Terrifying and true — By the end of two chapters, of Kate Moore’s book, The Woman They Could Not Silence, I was livid. Fuming. Fighting mad. My modern feminist sensibilities could not believe what I was reading. Could a husband commit his wife to an asylum with NO cause whatsoever? Is the fact that…

Read James McBride’s novel — Why can’t we all just get along? Years ago, I was assigned to read the William Faulkner short story, “Red Leaves,” about an Indian chief who wants to bury his black slave with him when he dies. The vital and very much alive slave vehemently disagrees with his owner’s wish and escapes by running into the swamps. …

Watch out, Chat GPT! — Can writers beat OpenAI in court? What do Michael Connelly, John Grisham, David Baldacci, Jodi Picoult, Jonathan Franzen, George R.R. Martin, and Elin Hilderbrand have in common? If you said they’re all big-name, bestselling authors, you’d be right, but you’d be wrong in the bigger context. All of these top writers are part of a single…

Geraldine Brooks’ 2022 Book — Traveling Between Time Periods Many modern novels explore different time periods, each with its own story, and then tie all the timelines together. Geraldine Brooks’ novel, Horse, is no exception. The book starts in Washington, D.C., in today’s time. Here we meet Theo, a black British guy working on his Doctorate in Art History…

Martha Peterson’s network — One of the many advantages of belonging to a book club is that I am forced out of my comfort zone and into reading books I never would have chosen for myself. Let me tell you, I never would have chosen Martha Peterson’s The Widow Spy as reading material were…

Mira Grant’s “mermaid” novel — Science fiction is not my usual genre. It’s not that I don’t like it, it’s just that I have so many other books on my to-be-read list that I don’t gravitate toward sci-fi. But when my son and daughter-in-law recommended Mira Grant’s Into the Drowning Deep based on my interest…

Pop culture, art, and celebrity — How to make more readers? American beauty companies spent 7.7 BILLION marketing beauty products in 2022. Car manufacturers spent 2.7 BILLION dollars in 2021. Pet food and supplies corporations spent over 1 BILLION dollars marketing their wares to pet owners. But there is no agency or organization that spends billions of dollars to market one…

KKR buys Simon & Schuster — If you follow news of the publishing world, then you remember the failed attempt of Penguin-Random House to purchase Simon and Schuster last year. In November of 2022, the Justice Department ruled against the acquisition citing anti-trust concerns. If Penguin-Random House had been allowed to purchase Simon & Schuster, there…

Beauty in the Rocks — Fearless flowers A long time ago, someone told me to “bloom where I was planted.” I can’t even remember what caused the remark or what situation surrounded it, but the words stuck with me. When I saw this petunia, I thought of that phrase. Obviously, we didn’t plant the petunia there. It…