Memoir Monday... and This One Comes Naturally

Two Women Living Together by Kim Hana and Hwang Sunwoo... From Goodreads: The big-hearted, bestselling South Korean memoir co-written by two best friends flouting gender norms and societal expectations with their decision to grow old together under one roof.

When most of their peers were moving in with romantic partners and having children, Kim Hana and Hwang Sunwoo chose independence—savoring solitude, quiet mornings, and the unmitigated freedom of living alone. But in their forties, something shifted, and they were met with a new, unexpected loneliness. Refusing to settle for the outdated choice between marriage or isolation, Hana and Sunwoo made a radical decision: to buy a home and live together—not as lovers, not as roommates, but as chosen family.

Now a bustling household of two women and four cats, Hana and Sunwoo still value solitude, but can do so while sharing a life and its meaning with someone else. Together they navigate the challenges and comforts of cohabiting in midlife, the growing pains of interdependence and the unexpected rewards of compromise when you’ve grown set in your ways. From sick days to career wins to aging parents and beach-side retirement plans, they are redefining domestic bliss on their own terms, where love, partnership, and home are defined not by tradition, but by choice.

With warmth, wit, and sharp social insight, Hana and Sunwoo share their blueprint for building a life outside the scripts of marriage and society’s expectations for women. Two Women Living Together is a quiet revolution—a celebration of female friendship, community, and the many forms that love and family can take.

When we are young girls, we have sleepovers--with our girlfriends. When we go to college, we have roommates in college--that are women. But when we get married, we leave our girlfriends behind and build a life with our husbands. But if we find ourselves alone, why not embrace what we've done basically all of our lives, live with our girlfriends. Some may like to be alone, but we don't have to be alone. And Hana and Sunwoo chose not to be alone, and not to find a husband, but to find each other, and embrace female friendships. I am so fascinated with this book. On my wishlist!

First published in 2019, more recently in January 2026 by Ecco. 

P.S. This cover show is the UK cover, which I just love because of the cat tree!

 

Memoir Monday... Jenny Lawson back with some more of her on point humor

     

How To Be Okay When Nothing Is Okay by Jenny Lawson... Warm, insightful, and witty, the first book of advice from New York Times bestselling author Jenny Lawson—aka the Bloggess

Jenny Lawson is full of contradictions. She’s a celebrated author but battles self-doubt, paralysis, and anxiety. She’s an award-winning humorist but struggles with treatment-resistant depression. The questions people most often ask her are, “How do you do it? How do you keep going even when it feels impossible? How do you keep creating?” This book is her answer.

In How to Be Okay When Nothing Is Okay, Jenny shares more than one hundred humorous, heartfelt, and genuine tools and tricks that she relies on to keep her going even when her brain isn’t working properly due to depression, anxiety, and ADHD. She also offers tips to stay passionate and focused on creative endeavors, especially when everything around you is saying to give up.

Jenny Lawson suffers from severe anxiety and humanizes what she goes thru. She has a large following on different social media platforms and I think that is because of her self deprecating sense of humor, honesty and empathy towards others who also suffer with these issues. Nice to see Jenny Lawson back with another book to bring awareness and help. Her other books were great and I look forward to reading more from her! How To Be Okay When Nothing Is Okay will be published by Penguin Life and out on March 31st! 

Memoir Monday... with a Kate Bowler kind of Twist

 

Have a Beautiful, Terrible Day by Kate Bowler...

Witty, honest, and wise spiritual reflections that invite readers to embrace the bad, not just the good— from the three-time New York Times bestselling author of Everything Happens for a Reason (And Other Lies I’ve Loved)

Kate Bowler believes that the cultural pressure to be cheerful and optimistic at all times has taken a toll on our faith. But what if we could find better language than forced positivity to express our hopes and our anxieties? 

Have a Beautiful, Terrible Day! is packed with bite-size reflections and action-oriented steps to help you get through the day, be it good, bad, or totally mediocre. This is a devotional for the rest of us—which is to say, the people who don’t have magical lives that always work out for the best. As she composed these meditations during a season of chronic pain, Bowler understands how every day can be an obstacle course. She encourages us to develop our capacity to feel the breadth of our experiences. The better we are at identifying our highs and lows, the more resilient we become.

