1 comments about Sharon Osbourne Survivor: My Story: The Next Chapter.

1. Sharon has a fascinating life and puts it all out in the open for everyone. While some people might not be as open about their misfortunes, Sharon doesn't sugar coat anything; she tells it all. This book was well written and very personal. Her life is very interesting and how she has put up with Ozzy, I will never know. That must be what true love really is. She is such a hard worker and a great inspiration for women everywhere.
   
   I also highly recommend Sharon's first autobiography "Sharon Osbourne Extreme: My Autobiography" and the book "Understanding: Train of Thought".

5 comments about When She Was White: The True Story of a Family Divided by Race.

1. Firstly I have to admit that I haven't finished reading the book, I will edit my review when done. But I was curious about what other have said about it, so I paged to this review page.
   
   I bought this book because I vaguely remember the story of Sandra Laing from newspapers etc. as a kid growing up in South Africa. She is quite a bit older than me, I was rather young when the incident happened, and I cannot remember much about all the controversy.
   
   I mainly bought this book because I am quite interested in the genealogy of Afrikaner families. I have spent several years now documenting my own heritage. Frankly, I am surprised that the case of Sandra Laing stands out so much, as we Afrikaners are a creole nation who speaks a pidgin language - and I say this with pride. After 356 years in Africa, I don't believe that any of us are "pure whites" whatever that means. I guess it is not a well known fact (even amongst Afrikaners) that Afrikaners have on the average 6 to 12% of non-European blood (depending on which researcher's works you read). However, the majority of that proportion is Asian blood (particularly East Indian). In my own case I have verified this through DNA testing and genealogy - only because I was curious - my self-guestimate is 1/16th. I am sure the situation in the USA is not dissimilar.
   
   It is well known that people were formally classified as belonging to a race after 1948 (though I submit that Apartheid existed long before that). Physical appearance played some role. This was one of the stupidest acts of the then National Party. My family looked European, and we happened to have been classified as white. Though I know that we are not - completely.
   
   So why in the case of Sandra Laing was her appearance more African than many others? I don't know enough about biology to answer that question, as much as I don't know why my son's eyes are blue when neither my eyes nor my wife's eyes are blue. However, the way this family (and others) were treated due to physical appearance was certainly one of the many tragedies of the era.
   
   Flipping through the book, what really irritated my immensely, was the atrocious spelling of Afrikaans phrases in the book. They don't even resemble any language I am familiar with. Was the editor out to lunch? Could the author not spell-check her phrases in her word-processing program? My version of MS Word (purchased in Canada) can spell-check Afrikaans, why can't hers? Such poor attention to detail really diminishes the professional image and academic merits of the book.
   
   Another thing that irks me quite a bit are blanket racist statements by people like the first reviewer from that Bookclub - based on well-meant, but utter, ignorance (did she get her "facts" from the book?). While I agree with her summary and 'apartheid was bad' sentiments, she made too many factual and historical errors in her "review" for me to address here.
   
   In short. Afrikaners blood was never pure to start with - well-known fact - whatever they say or said. Afrikaners merely look less coloured than the coloureds. There were not 3 classifications (she goes on to mention 4) but many more initially. Afrikaners have much (about 20%) French blood as well, but never conquered the country. They may have conquered parts of it, but it was the British Empire that conquered the whole country (almost the whole continent!) for the "Queen" (for the mineral wealth, more to the point). While Afrikaners had a big role to play in institutionalising apartheid (unfortunately), they hardly invented it. They merely took over that role from the British in 1948. Williams talks about the American south - I believe that Afrikaner leaders actually studied laws in the American South before institutionalising apartheid in South Africa. There were several study tours by many to the American south (rather than to nazi-Germany as some believe). Etc, etc.
   
   Many Afrikaners were (and still are) racist, some Afrikaners supported the system, just like some Americans/Germans etc supported their systems. But the Afrikaner National Party could never stay in power without the English vote. Fact. So please don't blame the entire Afrikaner nation for the acts of some - even if the majority.
   
   Anyway, while a few historical and grammatical errors are clearly in need of being corrected, I am glad that someone wrote down the story and sad circumstances of Sandra Laing. This is a story that needed to be told again, so many years later, in context. It is worth reflecting on it and remembering it. Sadly, the country is not out of the woods. Today (2008), the future still don't look rosy, never mind that Afrikaner power left the scene 14 years ago after 46 years of running things. But I guess the problems are new and different today.



2. This was a great book! To see the struggle of this woman's life during aparteid in S. Africa rattled me to the core. And it brought to light some of our issues with race in this counrty. This is truly a book for the strong and I think we can all learn something from it.



3. I found Judith Stone's book on Sandra Laing wonderful as a chronicle of the history of race in South Africa. The book is a reminder, though, that people don't easily fit into categories. Sandra's white parents wanted her to be classified as white. I felt that the book presented convincing evidence that Sandra, despite her appearance, was the natural daughter of two white parents. Sandra herself felt more comfortable with blacks and wanted to fit in with them.
   
