The Book of Bright Ideas Review

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(More customer reviews)I have been reading a plethora of genres for 40+ years, and every once in a wonderful while I stumble across a masterpiece that fortifies my love of prose. "The Book of Bright Ideas" is a precious gem among the junk jewelry of average reads. Button, narrator, gifts a summer to remember as her new best friend, Winnalee, blows into town in a beat-up pick-up driven by her sister, Freeda. Fierce, fearless, and opinionated, 10 year old Winnalee is bound to stir up Button's quietly sad childhood. Through their myriad of adventures, planned and NOT SO PLANNED, life lessons are earned. So many life lessons that Winnalee and Button strive to savor them in "A Book of Bright Ideas," which will quarentee their happiness in the future. Oh, that it could be true!Kring has a gift of vivid description, rich dialogue, nearly ethereal insight and flavorful charm. Like Harper Lee, Sue Kidd Monk, Kaye Gibbons, and other greats, her work demands and receives your full attention and your deepest respect.
This is brilliant writing at it's finest....read this book and remember why you ever started reading in the first place.

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Wisconsin, 1961. Evelyn "Button" Peters is nine the summer Winnalee and her fiery-spirited older sister, Freeda, blow into her small town–and from the moment she sees them, Button knows this will be a summer unlike any other.Much to her mother's dismay, Button is fascinated by the Malone sisters, especially Winnalee, a feisty scrap of a thing who carries around a shiny silver urn containing her mother's ashes and a tome she calls "The Book of Bright Ideas." It is here, Winnalee tells Button, that she records everything she learns: her answers to themysteries of life. But sometimes those mysteries conceal a truth better left buried. And when a devastating secret is suddenly revealed, dividing loyalties and uprooting lives, no one–from Winnalee and her sister to Button and her family–will ever be the same.

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Don't Breathe a Word: A Novel Review

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(More customer reviews)This book is bizarre, in so many ways. The events that unfold don't make sense in the reality world. This is what made it so insanely intriguing.
This book was nothing like what I expected. I expected it to be a happy little story about some little girls fantasy world. Oh no, its not even close. This book has twists and turns, and then there are twists on top of the turns. Just when you think it couldn't get any weirder, it does. Nothing is what is expected.
The chapters alternate between Lisa (the little girl) 15 years prior, and Phoebe (her brothers girlfriend) exactly 15 years later to the date. Some of the chapters have great cliffhangers, and I found myself skipping forward to find out what happened. The reader is left in the dark when it comes to the mystery, and so are the main characters in this book. I think this is what makes it even more suspenseful.
Be warned, there are some disturbing elements in this story. I can't reveal certain parts of the story or it will ruin the mystery that is built up as the story progresses. Posting spoilers about this book would be doing the reader a huge disservice and would completely ruin the mystery of this book.
I had a very difficult time putting this book down. I read it slowly, so I could absorb all of the details, but I wanted to fly through it because I was dying to find out how it ended. If you are looking for a book that takes you down a path that you never expected, is so bizarre it doesn't make sense, makes you think and then think again and entertains you from page 1 to page 447, then I would highly recommend this book!

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Life Without Ed: How One Woman Declared Independence from Her Eating Disorder and How You Can Too Review

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(More customer reviews)I just looked up the word "campy," and there is nothing campy about Life without Ed. As a woman recovering from an eating disorder and as a clinician treating eating disorders, I find this book to be a refreshing change from the staus quo of tortuous memoirs and over-intellectualized material that tends to occupy this market.
The recovery work described in this book is undoubtedly the real deal. Jenni Schaefer has obviously worked hard to overcome her eating disorder and she is to be congratulated for that. And while we're at it, let's congratulate her for the willingness to share her story so candidly, and for being creative enough to bring such a delightful sense of humor to this very serious subject matter. She no doubt gets some of the humor from her therapist and co-author Thom Rutledge. His writing (the best of which is Embracing Fear) always manages to bring together serious self-help and the kind of humor that offers a perspective that is in and of itself healing.
If you have even the slightest interest in understanding the inner-workings of eating disorders, buy this book. If you are a therapist or counselor who works with eating disorders, buy this book. If you love someone with an eating disorder, buy this book. And if you have an eating disorder --- definitely buy this book.
Who says medicine has to taste bad to be good? Learn, grow and enjoy Life without Ed.
Sarah Wiley, Ph.D.

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A unique new approach to treating eating disorders

Eight million women in the United States suffer from anorexia nervosa and/or bulimia. For these women, the road to recovery is a rocky one. Many succumb to their eating disorders. Life Without Ed offers hope to all those who suffer from these often deadly disorders. For years, author Jennifer Schaefer lived with both anorexia and bulimia. She credits her successful recovery to the technique she learned from her psychologist, Thom Rutledge.

This groundbreaking book illustrates Rutledge's technique. As in the author's case, readers are encouraged to think of an eating disorder as if it were a distinct being with a personality of its own. Further, they are encouraged to treat the disorder as a relationship rather than as a condition. Schaefer named her eating disorder Ed; her recovery involved "breaking up" with Ed

Shares the points of view of both patient and therapist in this approach to treatment
Helps people see the disease as a relationship from which they can distance themselves
Techniques to defeat negative thoughts that plague eating disorder patients

Prescriptive, supportive, and inspirational, Life Without Ed shows readers how they too can overcome their eating disorders.

