[responsivevoice_button buttontext=”Listen”] 🌟🌟🌟💫 An Interesting and suspenseful premise, executed with the help of a crazily complex web of strange and compelling characters (most of them harboring deception and secrets), and an intensely creepy setting, this book’s initially engaging start fell somewhat flat for this reader on the final go-round. Hannah,…
[responsivevoice_button buttontext=”Listen”] 🌟🌟🌟🌟 Written by a former school-teacher, this lovely children’s book is a gentle look at the sometimes frightening, always expectant, world of the young, - a world where change-without-explanation can be as bewildering and it is distressing. Chloe is a smart, self-sufficient and curious eleven-year-old, living with a…
[responsivevoice_button buttontext=”Listen”] 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 What do you get when you take two articulate and learned sociologists, an astoundingly-clever cartoonist, and a desire to spread knowledge, awareness and a ray of hope concerning an eternally-challenging social structure - one that, in and of itself, perhaps more than any other construct, may be…
[responsivevoice_button buttontext=”Listen”] 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 A fascinating, multi-layered look at the “hard” problem of consciousness, which this reader found totally and absolutely mesmerizing. (My own consciousness working hard to keep up, expanding with the extraordinarily-sweeping insights of this author). Taking an unusual approach, the author, a neuroscientist, considers one true-to-life scenario -…
[responsivevoice_button buttontext=”Listen”] 🌟🌟🌟🌟 Packed with sardonic humor (Note to reader: watch where you read this book. I found myself laughing out loud in several places) pop culture (many of which were obscure to this reader), faux fur, and pink velvet, this ode to growing up a literary-wannabe in the exploding…
[responsivevoice_button buttontext=”Listen”] 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 Beautifully textured, this mind-altering speculative fiction story tells a tale of time, of humanity, and our never-ending search for meaning and understanding, amidst our existential quest to live a “tranquil life in the face of death”. With impeccable finesse the author builds an intricate and mesmerizing world…
[responsivevoice_button buttontext=”Listen”] 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 I adore this series. Having followed (and loved) the work of this brilliant and prolific author for decades, it is this series in particular - Isabel Dalhousie, her essential “goodness”, and her gorgeously-welcoming literary world - that has earned a very special place in my heart. An…
[responsivevoice_button buttontext=”Listen”] 🌟🌟🌟🌟💫 A continuation of the Detective Moralès series, this was my introduction to this author, and easily enjoyed as a stand-alone novel. Part dread, part horror, and all suspense, this is a brilliantly crafted story with an atmosphere so darkly charged with foreboding, that this reader, for one,…
[responsivevoice_button buttontext=”Listen”] 🌟🌟🌟🌟💫 This beautiful cook-book is a labor-of love between two authors, both of Chinese heritage and heavily influenced by a love of the food and flavors of their roots - one, Rosheen Kaul , (of Kashmiri and Chinese/Filipino descent), a head chef; and the other, Joanna Hu, experienced…
[responsivevoice_button buttontext=”Listen”] 🌟🌟🌟🌟💫 How would you handle it - in the blink of an eye, your entire world turned upside down? Not once, in fact, but actually, twice - first, the overwhelming (and somewhat expected) devastation driven by grief-stricken loss, followed by a revelation, hidden and spectacularly unsuspected for decades,…