Should Fiction be Safe?

Photo by Chris Long on Unsplash You’re driving down the interstate when you see a massive plaster sculpture of the Jolly Green Giant, his blocky 1950s grin startlingly white against the green of the pines around him. The kids are restless, and you need a stretch, so you pull into the parking lot, turn off…

Daring to Grow Together

I’m almost a decade late in reading Brené Brown’s Daring Greatly. Thankfully, it is just as applicable (if not more) in 2023 as when it was published in 2015. Here’s the quote from Theodore Roosevelt that Brown uses for the premise of her book: It is not the critic that counts; not the man who…

Letting Sleeping Beauty Go

My husband and I were watching The Mandalorian on Netflix the other night when we had a personal visitation from that well-girl in The Ring. She lurched slowly out from the hallway and into the living room, her head down and silky hair completely covering her face. In this version, the girl had traded a…

“Mom Genes” Needs a New Wash

A lovable but overly-ambitious take on a touchy subject Journalist Abigail Tucker tackles an enormous subject in her book Mom Genes: Inside the New Science of Our Ancient Maternal Instinct. Not only have moms been around for a long time, but they are difficult to study, and any conclusions study results suggest about pregnancy, childbirth…

Loving Someone Even When They Make Life Complicated

I borrowed Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time from the library thinking it was a “funny” book. It was on a list of recommended hilarious reads by an author I know, so when I opened it up, I was expecting laugh-out-loud scenarios with quotable quips and sass. But I got…