Like modern-day psalms, Bowler’s spiritual reflections look for the ways we can expand our capacity for courage, love, and honesty—while discovering divine moments with God. With bonus sections to use during the seasons of Advent and Lent, this is an easy book to read along with other people too. 

If you want to build your daily habit of spiritual attentiveness, this book is here to say: May all your days be lovely. But for those that aren’t, have a beautiful, terrible day!

I first heard about Kate Bowler when someone I knew reviewed her book Everything Happens for a Reason and Other Lies I've Loved. At the time of writing that book, Kate was diagnosed with stage IV colon cancer and wasn't expected to live. It was a book "tells her story, offering up her irreverent, hard-won observations on dying and the ways it has taught her to live". Kate went on to survive and is now cancer free. This book, Have a Beautiful, Terrible Day!, is a book of daily meditations, "small reflections and blessings" that Kate hopes will help in our daily struggles. The table of contents is broken down with descriptive labels so we can flip to a specific reflection that hopefully targets what the day is bringing to us. She meant this book to be flipped through as needed. I look forward to flipping through and starting my day or ending my day or just living the day with words that can put what may be going on in perspective. 

Have a Beautiful, Terrible Day! by Kate Bowler will be published January 23, 2024 by Convergent Books, an imprint of Random House. And I was lucky to be sent a eBook for review by the publishers! Look for my review coming soon...

Memoir Monday... or rather Ironing out the Truths of History

The Wager, A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder by David Grann... On January 28, 1742, a ramshackle vessel of patched-together wood and cloth washed up on the coast of Brazil. Inside were thirty emaciated men, barely alive, and they had an extraordinary tale to tell. They were survivors of His Majesty’s Ship the Wager, a British vessel that had left England in 1740 on a secret mission during an imperial war with Spain. While the Wager had been chasing a Spanish treasure-filled galleon known as “the prize of all the oceans,” it had wrecked on a desolate island off the coast of Patagonia. The men, after being marooned for months and facing starvation, built the flimsy craft and sailed for more than a hundred days, traversing nearly 3,000 miles of storm-wracked seas. They were greeted as heroes.

But then ... six months later, another, even more decrepit craft landed on the coast of Chile. This boat contained just three castaways, and they told a very different story. The thirty sailors who landed in Brazil were not heroes – they were mutineers. The first group responded with countercharges of their own, of a tyrannical and murderous senior officer and his henchmen. It became clear that while stranded on the island the crew had fallen into anarchy, with warring factions fighting for dominion over the barren wilderness. As accusations of treachery and murder flew, the Admiralty convened a court martial to determine who was telling the truth. The stakes were life-and-death—for whomever the court found guilty could hang.

The Wager is on all the Buzz lists. Descriptions like Masterful, a Tour de Force, Incredible have all been used to describe it. Although not a Memoir, the base of its' essence is memoirs. The diaries and journals David Grann could find to lay out all the players and their accounts of the HMS Wager and what happened to the ship and its' crew. Years of research. It sounds so interesting to me. And I am also curious as to the different accounts of what happened. Published by Doubleday ( and found on the Penguin Randomhouse website), The Wager is available at your favorite bookstore! 

Memoir Monday...

One Hundred Saturdays by Michael Frank... With nearly a century of life behind her, Stella Levi had never before spoken in detail about her past. Then she met Michael Frank. He came to her Greenwich Village apartment one Saturday afternoon to ask her a question about the Juderia, the neighborhood in Rhodes where she’d grown up in a Sephardic Jewish community that had thrived there for half a millennium. Neither of them could know this was the first of one hundred Saturdays that they would spend in each other’s company as Stella traveled back in time to conjure what it felt like to come of age on this luminous, legendary island in the eastern Aegean, which the Italians won in 1912 as the Ottoman empire was disintegrating, began officially governing as a colonial possession in 1923, and transformed over the next two decades until the Germans seized control and deported the entire Juderia to Auschwitz in July of 1944.

Probing and courageous, candid and sly, Stella is a magical modern-day Scheherazade whose stories reveal what it was like to grow up in an extraordinary place in an extraordinary time—and to construct a life after that place vanished. One Hundred Saturdays is a portrait of one of the last survivors, drawn at nearly the last possible moment; it is also an account of a tender and transformative friendship that develops between storyteller and listener as they explore the fundamental mystery of what it means to collect, share, and interpret the deepest truths of a life deeply lived.

