Two Bluestockings

I am not the self-help one in the group. I personally avoid my feelings and emotional self as often as I possibly can. My mother laughs at me because I hate being alone. The silence is loud. And silence is good for your mind to be like: "Hey. Let’s discuss all the things you have shoved in these boxes in the basement." (I hoard unpleasant things in my brain. I admit it! Jayna, don’t even try to psych me!) That being said, this book is a little similar to the relationship book He’s Just Not That Into You (yes, it is also a movie). That is the only self-help book I read because I wanted it, and I loved it. This book seemed like it would be well suited for a younger audience, late middle and high school ages. It has no sexual context to it, but is about the reader--written in a generic ‘she’ pronoun to correlate with the author’s gender/preferred pronoun--learning how to move on and let go of those relationships that many teenagers find themselves in. The vicious cycle of ...

This book came to me during an incredibly busy week. I opened it up, scanned the first few pages, and said, "This is not for me." It had a lot of references to men feeling emasculated if their wives worked and women being fake to keep the peace. I almost put it down, but I'm glad I didn't. (First, you should know that my specialty is researching women's mental health, which is why I react so strongly to these implications.) Thankfully Lomazoff-Marron is also not a fan of such things either, because her women not only rose from the ashes of their lives, they came back stronger and more authentic. The book begins with Jonathan and Meredith Perkins. Jonathan is painted as the hard worker with "business acumen," whose business is booming. Meredith is the art history major turned housewife, who attempts to find contentment in decorating her house. Enter federal agents, who arrest Jonathan for fraud and embezzling. The Perkins' world crumbles, and Meredith...

Okay, so I have a confession. I love books like this. Not only are the titles confusing and fun, I make a movie up in my head of what the plot is before I start the book. I don’t even read the back of the book, I make my own Hallmark version in my mind, then dive in. For better or for worse. Because, let’s be honest for a minute, sometimes these books are train wrecks that you just have to look at because you are stuck in traffic, and you left the real book in your other bag. I can happily say that this book is not one of those. This book is cute and funny and more on the realistic side than other books in this category. (The only thing I will mention is the criminology aspect had some incorrect procedures, but I will leave my college education on the party killer side of my brain). I enjoyed the characters. They are all loveable, honest and reminded me of my own family. We are loud, we love each other to a fault, and we meddle by accident because most of us are fixers. So we fix. Whic...

          I do not have the poet's soul that Aarika has, so I was quite nervous to read this book. Shiva contacted us via email, and he struck  me as an extremely warm individual, which also makes it difficult for this critic. Aarika says I have no soul--she has also not seen me ugly cry over Old Yeller .          Shadow: Unparalleled Waves of LIFE was intended to be part of a collective effort between Shiva Vangala and his cousin, Satheesh Kotoju. They wanted to write and publish with the pen name SanthuSnehama, however this dream ended when Satheesh died unexpectedly in 2019.           The book is very short, clocking in at 16 poems. It is beautifully illustrated, and each poem has its own black and white illustration that helps to convey its meaning.          When read with the knowledge that this was to be a collected effort, you can feel a spectrum of emotion...

Aarika and Jayna sent Maureen some questions to get to know her better. They are included here for your entertainment and in hopes that you will be further encouraged to check out Maureen's book Woven. The Two Bluestockings' review for that book can be found here !  Do you try more to be original or to deliver to readers what they want? I think writing is an art, and so I try to be true to myself when I write. I learned a lot about writing when working on Woven, my first novel. I learned about the difference between commercial fiction and literary fiction, after some well-meaning people tried to rework my book to make it fit a formula: intro characters, intro a problem, try to solve the problem and fail several times in spectacular fashion, solve the problem and live happily ever after. That did not work for this book and for a while I thought maybe I could not write a novel after all. But then I started to think about art and how an art dealer might have said to Picasso, “Yo...

I had the pleasure of reading this book in one sitting! I honestly had no idea what to expect, but I can stay without a doubt that this book delivered whatever I was missing. This book was such an easy read, the language was easy to follow and is one of those books you can’t help but curl up with after a long day. This story is easy to follow, but has an interesting concept you can’t help but stay with until you have concluded the story. When you are finished reading, you can close the book, take out your headphones, or just close out the app on your phone satisfied. Ratings: Language: 2 out of 5. There is some strong language throughout the book, but it is not overbearing and easily overlooked if you prefer less language in your books. The language is not used unnecessarily, but more in relation to the characters.  Sexual content: 2 out of 5. There is some talk of sexual situations, insinuations of sexual relations between characters, and conversations about exploring the chemis...

     Maureen Morrissey is the author of Woven: Six Stories, One Epic Journey . In this novel, you watch the history of a family unfold from the great-grandparents to the fourth generation. Morrissey says in the author's note that this was her 2020 project that she wrote during the COVID-19 pandemic.      Morrissey obviously is a history buff. I learned some things about World War Two that I didn't know like: a group of nurses crashed in the mountains and had to hike nine weeks to reach their destination and the Japanese actually put together prison camps that were equally as horrible as some of the camps in Germany.      The book is divided into two parts: his and hers. The "His" stands for Cam's story and the "Hers" stands for Tessa's story. The story begins with Cam's great-grandfather who fled to the United States to escape the Irish potato famine and threads down through the generations to Cam's grandfather who was the first in his family...

    T he Venom Protocols  by John Murray McKay is a fast-paced novel about a female assassin. From his work, you can see that McKay is influenced by Marvel Comics, which he says that he loves in his GoodReads profile.       Charlotte Corday is hiding out in Hawaii, running from her past as a hitwoman for the mafia in New York. When a well-dressed man shows up to demand that she complete one last mission, the reader drops into her disorienting past. From her first (albeit involuntary kill) to her attempt to flee from the wicked men trying to control her, Charlie checks every box for a badass heroine. She's funny. She's dangerous. (Basically, she's as if Venom--from the Marvel movie--mixed with Jason Bourne. It's a wild but fascinating combo.)      My first gripe with the book is that McKay calls cookies biscuits. Or at least, that's what I assumed--and Aarika confirmed. One character bakes these "biscuits" badly, which is a running joke i...