Sheila's Guests and Reviews

Sometimes it feels like we're living in a scifi world. A friend showed me how an author had "predicted" the corona virus, but the mathematician in me looked at the number of books the author had written that have not come true and concluded prediction might be more like good imagination. I guess the same thing happened after 9/11, where those with good imaginations were often credited with predictive skills. But science fiction authors don't predict. They use the present to imagine the future, and sometimes maybe even hope their readers might prevent that future from arising. I wish the corona virus wasn't here (after all, I'm still planning to fly to visit family!). But I'll keep reading scifi (and social-fi, and historical-fi and more). And here are some book reviews to help you choose your next "fi." (And your next cup of coffee!) Walkaway by Cory Doctorow is a futuristic epic that imagines a near-future of ecological and social disaster. H...

So much has distracted me this last few months that my pile of books-read is actually larger than the pile of books labelled must-read. I guess I'll start posting a few of those books-read reviews, so I can file the pile back onto shelves. We need to be tidy for Christmas! One of those "distractions" (the best and most rewarding of them) has been the fact that I've been writing a book about the Bible--Questioning Faith. I'm still hunting for a subtitle, so please leave one in the comments if you can think of something. It's a book designed to help teens, their parents and grandparents, and the teens-at-heart see that the Bible is big enough for all their questions, and God is big enough to encompass all their doubts. I started thinking about it back in England when my son's elementary school friend explained that he didn't believe Bible stories because he'd grown out of fairytales long ago... and I realized the Bible stories were told in elementa...

Visiting places remembered from childhood is a great way to see how quickly the world changes. Our recent trip to England brought back lots of memories, but nothing is ever quite the same. Weren't beaches wider back then? And sidewalks? And buildings... weren't they taller? Didn't people smile more, and possibly argue less? Watching old videos makes the differences even clearer - the toys the kids played with, the way they played and dressed and spoke... And then there are books. I've recently enjoyed reading several books set in the past (or even set in England in the past!) so here are some reviews. Find some coffee and see what you'd choose to read too. Dreams that never were by Greg Messel is set in the US in the sixties, telling a first-person story set around the assassination of Robert Kennedy. I remember rushing to a TV set in dismay when I heard the news - and I was a kid in England - and I remember the quotes from the late senator that preface the c...

I've loved historical fiction set in Scotland, ever since I was a child (when I was hooked on Nigel Trantner), so I could hardly resist when I was offered the chance to interview Laura Vosike, author of the Water is Wide. Join me as I learn more about Scotland, the book and the author. Laura, I'll just go pour some coffee while readers find out about you and your book. Laura Vosika is a writer, poet, and musician. Her time travel series, The Blue Bells Chronicles, set in modern and medieval Scotland, has garnered praise and comparisons to writers as diverse as Diana Gabaldon and Dostoevsky. Her poetry has been published in The Moccasin and The Martin Lake Journal 2017. She has been featured in newspapers, on radio, and TV, has spoken for regional book events, and hosted the radio program Books and Brews. She currently teaches writing at Minneapolis Community and Technical College. As a musician, Laura has performed as on trombone, flute, and harp, in orchestras,...

In the 60s I was a kid in school. In the 70s I went to college. In the 80s I started a family. In the 90s I changed countries. In the 00s I gained a new citizenship. In the 10s I tried to be an author. And I sometimes feel old. But it's fun to read novels set in my younger days, to remember how things were, and to learn how different they might have been somewhere else. It's fun to read of earlier times too, my parents' days, my parents' world. And it's intriguing to read my way into different versions of my own present world--the lives of strangers who just might one day be my neighbors perhaps. I guess I'd classify the books I've been reading recently as "drama," though I'm not sure that's a shelf in the library. Some of them are historical, others contemporary; but all them take to me to almost-places where I've almost been, and they're all highly recommended. The Alice Network by Kate Quinn is set in the years of my grandpa...