Grace (Eventually), by Anne Lamott

There just aren’t words for how much I love Anne Lamott.
The other day I heard Shelagh Rogers on Sounds Like Canada interviewing Heather Mallick about her new book Cake or Death (which you’ll probably see me reviewing here, eventually).  They got talking about writers they like, and one of them mentioned Anne Lamott.
“Oh I love [...]

Mary, by Janis Cooke Newman

Mary is a fictional biography of Mary Todd Lincoln, wife of Abraham Lincoln.  Without knowing a great deal about the real Mary Lincoln, I found this an engaging and engrossing read.
I had a vague sense of having read somewhere that Mrs. Lincoln was mentally ill, and in fact while I was reading this novel I [...]

Lucky, by Alice Sebold

Like many readers, I only picked up Lucky after I had read Alice Sebold’s very successful first novel, The Lovely Bones. I assumed that the memoir came after, but the fact is it was published three years before The Lovely Bones, and rereleased after the novel proved so successful.
Both books tell the story of a [...]

Paris to the Moon, by Adam Gopnik

Adam Gopnik and his wife Martha moved to Paris with their infant son, Luke, in the late 1990s.  The two New Yorkers had had a lifelong fascination with Paris and spent some time there before, and decided it would be a good place to spend their son’s preschool years.  Paris to the Moon consists of [...]

The Boleyn Inheritance, by Philippa Gregory

SPECIAL NEWS FLASH!! Third Goddess Added to Pantheon!Yes, it’s true. The time has finally come.  After withholding judgement for a few years, I have decided to elevate Philippa Gregory to the vacant third position in my pantheon of Historical Fiction Goddesses, alongside long-time Goddesses Margaret George and Sharon Kay Penman.
I’m sure Philippa has been waiting [...]

Forest Mage, by Robin Hobb

For item #2 on my post-Lent fiction fun list, another new novel by another of my favourite fantasy authors.  I have loved all nine of Robin Hobb’s “Realm of the Elderlings” trilogy of trilogies — the Assassin series, the Liveship Traders, and the Tawny Man trilogy.  The first volume of her new Soldier Son trilogy, Shaman’s [...]

Ysabel, by Guy Gavriel Kay

For my first plunge back into fiction after Lent, I could not do better than read the newest book by my favourite fantasy author.  I was first introduced to Guy Gavriel Kay through reading his Fionavar trilogy back in the 80s — classic high fantasy with characters from our world drawn into an epic conflict [...]

Aaaand … We’re Done With That

So, I’ve reached the end of my non-fiction reading list for Lent 2007.  The final tally is

19 books
17 read in their entirety during Lent; two started earlier but finished during Lent
One Biblical book read (Luke)
One cheat, but only for work (had to reread the novel Waiting for Time for a class)
Favourite and most [...]

Every Earthly Blessing: Rediscovering the Celtic Tradition, by Esther De Waal (LentBook #19)

As with Julian of Norwich, this is a book I’d been planning to read for a long time.  I’m very attracted to the idea of “Celtic Christianity,” even though I know it’ a vague concept into which people tend to toss whatever ideas they like about early Christianity in the British Isles (including the prevailing [...]

The Great Failure: A Bartender, A Monk, and My Unlikely Path to Truth, by Natalie Goldberg (LentBook #18)

One of the things I love about my Lenten reading project is the role serendipity plays in it.  Some books I select, because people recommend them or because I’ve meant to get around to reading them for awhile.  Others just fall across my path, like this one, and somehow fit neatly into other things I’m [...]