As Good Luck Would Have It

“A good friend is like a four-leaf clover; hard to find and lucky to have.” —Irish Proverb

If it’s true a good friend is like a four-leaf clover, then a once-in-a-lifetime friend is like a 56-leaf clover—virtually impossible to find without Heavenly help and born-under-a-lucky-star fortunate to have. I’m sure you’re well aware by now that Rachel is my 56-leaf clover. Today is Rae’s birthday.  I’m celebrating the girl who is a good luck charm, as life is always better with her in it. Her friendship reassures me that the universe may well have my back. And she quietly reminds me, “where there is kindness, there is goodness, and where there is goodness, there is magic.” I see so much magic in you, birthday girl.

Of course, Rae and I believe books are handheld magic. Reading Hamnet (Waterstones’ Book of the Year) at December’s close was a serious source of enchantment for me. And not just because I’m literati. The fictional account about Shakespeare’s son who tragically died at age 11 has made more than a dozen Best Books of 2020 lists. NPR called Maggie O’Farrell’s latest novel “timeless.” I have a few adjectives of my own: compelling, lovely, immersive, and illuminating (to name a few), but they feel a little small. Honestly, I can’t wait to read Hamnet again. And I may not wait long. I’m with Dominic Dromgoole, author of Hamlet, Globe to Globe, “I don’t know how anyone could fail to love this book. It is a marvel: a great work of imaginative recreation and a great story. It is also a moral achievement to have transformed that young child from being a literary footnote into someone so tenderly alive that part of you wishes he had survived and Hamlet never been written.” Let’s be honest, it’s a moral achievement to unearth legitimate magic in the year 2020. Bravo Maggie, Bravo. As good luck would have it, we’re readers when you picked up your glorious pen.

Posted by Tracy

Take Me To Church

“When she wants for me things that I don’t want for myself – I am angry that she doesn’t understand me, doesn’t see me as my own, separate person, but that anger stems from the fact that I don’t see her that way either. I want her to know what I want the same way I know it, intimately, immediately. I want her to get well because I want her to get well, and isn’t that enough?”

Happy 2021, my friends. We’re already off to a rough start (cheers!), so let’s keep the books coming. I’m always looking for a way to escape our current reality, even if it means looking into an unstable alternate one.

Every now and then, you have a book that just strikes a chord in your soul. Know what I’m saying? If you haven’t, you will. Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi struck four or five chords at the same time for a bittersweet harmony. In the beginning, we jump directly into the life of Gifty, a fifth-year post-graduate neuroscience student at Stanford University, who is attempting to find a “cure” for addictions by getting rats hyped up on Ensure. Shortly after, we learn more about who she is—the daughter of Ghanaian immigrants, who moved to Alabama to start a new life before her birth and grew up as the only Black girl in her church and at school. Gifty also reveals to readers early on that her father abandoned her family when she was very young to return to Ghana; her promising high-school athlete brother, Nana, died in her teens from his opioid addiction; and her bedridden mother deals with extreme depression.

Heavy, I know. But the rest of the book is the unraveling of Gifty’s story and her struggles to accept herself and her beliefs. Within the first few pages, Gifty flies her suicidal mother out to the Bay Area to live in her tiny apartment, as she learns from her mother’s pastor that she refuses to leave her bed, eat, or perform any basic living routines besides going to the bathroom. Struggling with mental illness for over 10 years, her mother refuses any assistance—instead, she turns to God for help. Readers then take a deeper dive into each of the traumas, and its effects on both her and her mom, along with Gifty’s lifelong desire to be close to her mom and her wrestle to create and maintain a close-knit relationship.

On top of her issues with her mother, Gifty is also grappling with her belief in God. Raised in a zealous Southern church, she has been (for lack of a better word) scared into believing that God exists. After arriving at Harvard, Gifty soon learns she’s in the minority with her faith in a higher power and begins to question her beliefs and childhood; however hard she may try, there’s always something drawing Gifty back to Deity throughout the book. So where does she take it from here?

 Gyasi is beyond brilliant in both writing style and storytelling. The questions she asked throughout the book caused me immense introspection and reflection on my beliefs and how my past has shaped me into who I am this day. A solid 4 out of 5 stars, this is a book that you do not want to miss.

 WARNING: There are deep depictions of drug abuse, overdose and emotional abuse throughout the book.

Posted by Michelle

Remarkable Jane

“We love Jane Austen because her characters, as sparkling as they are, are no better and no worse than us. They’re so eminently, so completely, human. I, for one, find it greatly consoling that she had us all figured out.” 

Attention Literati! You know who you are—scrupulous readers who crave good prose and don’t mind admitting one bit, “Yep, still doin the English major thing.” Of course, you don’t need to be an English major to adore Jane Austen. (She can feel universal like the need for oxygen, a craving for chocolate, or the pure love of puppies.) If you love Jane Austen (and I know you do), I’ve got a thoroughly charming read for you.

Jane had tons of stuff figured out over 200 years ago. I wonder if that’s why her works are still so relevant today? (You’ll have to join our upcoming book club to find out.) In the meantime, if you’re a Janeite like me, you will love Natalie Jenner’s The Jane Austen Society. Her debut novel is set in the small English village of Chawton, where Jane Austen lived for the final 8 years of her storied life. An unlikely cohort—a doctor, a widow, a farm hand, a Hollywood star, to name a few—band together in an effort to preserve what remains of Austen’s home. Not surprisingly, they forge authentic connections through remarkable Jane. And their common goal of protecting her legacy, amid difficulties of their own, underscores characters that sparkle in their own right, who are no better or worse than each of us.

 p.s. The audible narrator, Richard Armitage, was spot-on!