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The Bayou Trilogy: Under the Bright Lights, Muscle for the Wing, and The Ones You Do Review

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(More customer reviews)"This was Frogtown, where the sideburns were longer, the fuses shorter, the skirts higher and expectations lower, and he loved it"
On the steamy and seedy shores of the Louisiana Bayou, Detective Rene Shade walks a fine line between law and loyalty in Saint Bruno where he was born and raised. This trilogy combines three loosely connected stories of crime and justice in the shadows of Frogtown and Pan Fry.
The first story, Under the Bright Lights, has Shade, and his partner How Blanchette, investigating the murder of a city councilman. The Mayor would be happiest if the whole business could be blamed on a trigger happy burglar, but it's not how Shade sees it going. The Councillor's death seems to be linked to a power play in the criminal underbelly that is in danger of triggering a war. Shade chases his suspects right into an armed confrontation in the middle of the Marais du Croche, a swamp beset by lethal cottonmouths and hungry crocodiles.
Muscle of the Wing partners a reluctant Detective Shade with a boyhood friend, Shuggie Zeck, whose business interests are being devalued by a mysterious gang of hold up men. In a town where payback and kickbacks grease the system for politicians and criminals alike, Shade can read between the lines of his Captains orders. This investigation isn't about justice so much as vengeance.
In The Ones You Do (Criminentlies), Detective Shade is brooding over his 90-day suspension when his father, the legendary John X Shade returns to the city with a daughter and annoyed ex associates in tow. This tale features the Shade family, itself a microcosm of the environment they live in. These eccentric characters underscore the themes of loyalty, redemption and belonging that flow through the trilogy.
Daniel Woodrell envelops the reader with his atmospheric depiction of the steaming, soiled bayou and it's unique characters. His style is vividly descriptive, and its a surprising pleasure to immerse yourself in the gritty underbelly of his world. The heat, the sweat, the fear become almost tangible with his eloquent turn of phrase. The language he uses has a cultural lilt, wit and earthiness that defines his characterisation. There is a sense of raw authenticity in Woodrell's examination of the realities of life in Saint Bruno and he captures the indistinct boundaries for those that dwell in the less respectable area's of society masterfully.
Far from being a one dimensional character representing the law, Detective Rene Shade is a skillfully drawn character of principle and personal conflict. Throughout the trilogy, Woodrell reveals the flaws and strengths that define Shade. He is a nuanced character who is engaging and likeable.
Shade is surrounded by family, friends and enemies, the ordinary and the eccentric. Eldest brother Tip, runs a drinking dive named The Catfish while youngest brother, Frankie is a lawyer. Their father, John X Shade is a pool hustling legend who is defined by his absence. Shade has grown up in the town he now polices and his childhood friends are as likely to be his enemies as his informants. Woodrell's characters are all boldly drawn with attention to detail and credibility.
Wonderfully written and an engrossing read, Woodrell has a gift for story and prose. The Bayou Trilogy is an atmospheric, brash and exciting adventure through the nadir of the criminal underbelly in the deep south, and I look forward to reading more by this author.
Shelleyrae @ Book'd Out

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These Things Hidden Review

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(More customer reviews)These Things Hidden is all about secrets. As the story progresses, the past is revealed piece by piece. The story falls into place easily while offering shocking things, long hidden, yet never expected.
The book is written in alternating viewpoints between four different women all linked in some way to a little boy named Joshua. Each woman wants to ensure Joshua is safe and taken care if, even if they have different ideas and motives driving them.
The book begins with Allison being released from prison. She committed an unforgivable crime, the nature of which we don't learn until later in the book. Every bit of Allison's past is revealed at the perfect moment. Her story is traumatically heart-wrenching and you can't help but feel for her while at the same time hating her actions.
The story is scarily realistic for the world we live in today. Bad choices ruin lives. Good choices can just as easily take their toll. Love for family and the secrets we keep can lead down a road we aren't prepared to travel. These Things Hidden is a moving, beautifully written, absolutely compelling novel you won't want to miss.

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At Home in the World: A Memoir Review

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(More customer reviews)Though not someone who has followed all of Joyce Maynard's career, I still found myself immersed almost from her opening paragraphs. There is a lot here, some disturbing, some thought-provoking, and always fascinating. I was surprised, as I was one who, almost on principle, felt J. D. Salinger's privacy, if it's so important to him, should above all not be violated. However, I realized as I went along, that this is really missing the point and is also implicitly saying that Salinger, as Great Writer, is more important than others in his life. But this IS Joyce Maynard's life, not J. D. Salinger's, though he does figure in her life for 10 months and she learned a great deal about herself from analyzing that relationship's hold upon her.
I do not see that she has exploited her relationship with him; I don't even see that she has particularly said horribly negative things about him, for that matter. I also feel that all the focus on this book as being about Maynard's sense of "victimization" by a "dysfunctional family" and an older man, J. D. Salinger, are simply way off the mark and totally missing the main points of her story. She does not portray herself as a victim and her self-analyses and self-criticism ring true as evidence of her having made some hardwon peace with her past and having reached a maturity that has often not seemed characteristic of her work in the past.
I also think there is a great deal more humor and a great deal more irony than people have generally been writing about in reviewing this book. The theme of authenticity vs. inauthenticity, for example, is an important one, whether one is critical of Maynard's narcissism or not. J. D. Salinger's own naricissism is fairly transparent in her story & obviously one of the reasons, coming from the family that she did, that he had such a hold over her. Ultimately, of course, his concern with authenticity and genuineness and purity are indeed compromised by the many things within himself that he doesn't wish to look at.
Actually, I thought she was quite kind about the relationship, as if she had taken responsibility for the part she played in getting involved with him in the first place.
A couple of interesting lines that keep coming back to me are "What purpose did I serve in your life" and her observation that she was . . . "one who had made the mistake of trying to live out fictions best left on the page," a common mistake of imaginative young people & we'd all be doing well to have accepted our past with the grace and wisdom she seems to have arrived at.

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