   Judith Stone clearly wants Sandra to be a victim of apartheid and a symbol of the new South Africa. Stone has a hard time making Sandra fit into this, though. Stone talks a lot about the hardships Sandra faced, and sometimes it seems she is bending over backwards to make excuses for Sandra's behavior. Although Stone doesn't say so, it seems clear from the story that Sandra is either borderline mentally retarded or somewhere close to it. Sandra claims she didn't know at the time she was expelled from school at nine that it was because of her color. Her parents homeschooled her until age 12, while working endlessly to get her the legal right to attend a good school. When they finally succeeded and Sandra returned to school, she was put back two grades, then found it difficult to pass even that. Sandra went on to fulfill every black stereotype in existence. At 15 or so, Sandra left school to move in with a black man who was already married to someone else and had three children to provide for. The thought that maybe it might be a good idea to finish school seems never to have once crossed her mind. She went on to have five children out of wedlock with three different black men, again without the slightest forethought. Three of Sandra's children were turned over to foster parents for nine years. Money Sandra received, both from working at menial jobs and from payments for her story, flowed through her hands like water. I frankly felt sympathetic with Sandra's white parents and brothers, who eventually cut off contact with Sandra and her train wreck of a life. Yes, there are plenty of white girls in the world who act just as foolishly. But making a heroine out of Sandra is difficult, no matter how much color prejudice she experienced as a child.
   
   This book presents good evidence that race classifications are superficial. Unfortunately, removing racial classifications is not enough to create responsible citizens.



4. I want to commend Judith Stone for the phenomenal work she has done in discussing a number of difficult subjects: Sandra Laing herself, the history of South Africa, and the nature of memory, family, and the examined life. Clearly, Sandra's lack (repression) of memory, and her inability to articulate her feelings, left Stone with an enormous challenge. She works through this brilliantly by marshaling the journalistic reports from the time and later, interviewing people who know Sandra, and sensitively explaining and exploring Apartheid's tortured history. Stone uses her knowledge of studies of PTSD, false-memory syndrome, and other relevant fields in psychology to examine Sandra's individual and South Africa's collective forgetfulness/refusal to admit reality. All in all, Stone has done a stunningly professional and sensitive job in illuminating one person's life, the cruel and terrible absurdities of Apartheid South Africa, and, more broadly still, what it means to live in a world where an ideological rigidity based on lies and hypocrisy sucks the life out of everyone--oppressor or oppressed.



5. When Sandra Laing was born in 1955 to a pro-apartheid Afrikaner couple in South Africa she was registered as a white child - but upon entering a white boarding school, was persecuted by students and teachers because of her brown skin. Her parents believed an interracial union back in their family history was to blame, but neighbors thought Mrs. Laing had committed adultery with a black man and the entire family was shunned. She was reclassified as 'coloured', her parents fought the South African courts to reverse the determination, then as a teen Sandra eloped - with a black man - and her parents disowned her. WHEN SHE WAS WHITE: THE TRUE STORY OF A FAMILY DIVIDED BY RACE crosses back and forth along discrimination lines and is riveting. Impossible to put down, it will enhance any general-interest lending library and is an emotionally charged, highly recommended pick.

5 comments about Piano Girl: A Memoir.

1. You learn, first of all, what is essential to take to every gig. Aside from her father's list, Robin also packed along her sense of humor and adventure as well as a never say die spirit that kept the show going despite crazy drunks, wild children, and the invasion of huge NYC cockroaches.
   
   "Piano Girl" is not just a reflection of one woman's life playing in bars and hotels across the world from Pittsburgh to German castles, but what she sees in the audience as she's playing. The pictures are painted with compassion and a whole lot of humor.
   
   You also learn which musician to get serious with. Robin says she's dated them all, and it'd surprise you who the best man to settle down with is.
   
   Plus, a whole lot of thinking outside of the box in odd situations. Precisely what do you do when you're the Maid of Honor and the pianist for a Chinese wedding at Riker's Island Prison? Or, when a celebrity appears in the audience? How about how do you handle a tryout as a circus dancer if you really can barely dance? Or, what song to play when a 70-year-old woman has just left the restroom and gone up in the hotel's glass elevator with her skirt tucked up in her panties exposing herself to the lobby?
   
   I don't normally read memoirs, but I found "Piano Girl" a well-written and entertaining read. May you play tickle those ivories for many years to come, Robin!
   
   Rebecca Kyle, May 2008
   
   Below are links to Ms. Goldsby's musical CDs as well:
   
   Songs from the Castle
   
   Twilight
   
   Somewhere In Time



2. This is the paperback edition of Piano Girl: Lessons in Life, Music, and the Perfect Blue Hawaiian
   
   Like the good old Barbra Streisand staple, Robin Meloy Goldsby shares with us the memories that light the corners of her mind, and true to the lyrics, it's the laughter we will remember, whenever we remember this personal and funny autobiography.
   
