Book Review: Words Made Fresh

Author: Larry Woiwode

Title: Words Made Flesh: Essays on Literature & Culture

Description: Larry Woiwode, the poet laureate of North Dakota, presents ten republished essays on Christianity, literature, and culture featuring John Updike, William Shakespeare, Bob Dylan, and John Gardner.

ARC source: Library Thing Early Reviewers

Writing style: I enjoyed Woiwode’s conversational style and his unabashed defense of Christian belief as his standard. The conversation often strayed, however, and the essay ended up discussing something very different than the title subject. For example, an essay entitled “Views of Wendell Berry” ends by discussing Berry’s various publishers.  

Audience: People concerned with literature, culture, and faith. Many of the essays were earlier published in Books & Culture.

Major ideas: Unlike most writers on this topic, Woiwode is quite conservative, which comes out in his essays on guns and his views on CNN (curiously, Fox News is not mentioned). His writing centers around the Christian faith, its treatment by various writers and its preservation in contemporary culture.

Wrap-up: I wasn’t familiar with some of the writers featured in the essays (i.e. Reynolds Price), so those essays were less helpful. The best essays were those that featured Woiwode himself (on guns, home, and Bob Dylan). His essays on other writers were not as good, although this may be partially because I am used to reading academics, not writers, writing about literature. (A sad and somewhat ironic comment). The essays varied in terms of level of interest and level of writing. 3.5/5*

Book Review: Always the Baker, Never the Bride

Author: Sandra D. Bricker

Title: Always the Baker, Never the Bride

Description (source): Thirty-six-year-old Emma Rae Travis has been baking specialty cakes and melt-in-your-mouth pastries at The Backstreet Bakery in historic Roswell, just outside of Atlanta, for the last six years. But here s the rub about her job as a baker ... Emma is diabetic. When she tastes her creations, it can only be in the most minute portions. Emma is considered an artisan for the stunning creme brulee wedding cake that won her the Passionate Palette Award last year, but she s never even had one full slice of it. 

When Jackson Drake hears about this local baker who has won a prestigious award for her wedding cake artistry, he tells his assistant to be sure and include her in the pastry tastings scheduled at his new wedding destination hotel the following week. And for Jackson, that particular day has started out badly with two workmen trapped in a broken elevator and a delivery of several dozen 300-thread-count bed linens in the wrong size abandoned in the lobby. But when the arrogant baker he met a week prior in Roswell stumbles into the dining room with a platter of pastries and a bucketful of orders, he knows for certain: It s going to be a really rotten day. 

Can these two ill-suited players master the high-wire act and make a go of their new business venture? Or will they take each other crashing downward, without a net? And will the surprise wedding at The Tanglewood be theirs? (product description)

Review source: Free kindle book.

Plot: A mixed bag here. There were a lot of subplots, some more successful than others. The one about Emma’s aunt gets way too much play time (it’s like the author would pull her out whenever she couldn’t think of anything else to advance the action). Also, read the description… does it sound like a Christian romance? Nor does it begin like one. About halfway through the book, though, all of a sudden, everyone starts praying, worrying about their relationship with God—I don’t mind Christian romance, but it just hit me weird in this book because it was so abrupt.

Characters: The main characters suffer from the “I’m boring because I have to be normal because everyone I know is so eccentric” syndrome. This syndrome seems to only occur in books.

Writing style: I think the novel was at least one-third too long. So some of the things that bugged me would have been taken care of if it had been shorter. There were details that seemed thrown in that never advanced the story. Who cares if she’s diabetic? It didn’t make much difference (except we got to hear how much she wanted sugar all the time). At one point, she was a mechanical whiz, but that was just dropped…

Audience: Christian romance readers. Not me so much.

Wrap-up: The book was readable, but I started to get pretty tired of it. I wouldn’t seek out more books by Ms. Bricker. 2.5/5*

Book Review: The 5 Languages of Appreciation in the Workplace

Author: Gary Chapman and Paul White  

Title: The 5 Languages of Appreciation in the Workplace

Description (source): The 5 Languages of Appreciation in the Workplace applies the love language concept to the workplace. This book helps supervisors and managers effectively communicate appreciation and encouragement to their employees, resulting in higher levels of job satisfaction, healthier relationships between managers and employees, and decreased cases of burnout. Ideal for both the profit and non-profit sectors, the principles presented in this book have a proven history of success in businesses, schools, medical offices, churches, and industry. Each book contains an access code for the reader to take a comprehensive online MBA Inventory (Motivating By Appreciation).