Posted by Tracy

Mostly Idiots

“It's always very easy to declare that other people are idiots, but only if you forget how idiotically difficult being human is.”

“A bank robbery. A hostage drama. A stairwell full of police officers on their way to storm an apartment. It was easy to get to this point, much easier than you might think. All it took was one single really bad idea.  This story is about a lot of things, but mostly about idiots. So it needs saying from the outset that it’s always very easy to declare that other people are idiots, but only if you forget how idiotically difficult being human is.” So says Fredrick Backman in his latest.

In a year full of frustration, anxiety, and a good bit of political idiocy, humorous fiction might just be what we all need. A failed bank heist (it’s difficult to rob a cashless bank) leads to a hostage crisis involving eight anxious and slightly broken people. A robber in need of a getaway runs into an apartment open house where the would-be thief gives new meaning to Stockholm Syndrome. What follows is a whimsical story that uses humor to touch on the more sensitive topics of forgiveness, tolerance, hope, and our innate desire for human connection. Isn’t that what we all crave during these turbulent times? In my opinion, A Man Called Ove remains the crowning jewel in Backman’s writing portfolio, but this heartwarming tale lifted my spirits much in the same way as the loveable curmudgeon Ove. If you’re a Backman fan, you will love his latest offering. If you’re not a fan, I think you soon will be.

Posted by Sharee

On the Doorstep of 5 Bright Ones

“It is sad, of course, to forget. But it is a lonely thing, to be forgotten. To remember when no one else does.”

When I was in elementary school, recess consisted of playing on the Big Toy, with some light kiddie conversation sprinkled in. Superheroes and superpowers were hot topics. The most frequently debated question—“If you could have one super power, what would it be?” I was fixated on the idea of flying—you could go anywhere you wanted on your own terms! (Maybe I’m Toni Morrison’s long-lost cousin, a girl can dream, right?) Most of my friends wanted the power of invisibility. How freeing to be present in an instant but nobody knows it. After reading V.E. Schwab’s The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, I am firmly convinced that invisibility is less of a superpower and more of a curse.

Picture this: it’s 1714 in a small village in France. You’re 23, past your prime, single and disapproved by everyone in your small town (minus “crazy” Esther). When a recently widowed man wants you to be his wife, your parents practically throw you at him to marry you off. Your wedding date is set despite protests. Minutes before the wedding, you run off into the woods to pray to anyone who will listen. The only “thing” that appears is Darkness, who agrees to take away her fate in exchange for her soul. Such is the plight of Addie LaRue – what should she do?

Addie takes the deal. Shortly after, she discovers no one can remember her – not even her beloved Papa, who casts her out of their home when she tries to return. Calling back the Darkness, she begs to have it reversed. The dim creature declines, mentioning to her that she was the one that prayed to him for relief. Left with no other options, Addie embarks on a nomadic life attempting to find her purpose.

For 300 years, Addie steals, swoons, and stalks her way into hundreds of friends and admirer’s lives, desperate to have one person remember her. No one remembers her long enough to sustain a relationship. She is a forgotten soul—that is until 2014, when she meets Henry Strauss. Strauss remembers her stealing a book from his bookstore the previous day. Shocked beyond all reason, Addie throws herself at Henry. She’s desperate for answers, until she discovers Henry’s dark secret.  

This book is a solid 4.75/dare I say on the doorstep of 5 stars? From the moment I picked it up, I was hooked. The first half of this gripping fiction details the backstory of Addie’s experiences with history and travels; the second half focuses on her current-day situation with Henry Strauss. Beginning to end, Schawb keeps readers entranced with what will become of poor Addie LaRue. Don’t wait to pick this book up. I repeat, don’t wait to pick this book up!

If you’re so inclined, drop what superpower you’re after below…just do it after you finish the story. (Who knows, your answer may change :)

Posted by Michelle

Southern Comfort


“Sometimes the debt you pay ain’t exactly the one you owe, but it works out jus’ the same anyway. Lord knows I done caused my share of heartache in this life.”

To quote my girl Rachel, “Sometimes Audible proves a skillful matchmaker—pairing me up with [a great] read based on books I’ve loved. One that I may never have stumbled across otherwise,” like The Pecan Man. If you’ve been following along with us for a while now, maybe you’ve noticed that Rae and I are big fans of Southern fiction. We’ve recommended southerly winners like Where the Crawdads Sing, All Over but the Shoutin’, The Giver of Stars, and Charms for the Easy Life, to name a few. And we have to weather the persistent urge to defend against altering quite possibly the most perfect character in modern-day literature, Atticus Finch. It’s hard to resist lit from “a place where grandmothers hold babies on their laps under the stars and whisper in their ears that the lights in the sky are holes in the floor of heaven.” (Thank you, Rick Bragg, for that little bit of starriness right there.)

The Pecan Man shot to the front of my tbr pile when I read that, “This [novella] has been described as To Kill a Mockingbird meets The Help.” Any time, I said, any time a book is mentioned in the same realm as Harper Lee’s phenom, I’m down to give it a try. The pee-can man, a homeless elderly black man named Eddie, did remind me a little of Boo Radley—mothers would call their children inside when he came into view. And Ora, a widow with a big heart and dispassionate eyes, who hires Eddie to help about the yard certainly has elements of Atticus Finch in her. You’ll have to read this little southern gem to discover whether or not Eddie was unjustly accused and sentenced for the death of the police chief’s son.

I’m grateful I met Ora. She’s both progressive and kind, and her moral compass is somewhere in the vicinity of true north. Let’s be honest, she didn’t start a movement. But in the summer of 1976, Ora demonstrated a deep understanding of this truth: Black Lives Matter.

P.S. Looks like Laurence Fishburne is set to play The Pecan Man onscreen…should be good!

Posted by Tracy