Part memoir, part a call to arms for the next generations, he uses his own […]

This was one of my first audiobook experiences and holy Nightcrawler, Batman this was one for the ages! First off, this book was read by the delightful Mr. Cumming himself. At turns intimate and heartbreaking, then raucous and hilarious, all the way through I was carried along by that distinctive, yet intimate Scottish brogue. I found it added to my enjoyment of the book immeasurably. This book follows not just the harrowing relationship he had with his father Alex——“Soon, my head was propelled forward by […]