The inventory is designed to provide a clearer picture of an individual's primary language of appreciation and motivation as experienced in a work-related setting. It identifies individuals' preference in the languages of appreciation. Understanding an individual's primary and secondary languages of appreciation can assist managers and supervisors in communicating effectively to their team members.

ARC source: netgalley

Writing style: The authors are annoyingly redundant. If a concept is clearly explained for one “language,” it doesn’t need to be explained in similar detail for the other four. Likewise, the reader tends not to forget from chapter to chapter, so we don’t need an entire recap. I think this book was at least three times longer than it needed to be.

Audience: Business people who like this kind of flavor-of-the-month management self-help. Love languages fans. Neither one is me.

Major ideas: The “love languages” idea has made Chapman a household name (and rich) over the last few years, and most denizens of evangelical bookstores are at least familiar with the concept. Signals can get crossed when we don’t communicate our regard to people in the way that they most want to hear it. This book adapts that concept for the workplace, with mixed results. The languages are words of appreciation, acts of service, tangible gifts, and quality time. Physical touch is listed as a parenthetical addition; for obvious reasons, many people are uncomfortable with physical touch in the workplace.

Wrap-up: In addition to the problems I had with this book that I’ve mentioned above, there were some other 

problems with the kindle ARC from netgalley. There was no code to take the assessment, so no way to judge this tool that’s referred to on at least every other page. Then the text was so badly arranged that the book was just a headache to read. Here’s a typical bit:

Staff doesn’t feel appreciated bysu

“They couldn’t pay me enough to stay here. The lack of support is deafening.”

                Pervisors and coworkers. Most supervisors are not aware of this factand thus,

Theyfocusmoreonthepowerof financial benefits

Etc. etc. Yuck! An ARC with a few typos is one thing, but this thing literally had lines with no spaces, dozens of times. I’d recommend this book if you really need to affirm your co-workers and you’re sort of slow to get the idea. Otherwise, read the synopsis and go find something more worth your time. 1/5

Book Review: Naomi and her Daughters

Author: Walter Wangerin

Title: Naomi and Her Daughters

Description (source): From master storyteller Walter Wangerin, Jr. comes this familiar biblical saga told in a fresh, transfixing way. You'll feel you've never heard it before! Melding historical accuracy with imaginative detail, Wangerin uses the biblical books of Judges and Ruth to explore themes of love, faith, grief and community set against a backdrop of war and political instability. The widow Naomi grieves the deaths of her two adult sons after the shocking murder of a beloved adopted daughter, while pondering her responsibilities toward her Moabite daughters-in-law. Ancient Israel is in chaos. When her daughter-in-law, Ruth, begs to return to Israel with Naomi, events are set in motion that will change the course of history. But wait...this isn't the tame, flannel graph story you heard in Sunday School. In the tradition of Anita Diamant's The Red Tent and Elissa Elliott's Eve: A Novel of the First Woman, Wangerin imbues his tale with strong female characters and an earthy realism that gives the timeless Old Testament narrative so much power. You'll find echoes of contemporary issues throughout: deceit, heartbreak, loss, war, and, of course, the power of love. Naomi's combined strength and tenderness becomes the pivot upon which a nation turns; her decisions ultimately lead to the founding of the family lineage of Jesus Christ. Breathtaking descriptions, shocking violence, and inspirational courage make this spellbinding novel by a beloved award-winning author a story you won't soon forget. It's the perfect novel for your book group, and a satisfying read for those who love thoughtful biblical fiction. (Amazon)

Review source: I downloaded on kindle for free.

Plot: Wangerin imagines that the horrific story from Judges of the Levite’s concubine is also a part of Naomi’s story; in fact this woman is Naomi’s first “daughter.” This story makes up the first part of the book; subsequent parts deal with Boaz, and Naomi’s sojourn in Moab, with only the last section dealing with the familiar story of Ruth.