In the vein of Tuesday with Morrie, Michael Frank spends 100 Saturdays, nearly 6 years, talking with Stella Levi in her Greenwich Village apartment. A chance meeting at a lecture turns into a wonderful friendship and of Stella sharing her story, her life.

One Hundred Saturdays was listed under the Indies Next selections as one the 6 Now in Paperback selections for September 2023. Originally this book was in the running for the Indie Next pick in September of 2022, but didn't win the #1 spot. But that's how I found this book... reading about Septembers' picks. And it intrigued me. I generally shy away from books about the Holocaust. They just depress me. But this book takes place in an area I'm unfamiliar with: Rhodes, Greece. But not only is this a story of survival, but it also is a coming of age story. I like how the author and Stella Levi meet and how the author takes the next 100 saturdays to listen to Stella recount her life to him. 

On my nightstand, published by Avid Reader Press, a division of Simon & Schuster last September, it is now available in paperback.

Memoir Monday... and a Great Father's Day Gift!

The Baseball 100 by Joe Posnanski... A magnum opus from acclaimed baseball writer Joe Posnanski, The Baseball 100 is an audacious, singular, and masterly book that took a lifetime to write. The entire story of baseball rings through a countdown of the 100 greatest players in history, with a foreword by George Will.

Longer than Moby-Dick and nearly as ambitious,​The Baseball 100 is a one-of-a-kind work by award-winning sportswriter and lifelong student of the game Joe Posnanski that tells the story of the sport through the remarkable lives of its 100 greatest players. In the book’s introduction, Pulitzer Prize–winning commentator George F. Will marvels, “Posnanski must already have lived more than 200 years. How else could he have acquired such a stock of illuminating facts and entertaining stories about the rich history of this endlessly fascinating sport?”

Baseball’s legends come alive in these pages, which are not merely rankings but vibrant profiles of the game’s all-time greats. Posnanski dives into the biographies of iconic Hall of Famers, unfairly forgotten All-Stars, talents of today, and more. He doesn’t rely just on records and statistics—he lovingly retraces players’ origins, illuminates their characters, and places their accomplishments in the context of baseball’s past and present. Just how good a pitcher is Clayton Kershaw in the twenty-first- century game compared to Greg Maddux dueling with the juiced hitters of the nineties? How do the career and influence of Hank Aaron compare to Babe Ruth’s? Which player in the top ten most deserves to be resurrected from history?

No compendium of baseball’s legendary geniuses could be complete without the players of the segregated Negro Leagues, men whose extraordinary careers were largely overlooked by sportswriters at the time and unjustly lost to history. Posnanski writes about the efforts of former Negro Leaguers to restore sidelined Black athletes to their due honor, and draws upon the deep troves of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum and extensive interviews with the likes of Buck O’Neil to illuminate the accomplishments of players such as pitchers Satchel Paige and Smokey Joe Williams; outfielders Oscar Charleston, Monte Irvin, and Cool Papa Bell; first baseman Buck Leonard; shortstop Pop Lloyd; catcher Josh Gibson; and many, many more.

The Baseball 100 treats readers to the whole rich pageant of baseball history in a single volume. Chapter by chapter, Posnanski invites readers to examine common lore with brand-new eyes and learn stories that have long gone unheard. The epic and often emotional reading experience mirrors Posnanski’s personal odyssey to capture the history and glory of baseball like no one else, fueled by his boundless love for the sport.

When I read about this book, I immediately thought of my husband. He's such an avid baseball fan. But fan doesn't even come close to his knowledge of baseball and it's subtle intricacies. I can see him debating the choices and the players that Joe Posnanski ranks in his 100 of the greatest players of baseball and I think that any fan of the game would have fun doing it as well. Published by Avid Reader Press (a division of Simon Schuster) in 2021, I think this would make a great Father's Day gift for the guy who loves baseball... 

Memoir Monday...

