Wednesday, March 25, 2026

Memorial Days by Geraldine Brooks

 Read this from Munich to Denver.

Geraldine Brooks tribute to her husband. It is easy to read and enjoyable.

Book Review

From the Publisher - 

Book Description

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER · A National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist

A New York Times Notable Book of 2025 · A Washington Post Notable Nonfiction Book of 2025 · A Time Best Memoir of 2025 · Named a Best Book of 2025 by NPR, People, Air Mail, Bookreporter, and Publishers Weekly


“Brooks tracks the geography of grief with patience and grace as she comes to terms with the ongoing nature of outliving the ones you love most. … Her memoir is certainly a testament to her own unique loss, but it’s moreover a lifeline to others who will find themselves in this familiar, shattered landscape of grief.” —Los Angeles Times


“A rich account of marriage and mourning.” —Washington Post


A heartrending and beautiful memoir of sudden loss and a journey towards peace, from the bestselling, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Horse


Many cultural and religious traditions expect those who are grieving to step away from the world. In contemporary life, we are more often met with red tape and to-do lists. This is exactly what happened to Geraldine Brooks when her partner of more than three decades, Tony Horwitz – just sixty years old and, to her knowledge, vigorous and healthy – collapsed and died on a Washington, D. C. sidewalk.


After spending their early years together in conflict zones as foreign correspondents, Geraldine and Tony settled down to raise two boys on Martha’s Vineyard. The life they built was one of meaningful work, good humor, and tenderness, as they spent their days writing and their evenings cooking family dinners or watching the sun set with friends at the beach. But all of this ended abruptly when, on Memorial Day 2019, Geraldine received the phone call we all dread. The demands were immediate and many. Without space to grieve, the sudden loss became a yawning gulf.


Three years later, she booked a flight to a remote island off the coast of Australia with the intention of finally giving herself the time to mourn. In a shack on a pristine, rugged coast she often went days without seeing another person. There, she pondered the various ways in which cultures grieve and what rituals of her own might help to rebuild a life around the void of Tony’s death.


A spare and profoundly moving memoir that joins the classics of the genre, Memorial Days is a portrait of a larger-than-life man and a timeless love between souls that exquisitely captures the joy, agony, and mystery of life.

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Monday, December 15, 2025

Sister Monica Clare

 A Change of Habit by Sister Monica Clare.

Loved every minute and read it over the weekend in Cape Town.

I think there are more people out there like her than one would think, but life just gets complicated..

Her Website

Community of ST John

publisher

The soulful, hilarious memoir of a chronic people pleaser who surprised everyone in her life by abandoning an unfulfilling career and marriage to join a convent—and learned how much we stand to gain when we fully embrace our authentic selves

“A Change of Habit follows the arc of Sister Monica Clare’s career with irreverence and sincerity. . . . Her book [confirms] the warmth—and fragility—of her new community.”—The New York Times


More Details

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Tuesday, November 04, 2025

Elizabeth Gilbert and Jen Hatmaker - 2 memoirs

For the last two weeks I read two memoirs- I love supporting Independent bookstores and loved grabbing them.  However, the idea that a hardcover new book is $30 - I am not I am ok with.


Elizabeth Gilbert writes a memoir about walking through grief and finding freedom.

Makes sense to me. Life is hard and sometimes harder for others. I hope she stays in sobriety for life.

But I will say that some of the story is a lot!

Book and Film Blog

I am not a huge reddit reader - but very candid feedback

Reddit


Awake by Jen Hatmaker

Tells about her journey through divorce and how she still loves God but not the church.



Jen Hatmaker

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Saturday, September 20, 2025

Kindle Reads

 Downloaded this one from the memoir area that was on sale.  It caught my eye and minimal risk involved. - Goodreads link

She is a great storyteller. I enjoyed as she recounted her memories from her three marriages and how she navigated through them all.  Easy to read.


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Saturday, August 09, 2025

The Fine Art of Camouflage

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Wednesday, August 06, 2025

Playing for Freedom by Zarifa Adiba and Anne Chaon

Playing for Freedom by Zarifa Adiba and Anne Chaon

A detailed book about Zarifa living in Afghanistan, finding music, facing the Taliban, and loving her country.
It is beautiful and inspiring. 
My heart continues to be with the women and children trapped and living in danger.

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Sunday, July 13, 2025

The Fine Art of Camouflage

Enjoying this book immensely and can relate as a military family.
The Fine Art of Camouflage

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Wednesday, June 18, 2025

Elk Love by Lynne Spriggs O'Connor Book Trailer


The most beautiful book trailer - ever.

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A beautiful book

There is so much I love about this book.
It is a memoir.
Deep love that is not easy.
Wrestle with grief.
pages painting beautiful pictures of meadows, horses, animals, cows, dogs, mountains, countryside, rivers, and friendships.

Cannot recommend this one enough.

