“For one who reads there is no limit to the number of lives that may be lived, for fiction, biography, and history offer an inexhaustible number of lives in many parts of the world, in all periods of time.”
Louis L’Amour
“I have read many books by many lights, hoarding their beauty, their wit or wisdom against the dark days when I would have no book, nor a place to read. I have known hunger of the belly kind many times over, but I have known a worse huger: the need to know and to learn.”
Louis L’Amour
Books are the cans and boxes of food in my pantry. Books are the spices I use when I cook – not all of them at one time, but a bit here and a bit there. I have three stacks of books on my nightstand: fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Each night I read – not because it is a ritual but because it is a need and a tremendous pleasure, like sleep or sex, or eating delicious chocolate and drinking an ice cold Dr. Pepper.
Reading allows me to be whoever I want to be, whenever I want to be, go wherever I want to go: in other words, whenever I read, I am never left behind nor am I running out of time.
Oprah said that the book that saved her life was A Tree Grows In Brooklyn.
I think every child that goes through extreme sadness finds relief and healing in a book – I found my relief and healing in Bette Green’s The Summer Of My German Soldier;
I found passion and escape in Shirlee Busbee’s While Passion Sleeps;
and of course there is always books about Jesus that nourish my soul and the number one book I can thin of is Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis
Reading is part hereditary, part nurturing – and our job as parents is to make sure that we not only pass the gene of good health, good food habits, but also the thirst for reading
Below are a few book suggestions – books on fiction, poetry, and nonfiction. Enjoy the quick “shopping spree” below and if one strikes your fancy visit the contact website and buy a book.
And remember a book is a present you can open and read over again. And they make great knick-knacks.
A Fatal Flaw by Margaret Blake
Fiction, Whisky Print Press
Kerensa needs to find out the truth about her late mother. Travelling to Florida from Cornwall, she tries to discover what happened. When Ned Rochester comes along he seems as if he could be useful but he is a cop. Can Kerensa really trust a cop with the mystery of why her mother shot her father?
Margaret Blake
Manchester, United Kingdom
Blake began writing since she was a child, but did not take writing seriously until her husband John encouraged her to do so. Her first novel, a historical romance, A Spring of Bloom, was published in 1979. She’s thus far published over ten novels, five of which are under her Grandmother’s name Ellen Noone.
Love And Its Disappointment by David Brazier.
Nonfiction, O Books, John Hunt
Love and Its Disappointment offers an introduction to an “other centered approach” to psychotherapy and, by extension, to many other areas of life. This does not simply mean that one be primarily focused upon one’s friend (or client) as “other” but advocates that the meaning of the other person’s life is to be found in the way in which he or she esteems their own others. This produces a distinctive turn in the method and philosophy of therapy. The book begins with a sympathetic critique of the work of the great psychologist Carl Rogers who was known to the author, but then draws in considerations from philosophy, especially that of Iris Murdoch, and from the theory of the arts, which are here regarded as a kind of therapy for society as a whole. The book is serious but not heavy, full of insights and usefully different ways of reflecting upon life, therapy and the arts, especially poetry.
David Brazier
Narborough, Leicester
http://amidatrust.typepad.com/dharmavidya/
David Brazier is a Buddhist master and head of the Amida-shu, an order of Pureland Buddhists. He is also professionally a psychotherapy trainer, author, poet and critic; and non-professionally a traveler,
photographer, gardener and woodsman. He is the inventor of pandramatics, an improvisational theater art. He lectures regularly in about ten countries and has seven published books and many other writings. He is English but spends most of the year traveling.
Jazz byJeanpaul Ferro
Poetry, Honest Publishing
Jazz develops Jéanpaul Ferro’s considerable observational talent and poetic merit. Perfect for your commute to exorcise the repressed, sweating and fevered demons, or relaxing with a glass of wine in the evening after a hard slog, Jazz zips across, punchy and provocative, evoking Beat and post-Beat but without aping either.
Jeanpaul Ferro
Providence, Rhode Island
Ferro is a novelist, short fiction author, poet, and photographer from Providence, Rhode Island. An 8-time Pushcart Prize nominee, He is the author of five other books including Essendo Morti-Being Dead (Goldfish Press, 2009) which was nominated for the 2010 Griffin Prize in Poetry. He is represented by the Jennifer Lyons Literary Agency.
Nightmare Along the River Nile: A Story of Twentieth Century Slavery
by Suzanna Nelson
Fiction, iUniverse
Edgar is caught up in a nightmare he never imagined possible when his bus is stopped by the rebels of the Lord’s Resistance Army, in northern Uganda. Along with other passengers, most of them students, Edgar is abducted and taken on a long journey to the rebel headquarters in the bush. Things turn even worse when, instead of being forced to become a soldier, he is sold into slavery. His life is changed forever. Edgar’s friends learn of his fate and embark on a daring and difficult rescue attempt.
With the help of a fellow captive, Edgar attempts a daring and dangerous escape, knowing that his re-capture would end in a fate worse than death. But will he succeed? Looking collectively at the people who are involved in Edgar’s captivity and the ones who assist him, we are reminded that people are capable of good or evil, regardless of their color or creed. Through Edgar’s story, the reader will come to understand the resilience that human beings can exhibit under extreme circumstances, the power of faith and the meaning of true friendship.
Suzanna Nelson
Geneva, Switzerland
Nelson is a consultant for the United Nations who has lived and worked in Africa, Europe, and North America. She is also the author of The Helpers: An International Tale of Espionage and Corruption.
