It’s winter again, time to publish my list of favorite books of 2023! The books you read change the way you think about others and even make you smarter. (Here’s a fascinating article from The Guardian about how reading can actually raise your IQ.) They can help you grow not only in knowledge but in understanding those with whom you…
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A mini review of The Forgotten Girls: A Memoir of Friendship and Lost Promise in Rural America, by Monica Potts. Half memoir, half biography, The Forgotten Girls chronicles an Arkansas native’s attempt to trace the cause of the destructive spiral of her best friend’s life. Ms. Potts, who moved away from small-town Clinton, sees the rising death rates of rural white…
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Different: The Story of an Outside-the-Box Kid and the Mom Who Loved Him, by Sally and Nathan Clarkson. This mini review features a book told in two parts, as mother and son take turns telling their story. In Different, Sally Clarkson and her son Nathan take turns telling their story of learning to live with and find the strengths in…
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Most of my individual reviews tend to be of the nonfiction that I’ve read and thought through during the year, but I read a lot of fiction as well. These books are some of my favorite fiction of this year–or at least some of the most interesting fiction I read, in the case of the latter part of the list….
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In the mornings, I read passages from the Bible that fill me with fresh hope and new mercies. In the evenings, I read literature that inspires me and teaches me how to instill good habits and a love for learning in my children. And in between? Oh, the in between. In between these infusions of truth and idealism, I live…
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