Children of the Land by Marcelo Hernandez Castillo... When Marcelo Hernandez Castillo was five years old and his family was preparing to cross the border between Mexico and the United States, he suffered temporary, stress-induced blindness. Castillo regained his vision, but quickly understood that he had to move into a threshold of invisibility before settling in California with his parents and siblings. Thus began a new life of hiding in plain sight and of paying extraordinarily careful attention at all times for fear of being truly seen. Before Castillo was one of the most celebrated poets of a generation, he was a boy who perfected his English in the hopes that he might never seem extraordinary.

With beauty, grace, and honesty, Castillo recounts his and his family’s encounters with a system that treats them as criminals for seeking safe, ordinary lives. He writes of the Sunday afternoon when he opened the door to an ICE officer who had one hand on his holster, of the hours he spent making a fake social security card so that he could work to support his family, of his father’s deportation and the decade that he spent waiting to return to his wife and children only to be denied reentry, and of his mother’s heartbreaking decision to leave her children and grandchildren so that she could be reunited with her estranged husband and retire from a life of hard labor.

Children of the Land distills the trauma of displacement, illuminates the human lives behind the headlines and serves as a stunning meditation on what it means to be a man and a citizen.

When I started to read all the controversy surrounding American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins, I found "alternative" books that were recommended to read instead of that book in order to understand the real experiences of undocumented people entering the US. Children of the Land by Marcelo Hernandez Castillo is one of those books. Unlike American Dirt, which is a book of fiction, Children of the Land is a memoir.

Marcelo Hernandez is an awarding winning poet, writer and teacher. He received a B.A. from Sacramento State University and was the first undocumented student to earn an MFA from the University of Michigan. His book Children of the Land, published by Harper, will be available tomorrow at your local bookstore. On my Wishlist.

Memoir Monday and... The Shift: One Nurse, Twelve Hours, Four Patients' Lives by Theresa Brown, RN

In a book as eye-opening as it is riveting, practicing nurse and New York Times columnist Theresa Brown invites us to experience not just a day in the life of a nurse but all the life that happens in just one day on a hospital’s cancer ward. In the span of twelve hours, lives can be lost, life-altering medical treatment decisions made, and dreams fulfilled or irrevocably stolen. In Brown’s skilled hands--as both a dedicated nurse and an insightful chronicler of events--we are given an unprecedented view into the individual struggles as well as the larger truths about medicine in this country, and by shift’s end, we have witnessed something profound about hope and healing and humanity.

Every day, Theresa Brown holds patients' lives in her hands. On this day there are four. There is Mr. Hampton, a patient with lymphoma to whom Brown is charged with administering a powerful drug that could cure him--or kill him; Sheila, who may have been dangerously misdiagnosed; Candace, a returning patient who arrives (perhaps advisedly) with her own disinfectant wipes, cleansing rituals, and demands; and Dorothy, who after six weeks in the hospital may finally go home. Prioritizing and ministering to their needs takes the kind of skill, sensitivity, and, yes, humor that enable a nurse to be a patient’s most ardent advocate in a medical system marked by heartbreaking dysfunction as well as miraculous success.

I saw on fellow book blogger Deb Nance's blog, Readerbuzz, that she received a copy of The Shift by Theresa Brown, RN to review. I don't know why, but these kinds of "behind the scenes" books just fascinate me. Lately there have been quite a few books published looking deeper into the medical profession. When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi comes to mind, along with Being Mortal, by Atul Gawande, both books giving us a sense of how someone with a medical background views the meaning of life and dealing with the end of life. I remember also enjoying reading Another Day in the Frontal Lobe: A Brain Surgeon Exposes Life on the Inside
by Katrina Firlik, which for me was probably the first look at a Doctor as a person, and looking through her eyes at what she considers her just her "job".

Is it because I'm getting older that these books fascinate me?! At age twenty we really don't think of our own mortality yet, do we? For whatever reason these pique my interest, The Shift looks to be a worthwhile read... at least for us getting nearer to "over the hill".

