When Things Fall Apart Pema Chödrön “When Things Fall Apart” is a short, pithy collection of essays by esteemed Buddhist nun and spiritual guide Pema Chodron about facing the difficult things in life, whatever they may be. Although Chodron sometimes discusses specific situations, and occasionally gives specific examples, sometimes rather amusing ones of her inability […]
Read more "“When Things Fall Apart” by Pema Chödrön"The Sandbox David Zimmerman A surreptitiously weird book, “The Sandbox” follows the story of Toby Durrant, soldier and screw-up, who ends up in something way over his head while deployed in Iraq. The weirdness begins when Durrant’s convoy comes across the body of a little girl lying in the road. When they stop to investigate, […]
Read more "“The Sandbox” by David Zimmerman"Spoils Brian Van Reet Specialist Cassandra Wigheard is a tough girl from Arkansas who joined the army looking for adventure. What she got was deployment to Iraq and lots of close proximity with aspiring rapists, first from her own comrades in arms, then from the mujahideen who capture her and want to use her as […]
Read more "“Spoils” by Brian Van Reet"Shadow War: A Tom Locke Novel Sean McFate and Bret Witter I stumbled upon this book when I read Sean McFate’s rebuttal to Eric Prince’s proposal to turn the US’s operation in Afghanistan over to private contractors, aka mercenaries. (Eric Prince, lest we forget, was the founder of Blackwater). Naturally I had to check out his […]
Read more "“Shadow War: A Tom Locke Novel” by Sean McFate and Bret Witter"Free Fantasy! Yes, why not grab a free copy of The Midnight Land I, free today on Kindle? If you’re tired of summer and ready for something a little more chill, I guarantee it will cool you right down. Plus there are foxes, wolves, elk, horses…you get the picture. Get it here. And here’s a picture […]
Read more "The Midnight Land I is Free Today!"Flying By the Seat of My Knickers Eliza Watson “Flying By the Seat of my Knickers” is part of the burgeoning genre of…I don’t know exactly what to call it…stories about hapless young women who have to turn their lives around by having adventures and finding love. It’s chick lit of a very specific sort. […]
Read more "“Flying By the Seat of My Knickers” by Eliza Watson"How To Be Sick: A Buddhist-Inspired Guide For the Chronically Ill and Their Caregivers Toni Bernhard Foreword by Sylvia Boorstein The problem for most Western approaches to dealing with a serious or chronic illness is that they are based, whether they know it or not, on the concepts of objective distance and physical and rational […]
Read more "“How To Be Sick” by Toni Bernhard"I Married a Soldier Brenda Hale and Rachel Farmer It’s what every military spouse fears: silence when there should have been emails, followed by uniformed strangers at the door. In “I Married a Soldier,” Brenda Hale chronicles her happy marriage to career military man Mark Hale, and its heartbreaking end when he was killed in […]
Read more "“I Married a Soldier” by Brenda Hale and Rachel Farmer"Where in Hard-Boiled City is Carmella Sanfrancisco? CB Archer Ahahahaha! I bet you thought this book would be hard-core x-rated, didn’t you? Well, you’d be wrong! In an unexpected plot twist, this latest installment of the Tales of Gentalia is completely sex-free! Followers of the series have come to expect a certain something from it, […]
Read more "“Where in Hard-Boiled City is Carmella Sanfrancisco?” by CB Archer"The Lonely Soldier Helen Benedict If you still harbor any starry-eyed illusions about the Iraq war as a noble endeavor, or of the military as a welcoming place for women, this book will dispel them. Focusing largely on the experiences of a fairly diverse group (two white, one Mexican-American, one African-American, one Native American, all, […]
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E. P. Clark: Author, Book Reviewer, and All-Around Literary Handiwoman 