Characters: Naomi and Boaz are the two characters who appear throughout the book; Ruth appears only toward the end. I never felt like I really understood these characters, especially Boaz, who is borderline crazy and pretty scary in the first part of the book. Naomi is the best-realized character, but even with her, there is a remove. Perhaps it is a result of Wangerin reporting actions, but not entering the thoughts of the characters?

Writing style: Wangerin is one of those people who writes “literary” Christian fiction, and as such, I should like him, but I’ve never really warmed up to him. I really tried to read his best-known book, The Book of the Dun Cow, but just couldn’t get interested. I did read a non-fiction book of his on marriage, but that one and this one are the only two books of his that I’ve read. His style is spare and feels to me like it’s at an emotional remove (for the horrible events in this book, that may be a good thing). He intersperses Scripture regularly, so the style has to work with the biblical poetry, which it mostly does, though Wangerin does adapt some modern-sounding slang.

Audience: The description pretty much nails it: women who read novels based on biblical stories. Christian men would probably also enjoy the book, if they ever picked it up, since it’s anything but “mushy.” The problem with getting an audience for this kind of book is getting people to read it in the first place, since it’s based on the Bible. This isn’t the kind of book I typically read, so any rating I give is probably lower than someone who is in the target audience would give it.

Wrap-up: This isn’t the kind of book that one “enjoys.” Nonetheless, I did stay interested in it and want to finish it. I’m still not a huge Wangerin fan, but I know that there are plenty of them without me. 3.5/5*

Book Review: Shadow Castle (Expanded ed.)

Author: Marian Cockrell

Title: Shadow Castle expanded ed.

Description (source): In the middle of a deep forest is an enchanted valley and a castle where only shadows live, shadows of kings and queens who have waited for hundreds of years for the spell cast upon them to be broken. One day, a girl named Lucy follows a little dog through a tunnel into the valley and meets the mysterious red-haired Michael, who takes her into the shadow world to meet Prince Mika and his mortal wife Gloria, their children and their children's children, and learn the magic that will lift the spell. This new expanded Author's Edition contains additional chapters never published before! (Amazon)

Review source: purchased

Plot: Some basic information: this was my favorite, favorite book when I was a child. I would read it at least once a year, sometimes more. I never knew anyone else who had even heard of the book or the author. As an adult, I’ve found that there’s a small group of us who love this book—apparently enough to produce a reissue, with two additional stories. So, the review is mostly about the two new stories, since it’s a given that the rest of the book is 5*.

Characters: One of the new stories is about Robin and Mika when Robin was a toddler. It gives a little more backstory to Robin’s interest in goblins, as he is abducted by them, and Mika has to go to the rescue.  The second new story is about a descendant of Meira and Julian, Princess Flame, and her recalcitrant genie, and a fire fairy we meet in the Robin/Mika story.  The first story is mostly action; the second is mostly romance, although the second story does introduce witches and genies, who have been absent from the book until now.

Writing style: There are some phrases in this book that are so familiar to me that when I read them, they just echo, because I’m repeating them as I read them. The new writing is similar, but of course, it’s new and not so well-known, so doesn’t have that same reverberation. Nonetheless, the new segments aren’t a let-down.

Audience: Me. Other than me, girls from the age of five on up (though the younger ones might have to have some help with the reading. If they can sound out Flumpdoria, they’re good). My son liked the book as well when he was a preteen, though he would never admit it.

Wrap-up: I think one reason I loved the book as a youngster was the beautiful illustrations. They are still there in this edition, for which I’m grateful. The pictures of Mika and Gloria at their wedding and Robin and Bluebell alone are worth the price of the book. I still have my old copy; now the new one sits next to it. 5/5*

Book Review: The Pawn

Author: Steven James

Title: The Pawn (Book 1 of the Patrick Bowers files)

Description (source): As an environmental criminologist, Patrick Bowers uses 21st-century geospatial technology to analyze the time and space in which a crime takes place. Using an array of factors, Bowers can pinpoint clues to solve the toughest of cases. Bowers's skills have made him one of the FBI's top agents-until now. 