Memoir Monday and... Evicted by Matthew Desmond

Evicted: Poverty and Profit in The American City by Matthew Desmond... From Harvard sociologist and MacArthur "Genius" Matthew Desmond, a landmark work of scholarship and reportage that will forever change the way we look at poverty in America

In this brilliant, heartbreaking book, Matthew Desmond takes us into the poorest neighborhoods of Milwaukee to tell the story of eight families on the edge. Arleen is a single mother trying to raise her two sons on the $20 a month she has left after paying for their rundown apartment. Scott is a gentle nurse consumed by a heroin addiction. Lamar, a man with no legs and a neighborhood full of boys to look after, tries to work his way out of debt. Vanetta participates in a botched stickup after her hours are cut. All are spending almost everything they have on rent, and all have fallen behind.

The fates of these families are in the hands of two landlords: Sherrena Tarver, a former schoolteacher turned inner-city entrepreneur, and Tobin Charney, who runs one of the worst trailer parks in Milwaukee. They loathe some of their tenants and are fond of others, but as Sherrena puts it, “Love don’t pay the bills.” She moves to evict Arleen and her boys a few days before Christmas.

Even in the most desolate areas of American cities, evictions used to be rare. But today, most poor renting families are spending more than half of their income on housing, and eviction has become ordinary, especially for single mothers. In vivid, intimate prose, Desmond provides a ground-level view of one of the most urgent issues facing America today. As we see families forced  into shelters, squalid apartments, or more dangerous neighborhoods, we bear witness to the human cost of America’s vast inequality—and to people’s determination and intelligence in the face of hardship.

Based on years of embedded fieldwork and painstakingly gathered data, this masterful book transforms our understanding of extreme poverty and economic exploitation while providing fresh ideas for solving a devastating, uniquely American problem. Its unforgettable scenes of hope and loss remind us of the centrality of home, without which nothing else is possible.

This is book is predicted to be the "It" book of nonfiction this year. It has started to garner a lot of press and reviews. The subject matter is an important one, and is an emotionally charged one. Everyone needs to have a home. It doesn't need to be posh, but it needs to be a place we can lay our head down at night and feel comforted and safe. Matthew Desmond writes this book to shed light on the realities that exist. Though this may be a hard read, it is on my TBR list.

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*FYI, Here's an interesting paper, a policy research brief, written by Matthew Desmond on How Housing Matters.

Memoir Monday... When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi

When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi...  "At the age of 36, on the verge of completing a decade's worth of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, and the next he was a patient struggling to live. And just like that, the future he and his wife had imagined evaporated. When Breath Becomes Air chronicles Kalanithi's transformation from a naïve medical student "possessed," as he wrote, "by the question of what, given that all organisms die, makes a virtuous and meaningful life" into a neurosurgeon at Stanford working in the brain, the most critical place for human identity, and finally into a patient and new father confronting his own mortality."


How does a doctor become a patient gracefully? This is the story of how Dr. Paul Kalanithi dealt with changing roles from doctor to patient, and confronting what would turn out to be the end of his life. I watched a YouTube video he had done for the book, and was so effected by it. By his calmness, by his tenderness as he held his infant daughter, by his thoughts that he use to have as the doctor seeing the patient, and how he imagines his own physicians thoughts. This is on my TBR list now. And here is the video I watched...

Memoir Monday... Furiously Happy by Jenny Lawson

In FURIOUSLY HAPPY by Jenny Lawson... Jenny explores her lifelong battle with mental illness. A hysterical, ridiculous book about crippling depression and anxiety? That sounds like a terrible idea. And terrible ideas are what Jenny does best. According to Jenny: "Some people might think that being 'furiously happy' is just an excuse to be stupid and irresponsible and invite a herd of kangaroos over to your house without telling your husband first because you suspect he would say no since he's never particularly liked kangaroos. And that would be ridiculous because no one would invite a herd of kangaroos into their house. Two is the limit. I speak from personal experience. My husband says that none is the new limit. I say he should have been clearer about that before I rented all those kangaroos." FURIOUSLY HAPPY is a book about mental illness, but under the surface it's about embracing joy in fantastic and outrageous ways-and who doesn't need a bit more of that?

I tried to resist this book. The cover image just rubbed me the wrong way for some reason. And again, I thought, "Here's another celebrity tell all book", because she already published one book that was suppose to be a memoir, how much more can there be? But then I actually took a peek at it, and read some of it and now I HAVE to read it! The writing was so good! And she has this wry sense of humor that I like. And I guess it all comes back to "don't judge a book by its' cover". But now I can appreciate the cover. And Jenny Lawson is a celebrity because she has opened up about something very personal and how she deals with it, and in doing so she has helped so many people realize they are not alone... And that I can definitely appreciate. On my TBR list now!