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Sunday, May 25, 2025

sebastian Junger

He is a favorite for sure. I wrote about it in 2016
I wrote about Tribe in 2016 blog
Sebastian Junger is purposeful and meaningful.
His new book is fascinating faces the topic of death head on and that experience.
In My Time of Dying is part medical drama, part searing autobiography, and part rational inquiry into the ultimate unknowable mystery.

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Tuesday, May 20, 2025

Perfectly Clear

 A memoir from Michelle LeClair about her escape from Scientology.

Michelle Leclair

This is absolutely fascinating.

I tried to do some additional research and it is almost non existent.



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Wednesday, May 07, 2025

Memoir - Ruth Wariner

The Sound of Gravel 

RUTH WARINER is an internationally renowned speaker and author of the New York Times bestselling memoir THE SOUND OF GRAVEL. At the age of fifteen, Ruth escaped Colonia LeBaron, the polygamist Mormon colony where she grew up, and moved to California. She raised her three youngest sisters in California and Oregon. After earning her GED, she put herself through college and graduate school, eventually becoming a high school Spanish teacher. She remains close to her siblings and is happily married. The Sound of Gravel is her first book.


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Monday, May 05, 2025

Writing Hard Stories

 

Fascinating read about what an author feels when writing about their most traumatic events in their lives and how a memoir becomes a life of it's own.

Melanie Brooks is a writer and a teacher.

Her father died of AIDs - In the mid 1980s, Canada’s worst public health disaster was unfolding. Catastrophic mismanagement of the country’s blood supply allowed contaminated blood to be knowingly distributed nationwide, infecting close to two thousand Canadians with HIV. Among them was Melanie Brooks’s surgeon father who, after receiving a blood transfusion during open-heart surgery in 1985, learned he was HIV positive.



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Thursday, February 27, 2025

A Call to Farms

Loved listening to this audiobook. These stories hit at the heart. If there ever is a time to get back to simple and easy, now, possibly now.  Thank you Jennifer Grayson 




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Thursday, February 20, 2025

J.S. Park: Hospital Chaplain

Author Website 

J.S. Park wrote the book  As Long As You Need

J.S.Park is pretty amazing and I am grateful for him and the work he does.

J.S. Park is a hospital chaplain, author, and online educator. For eight years he has been an interfaith chaplain at a 1000-plus bed hospital that is designated a Level 1 Trauma Center. His role includes grief counseling, attending every death, every trauma and Code Blue, staff care, and supporting end-of-life care. He also served for three years as a chaplain at one of the largest nonprofit charities for the homeless on the east coast.

J.S. has a MDiv completed in 2010 and a BA in Psychology. He also has a sixth-degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do. J.S. currently lives in Tampa, Florida with his wife, a nurse practitioner, and his three-year-old daughter and their adopted dog.

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Monday, January 27, 2025

Finished Becoming Free Indeed by Jinger Duggar Vuolo

 Finished Becoming Free Indeed by Jinger Duggar


 


Vuolo

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Saturday, January 25, 2025

New Read- Christine Faour

 Christine Faour - Behind The Dress

A memoir written a woman that left the ATI cult.

Christine's Blog

Book Review




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Monday, December 26, 2022

Out of

A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to visit the Karen Blixen Museum outside Nairobi, Kenya.  She was a champion, writer, and pioneer in her own right. Her story moved something inside of me. She walked with her grief; still caring, wirting, and serving others.
"I am not a novelist, really not even a writer; I am a storyteller. One of my friends said about me that I think all sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story or tell a story about them, and perhaps this is not entirely untrue. To me, the explanation of life seems to be its melody, its pattern. And I feel in life such an infinite, truly inconceivable fantasy."
–Karen Blixen (aka Isak Dinesen) in an interview with Bent Mohn
in The New York Times Book Review (3 November 1957), later quoted by Hannah Arendt in The Human Condition (1958).

Isak Dinesen's opening line in her novel "Out of Africa" has stayed with "I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills."

We watched the movie Out of Africa last week that was inspired from her memoir published in 1937. Robert Redford and Meryl Streep characters were beautiful.

#opportunity #writer #kenya #africa #learning #travel #inspiration

“The cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears, or the sea.” Karen Blixen

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Monday, December 12, 2022

Sticks

 


I finished House of Sticks by Ly Tran this week in South Africa.

I love  memoirs and this one is  beautifully written.  It is not always the easiset to read and I often had to set the book down. My heart hurt for her as she struggled in school and being heard about her needed glasses.  I am grateful for those that noticed and helped Ly.  She is an overcomer with the help of people that receognized the need.

I want to go find her a mom and give her the biggest bouquet of flowers I can find and tell her her worth.

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Wednesday, March 20, 2019

Deep Creek

I am absolutely loving Deep Creek by Pam Houston



Chicago Review of Books - Link

I want to be her neighbor and her friend.
Mend fences.
Replace bluebird bird houses.
Nurse beloved animals.
Watch the sunset.
And always have the passport at the ready.

She is inspiring and has me dreaming about possibilities.

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