Collection of Reviews – Spring of 2018 – #1

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We are so proud to be posting our very first collection of reviews. We want to hear any and all of your thoughts, as always! Please comment or email us. Thank you!

 

White Houses – Amy Bloom

“If you’re a queer woman you cannot go another day without reading this book.

What Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe did for budding, unsure, closeted lesbians in the 90s, White Houses does for the bold, unapologetic, aging queer women those girls have grown to be: Bloom gives a voice. Bloom represents.

The story woven ripped my guts out one slow-burning shred at a time. Throughout the entire novel, I felt myself imagining that perhaps Eleanor Roosevelt lived her whole life mistaking a tickle in her throat—“Pollen, maybe…a need for a cup of tea?”—for what was in fact a desperate need to fall to her knees and scream. That’s what I wanted to do for both she and Hick: scream and pound the floor until all their barriers crumbled. But that’s a reader’s dramatic interference—the reality remembered, recorded and enhanced doesn’t need the fury of a modern eye. The reality of a long and winding thirty year relationship told in the resigned but love-strong, blunt and dry voice of a plain old regular women about her plain old regular true love—the 28th First Lady of the United States of America—is enough. So much more than enough.”

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Eat Dairy Free – Alisa Fleming

“If you’re climbing the mountain of sustainable, ethical, whole and simple eating, this is an excellent cookbook for you.

Elements that make Ms. Fleming’s dairy-free resource special include:

+ Full menus. It’s inspiring and fun to see full day’s worth of delicious food laid out in easy to follow groupings.

+ Idiot-proof explanations of substitutions and healthy cooking staples that are often overwhelming in the grocery store aisles. Sorghum flour? Nutritional yeast? Fear not: they are delicious and easy to incorporate.

+ Variation options included in recipes so you don’t have to experiment quite so much to customize to your tastes and needs. Gluten-free options, vegan options, high protein options etc.

+ many more unique and useful features!

Don’t miss the Carrot Cake Breakfast Shake, Cream of Portobello Soup, Mushroom Pesto Pizza, and Oatmeal Apple Pie Cookies”

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Come to the Rocks – Christin Haws

“Take a couple of hours and disappear into this sweet, cozy, queer-mermaid-vengeance-murder-true love tale.

The author’s vivid descriptions of the nature and power of the sea and shore are rivaled only by the deft exploration of the effect of psychological abuse on the mind of the victim—and the certain deterioration of the abuser’s boundaries into physical violence and worse.

If I were to offer one respectful suggestion: the book warns of sexually explicit content, but there is none (disappointing for we lovers of sexually explicit content.) Perhaps the disclaimer is unnecessary? Or could be replaced by a warning for the one burst of extreme swearing/profanity?”

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Fifteen Things They Forgot to Tell You About Autism – Debby Elley

“It shouldn’t be rare and/or profound that a book on building happy, healthy lives for the autistic children in your care be written by people ACTUALLY PARENTING autistic children, but here we are. May this shining, brilliant, hilarious book of raw hope mark the changing of the tide.

This book is hysterically funny but I also cried twice during the introduction. And several times after. And not at the poignant bits necessarily, but at the clarity of perspective, and the firm and simple definitions that would be so easily accessed and understood by even the most uninitiated (if you or your loved ones are on the spectrum you know how desperately important this is) and once even at a chapter heading: “Communication is What Happens While You’re Waiting for Speech.” Imagine a world where we all understood this, NNT or not.

I wrote several versions of “the author’s voice is both humble and bold” or “a mother’s ferocity and patience shines through” etc etc, but my honest impression is that Ms. Elley is the kind of hero-poet that would beat your ass if needed but also be moved to tender tears by a cheesy song at a karaoke bar. Anyone that reads this book and claims that don’t want to be her best friend is lying.

Not a memoir, except for the parts where it is. Not a point-by-point how-to manual, except for the parts where it is. There is not a single person on planet earth that could read this book and not come out smarter and better equipped to be kind, more compassionate, and inclusive of the autistic children and adults in the world around them. Read it, read it to or adapt it for your neurotypical or neurodivergent kids. Buy a copy for your willfully ignorant family members and any group you’re a part of that needs a foundation to understand the reality of life as or life with a person with autism.”