The Soul of an Octopus by Sy Montgomery... A Review

I am fascinated! I also had no idea about how an Octopus could interact with a human. This is a wonderful book on Sy Montgomery's exploration (literally) of the deep blue sea, The New England Aquarium, and of course the Octopuses she meets along the way. (yes, it's Octopuses!)

Sy Montgomery has a wonderful writing style that immerses you into the story and allows you to get to know these amazing creatures without getting your arms wet. After the first few chapters I was totally absorbed, and learning so much. I wish I could adopt one of these beautiful creatures, but I could never have a large enough aquarium. I CAN visit them at the New England Aquarium in Boston! Or any aquarium that has a octopus or two and I can appreciate them so much more now.

The Soul of an Octopus by Sy Montgomery, (Do they have souls? I think they do after reading this book!) is a book that will bring you closer to the world we live in, and teach you a thing or two about Octopuses! It's very readable, and enjoyable. It's also an interesting look behind the scenes at a large Aquarium, and how these "animals" are handled and truly loved.

4 tentacles for this one!

Love & War by Mary Matalin & James Carville… An Audiobook Review

They seemed the most unlikeliest of couples. 

Two political powerhouses from opposite sites of the floor who simply fell in love…. 

Love & War: Twenty Years, Three Presidents, Two Daughters and One Louisiana Home by Mary Matalin and James Carville is not what you'd expect and then again everything you'd expect. I have always been fascinated by the romance of this couple. How can such political powerhouses and adversaries find love between campaigning? I never thought that their relationship was created for publicity, but it seems that enough people did think that and have asked that question point blank to them. And that's what makes this tale of love and politics so interesting, because even though the media made such a big deal out of their romance, it wasn't a big deal. It was just a working class girl from Chicago and a boy from Louisiana falling in love and raising a family in the craziness of Washington, DC and then taking a step back and making lives for themselves outside the fray and dealing with the fray. Both Mary Matalin and James Carville are smart, savvy political engineers, but that's just one of the wonderful things about their relationship- they knew how to run a campaign, love politics and they could relate to what the other was doing. Political opposites, but that's what makes life interesting. Their life together is as normal as any husband and wife raising a family, buying a house, going to work every day but also filled with some people and places that we as readers have become familiar with if we've payed attention to anything happening to our country in the past 15 years. BUT, this is NOT a book on politics!

I listened to this audio book of Love & War and loved it! Read by Mary Matalin and James Carville, it's almost as if they are speaking to us directly about what's going on in their lives and what had been going on in their lives. They individually answer those questions about getting along, raising children, dealing with being "well known" and trying to live a normal life at the same time, and basically giving us a peek into their lives. Yes, they do talk about their jobs, but it's really not about that. It's about marriage, children and dealing with everything that goes along: Falling in love, staying in love, giving birth, ADHD, buying that first house, going to school, having a job, friends, and keeping your sanity in a Washington DC existence. This book lets you see beyond what you may have thought about Mary and James (individually and as a couple), and find common ground in your own life. Listening to Mary read and then James read what seems to be his "view" of the topic was fun. They both have great voices in respect to audiobooks, and they read wonderfully.

The audiobook of Love & War is unabridged, 9 CD's and 10.5 hours. Thanks to Random House Audio I received a review copy of this! Thanks Random House!  I've always talked about Memoirs on Chick with Books and this one really captured my attention.

Memoir Monday... Lost in Shangri-La by Mitchell Zuckoff

I really had to look twice to make sure that this was indeed a true story even though its description reads like an fictional adventure. But that is what caught my attention with this one... Lost in Shangri-La by Mitchell Zuckoff is a story that sounds so amazing that it's hard to believe it's true... but it is...

In 1945, twenty-four American servicemen and women boarded a plane to see “Shangri-La,” a beautiful valley deep within Dutch New Guinea. But when the plane crashed, only three pulled through to battle for survival.

Emotionally devastated and badly injured, the trio faced certain death. Caught between spear-carrying tribesmen and enemy Japanese, they trekked down the jungle-covered mountainside and straight into superstitious natives rumored to be cannibals.