Called to the mountains of North Carolina to consult on a gruesome murder, Bowers finds himself in a deadly duel with a serial killer who seems to transcend Patrick's analytical powers. Forced to track the killer's horrific murders one by one, Bowers finds his techniques and instincts are put to the ultimate test... (Amazon)

Review source: not a review copy; free on kindle

Plot: The book definitely held my interest and there were several plot twists that caught me by surprise (which is hard to do). The aspect that sets this book apart from other mysteries would be the detective's specialty as an environmental detective; the book introduces the specialty and its methods over the course of solving the case.

Characters: A book like this has two main characters that matter: the detective and the villain. Both are well-done in this novel. The detective (Bowers) is really smart, but not infallible, and his personal issues affect, but don’t overwhelm, the thriller plot. The (suspected) villains are well-written (i.e. chilling!) as well. There are several good supporting characters: Bowers’ stepdaughter is especially affecting, and the team of investigators has several individuals with distinct personalities.

Writing style: Bowers has a quick-paced writing style that alternates points of view. Lots of short chapters—typical of the thriller genre. This book had way more character development than the thrillers I usually read, and that’s a good thing.

Audience: People who like thrillers, serial killer mysteries, detective stories.

Wrap-up: This isn’t the type of book I usually read, but it was free on kindle, so I picked it up. It surprised me with its depth, and I raced to get it finished. I would read the next in the series. 4/5*

Book Review: A Small Hotel

Author: Robert Olen Butler  

Title: A Small Hotel

Description (source): Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Olen Butler has written fiction about far-ranging topics including hell, extraterrestrials, and the Vietnam War. With A Small Hotel, his twelfth novel, he has turned his attention to a new topic—the complexities of a male-female relationship—and delivers a beautifully told story of love, loss, and redemption.

Set in contemporary New Orleans but working its way back in time, A Small Hotel chronicles the relationship between Michael and Kelly Hayes, who have decided to separate after twenty years of marriage. The book begins on the day that the Hays are to finalize their divorce. Kelly is due to be in court, but instead she drives from her home in Pensacola, Florida, across the panhandle to New Orleans and checks into Room 303 at the Olivier House in the city’s French Quarter—the hotel where she and Michael fell in love some twenty years earlier and where she now finds herself about to make a decision that will forever affect her, Michael, and their nineteen-year-old daughter, Samantha.

Butler masterfully weaves scenes of the present with memories from both the viewpoint of Michael and Kelly—scenes that span twenty years, taking the reader back to critical moments in the couple’s relationship and showing two people deeply in love but also struggling with their own insecurities and inabilities to express this love.

An intelligent, deeply moving, and remarkably written portrait of a relationship that reads as a cross between a romance novel and a literary page turner, A Small Hotel is a masterful story that will remind readers once again why Robert Olen Butler has been called the “best living American writer” (Jeff Guinn, Fort Worth Star-Telegram). (Marketing copy)

Review source: netgalley

Plot: There’s nothing extraneous in the plot of this book, which I read in an evening. The novel centers tightly around the two protagonists; even their daughter only appears in a couple of scenes. Nonetheless, once I realized what Kelly was up to, I couldn’t put the book down.

Characters: Michael and Kelly are the married/divorcing couple. The only other characters are their daughter and their extramarital love interests—Michael’s new girlfriend is a fairly prominent character. Both Michael and Kelly are sympathetic and I was rooting for both of them. Nonetheless, I found it difficult to believe that any man could really be as clueless/messed up as Michael.

Writing style: This is my first novel by Butler. He tells the story from both Kelly’s and Michael’s points of view, and there are lots of flashbacks (note: in my galley copy on kindle, flashbacks sometimes occurred without even a paragraph break, making it a little hard to follow sometimes. I hope that will be fixed in the final copy!)

Audience: I would call this literary fiction, though I would think it would be less likely that a man would pick it up (or enjoy it).

Wrap-up: Much of the book is set in the French Quarter and around New Orleans; since I was just there a week ago, I really enjoyed the setting; Butler captured the French Quarter very well. I had to read this book in one sitting, which is unusual for me, so that gives it extra points. 4/5*