Forever Found, Forever Lost by Ross Eddy Osborn
Fiction, Whisky Creek Press LLC
A street-wise James Jesse Dowell wouldn’t buy the legend of some Eskimo beast god until he witnessed a soul-crazed bush doctor come to horrifying life at forty thousand feet in the sky. Now James must stalk the demon and kill the beast that rules Charles Patrick MacHenery’s soul—or James will never be free of the maddening curse pounding ever louder in his head like some satanic sealskin drum.
But how does one destroy a werewolf that can only die by a loving hand? An escaped moon demon who hasn’t made fulfilling love in over five hundred and thirty reclusive years—and desperately desires to, now that he’s been trapped by his new eternal love—Miss Amanda De La Ray—a woman as witchy as the swampy Louisiana wilds she fairly rules.
Ross Eddy Osborn
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
“I grew up blue collar in Oklahoma City, snuck through high school, did an eye opening tour of combat duty in Vietnam (1968) were I learned first trembling hand that we all laugh, cry, and scream in the same language. Been writing 20 plus years now, and getting solid notice. I’m working on a creative none fiction book titled ‘Don’t Stand on Greasy Grass, 1876.’ Twenty three year old Irish exile joins unwitting ranks with one of US histories arguable heroes, once brevet General, Let. Colonel George Armstrong Custer.”
Manifest Destiny by Rick Robinson
Fiction, Publisher Page
While observing the Presidential election in Romania, a Congressional staffer is kidnapped by Communist rebels and held captive in a remote area of the Carpathian Mountains. The quest for his safe return takes Congressman Richard Thompson to a dark side of international politics which no one dares talk about in the hallowed halls of Congress. In trying to save the life of the young American, Thompson must do things he thought impossible for him to imagine, let alone execute.
Richard Lee Robinson
Ft. Mitchell, Kentucky
Rick Robinson has spent thirty years in politics and law, including a stint on Capitol Hill as Legislative Director/Chief Counsel to then-Congressman Jim Bunning (R-KY). He has been active in all levels of politics, from advising candidates on the national level to walking door-to-door in city council races. He ran for the United States Congress in 1998. Rick’s first book, The Maximum Contribution, was named Award Winning Finalist in the 2008 Next Generation Indie Books Awards in the genré of political fiction. It also won an Honorable Mention at the 2008 Hollywood Book Festival. His last book, Sniper Bid, was released on Election Day 2009 and opened on Amazon’s Top 100 Best Seller list at #46 for political fiction. Sniper Bid has earned 5 national awards: Finalist USA Book News Best Books of 2009; Finalist Best Indie Novel Next Generation Indie Books Awards; Runner-up at the 2009 Nashville Book Festival; Honorable Mentions at the 2008 New England Book Festival and the 2009 Hollywood Book Festival. Throughout 2009 both books appeared on Amazon’s Top 100 Best Seller List on the same day.
A graduate of Eastern Kentucky University and Salmon P. Chase College of Law, Rick currently practices law in Ft. Mitchell, Kentucky with the law firm of Graydon Head & Ritchey LLP. Rick, and his wife Linda, live in Ft. Mitchell with their three children, Josh, Zach and MacKenzie.
Poemergency Room by Paul Siegell
Poetry, Otolith
Poemergency Room is a “curiosity dynamo” or a “dictionary playpen” that explores the ways that words – in sight and sound – can themselves be thrilled when placed into a poem. It is a book about a “realworldolescent” struggling with the relationship between “Fire Work” & “Hire Life,” all the while taunting, “A cubical food fight? Rip-roarin’ rhapsodic, I’m ready when you are.”
Paul Siegell
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
ReVeLeR@eYeLeVeL
Paul Siegell is the author of three books of poetry: wild life rifle fire (Otoliths Books, 2010), jambandbootleg (A-Head Publishing, 2009) and Poemergency Room (Otoliths Books, 2008). He is a senior editor at Painted Bride Quarterly, contributed to many fine journals, and featured in two national music and culture magazines, Paste and Relix. Having lived in the midst of the Long Island Expressway, the Cathedral of Learning, the Magic Kingdom, Stone Mountain and now the Liberty Bell, he currently bikes/buses/subways to a building where newspapers are published, and there he writes for a living, but not as a journalist.
Joshua Michael Stewart
Ware, Massachusetts
http://joshuamichaelstewart.yolasite.com/
Stewart’spoems have been published in Massachusetts Review, Rattle, Georgetown Review, William and Mary Review, Flint Hills Review, Pedestal Magazine, and Worcester Review.
Goodbye Saigon by Nina Vida
Fiction, Random House Value Publishing
Little Saigon, California 1993. Two young women, one a fast-talking Vietnamese immigrant who charms, cajoles and hustles her precarious way through life in a country she is determined by whatever means to make her own; the other an Anglo, short on money and willing to risk all to get some. In the unlikeliest of pairings, together they set up a bogus law firm in Little Saigon, California, and in a community filled with racism, vicious gangs and deadly scams, face down the forces that threaten to destroy them both.
Nina Vida
Huntington Beach, California
www.ninavida.com
“I’ve been asked how I came to write a novel about the Vietnamese immigrant experience in the United States. In the nineties my husband was an attorney in Little Saigon, California, and I became best friends with his Vietnamese office manager. Soon I was going to Vietnamese weddings and karaoke bars and festivals and funerals. I sucked up everything I saw and heard. The surface of Vietnamese experience gave way, and interior doors opened. The Vietnamese war and its wounds enveloped me. The surreal became real. I imagined my friend’s horrors by the way she talked about war and corruption and loss, by the way she imagined herself in an imagineless world. Her voice propelled me into a dark slumbering wood. The only escape was to write my way out.”
This post first appeared in The Asian American Times on July 14, 2011.
It also appeared on the Chris Rice Cooper Blogspot Dot Com on July 20, 2013
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