Drawn from interviews, Army documents, photos, diaries, and original film footage, Lost in Shangri-La recounts this true-life adventure for the first time. Mitchell Zuckoff reveals how the trio traversed the jungle; how brave Filipino-American paratroopers risked their lives to save the survivors; how a native leader protected the Americans; and how a cowboy colonel attempted an untried rescue mission to get them out.

From the excerpt of Lost in Shangri-La that I read, Mitchell Zuckoff does a great job holding your attention. His style of writing wasn't sensationalizing, but factual with the added creative style a good writer has. And what a story! Lost in a jungle with cannibals?! A rescue mission equally as dangerous?! This is definitely one on my TBR list! It has gotten quite a lot of praise since its release late in April and for people who think WW II stories are all dried up... think again!

Memoir Monday... The Reluctant Tuscan by Phil Doran

Memoir and part travelogue, The Reluctant Tuscan written by Phil Doran will have you laughing out loud. What happens when the wife of a Hollywood writer buys a house in Tuscany that needs a bit of repair? And what if that house is in a small village filled with eccentric characters such as the neighbor lady that puts "the evil eye" on Phil and his wife Nancy? You get a hilarious slice of life in an Italian village that if you didn't know it were a true story you'd think it was a piece of great fiction!

Nancy is a marble sculptor married to Phil, an aging Hollywood writer. To help her husband escape the rat race and fast paced life in L.A., Nancy buys a run down farmhouse that she thinks will be the answer to their need for a new life. Something that will save both Phil's life and their marriage. What Phil finds as he arrives in Italy, is a crumbling stone house unfit to live in and with no road to even get to it. As Phil and Nancy navigate the ancient & unspoken laws of small town life in Italy, turning neighbors into friends, you will meet some of the most interesting people, imagine the most beautiful landscapes and laugh at the things Phil & Nancy must do to "fit in", part of which will be discovering their "inner Italian". Phil Doran's writing is terrific and I'm glad he turned his pen towards his life in Italy. The book is entertaining, amusing and just plain fun.

If you ever wanted to visit Italy, if you ever thought about renovating a house, and if you ever wanted to know what "extra virgin" olive oil really was, pick up The Reluctant Tuscan. Food, family and a sense of belonging are what you'll walk away with!

Memoir Monday... Alone: Orphaned on the Ocean by Richard D. Logan and Tere Duperrault Fassbender

Alone: Orphaned on the Ocean

by Richard D. Logan PhD and Tere Duperrault Fassbender

I saw a brief interview with Tere Duperrault Fassbender on one of the major television networks last week and was fascinated by her story. When Tere Duperrault was 11 years old, Terry's family chartered a sailboat off the coast of Florida. It would be the last family vacation she ever had with her family- they were all murdered at sea. The captain had murdered his wife,Terry's parents and brother & sister. Terry had been asleep down inside the boat when she was awakened by the commotion. The captain shoved her back below, pulled the plugs on the ship and left on the dingy. He assumed Terry would drown as the ship took on water, but Terry found another little raft, jumped overboard with it and survived 4 days before being pulled to safety. The captain of the ship had survived and was telling everyone that the ship had caught on fire and everyone drowned... This is her story, a story of survival... It's been 50 years since that fateful day, and it's taken this long for Tere Duperrault Fassbender to come to terms with what happened. What happened that lead up to this tragedy? How did she survive 4 days alone in the vast waters that she was floating on? And what happened to the captain of the ship? I can't wait to read her story! Richard D. Logan is a nationally recognized expert in the psychology of solitary survival, he helps tell Tere's story...

From the Publisher... This is the first time Terry Jo, now known as Tere Duperrault Fassbender, has been able to fully tell her story. In September 1988 Oprah Winfrey reunited her with the freighter captain who saved her but, even then, she was not healed enough to reveal what it took to survive for four days adrift and alone at sea. Co-authored by psychologist and survival expert Richard Logan, readers delve into the details of how a little girl survived the murder of her family; the gradual collapse of the small cork float she used to keep afloat while guarded by a small pod of whales; and the aftermath and the reclamation of life. ALONE is the ultimate inspirational tale of good.