   Beginning her working career as a waitress, the author's inability to balance food and beverages without causing grievous bodily harm quickly prompted a switch to another occupation. When practice sessions on the piano at the Club Car lead to an offer to play for the patrons five nights a week, Ms. Goldsby exchanges her hair net for beach-blanket Barbie attire, and delights the audience with her collection of 12 songs and her "fake book" which is used when you need to bluff your way through a musical request.
   
   Eventually, tube tops evolve into cocktail dresses, and cocktail lounges become ritzy hotel lobbies, luxury island resorts and even castles, but Ms. Goldsby continues to amaze and amuse with her observations from the business side of the piano.
   
   Designing agents, questionable bookings and embarrassing situations are all described here in glorious detail, but above all, the colorful, eccentric and certifiably crazy characters encountered make for an enjoyable reading experience.
   
   It's obvious that if Ms. Goldsby had the chance to do it all again, she certainly would.
   
   
   Amanda Richards



3. Read this for a thorough treat of hilarity, sentimentality, and interesting information couched in grammatically perfect text. We have sent several copies as gifts that were enthusiastically acknowledged; lent our own copy which has not been returned.



4. This is a delightful collection of stories, culminating in a memoir spanning thirty years. Piano Girl, A Memoir portrays the life of an American woman and her observations from the bench of a grand piano. Divided into three parts, from the early years describing her accidental venture into what turned out to be a lifelong career, to the middle years--the heart and soul of the book--to the most recent decade when her career moves to a new continent and she becomes not only a piano girl, but also a piano mommy.
   
   Robin Meloy Goldsby exhibits first-class writing skills. Cover to cover, this book was a pleasure to read. It's conversational, thought-provoking, and laugh out loud funny. Many may have a story or two about an unusual or humorous incident they've witnessed in a hotel lobby bar, Robin shows what it's been like to spend five hours a day, five days a week as a witness to this endless parade or characters and incidents. I found it particularly interesting that after several years in the entertainment business, it dawns on this born performer that she's not being paid to perform, but rather, she's in her position to enhance the ambience. From this point forward she decides to "be the audience" and let everyone else be the show. These stories share the show.
   
   I had a hard time putting down this book. The stories are so entertaining and the author is so charming, it had an infectious quality to it. At one point while writing about another pianist, a woman named Robin who she helped to get into the business and ultimately became a work partner of sorts and a lifelong friend, she describes how Robin's optimism pulled her from the edge of career disillusionment. "She gives me a reason to keep playing," writes Goldsby.
   
   Now, I play the piano a little bit, but I do a lot of reading. Just want to say, I made a note on this page (page 198) about Robin Meloy Goldsby: "She gives me a reason to keep reading."
   
   Highly recommend.
   
   From the author of The Things I Wish I'd Said, McKenna Publishing Group.



5. I thought I would find this book very interesting and enjoyable because I like memoirs, am a woman, and play the piano. I've played a little in public, although I'm mainly an amateur, so wanted to read about music, inspiration, repertoire, what other musicians are like, etc. Instead, this book is a collection of hotel anecdotes that get very tiring and are very similar. The author tries far too hard to be clever and snappy all the time, but there is no depth or meaningfulness in this book. She just tries to put out "jokes" about the funny street people in the hotel, food on the piano, those wacky Germans, etc. It got boring after a while. If she discussed it, I completely missed any mention of how she met her husband and what was going on there -- all of a sudden she was just married to a musician. She doesn't discuss music very much, either.
   
   When a book is billed as a "memoir" I expect it to be some intelligent and revealing discussion of one's life, but this is not. I am not sure who this book would appeal to as it isn't very broad in coverage, but most people aren't going to be that fascinated by some anecdotes of a hotel lounge pianist. On top of that, the print and binding quality isn't that great, which was annoying. The paper is very stiff, so it's hard to even read the book comfortably like most paperback.

2 comments about Women Who Kept the Lights: An Illustrated History of Female Lighthouse Keepers.

1. Now in an updated and expanded second edition, Women Who Kept The Lights: An Illustrated History Of Female Lighthouse Keepers continues to be a unique and informative contribution to Lighthouse histories and studies. In an occupation dominated by males, Mary Louise and Candace Clifford reveal the names of 141 women who received official keeper appointments in the lighthouse service. More than twice that number received appointments as assistant keepers. Most of this number were wives, widows or daughters of former keepers, beginning with Hannah Thomas at Plymouth Light on the Massachusetts coasts in 1776 (her husband went off to fight the British), and ending with Fannie Salter, who tended the Turkey Point Light on Chesapeake Bay from her husband's death in 1925 until she retired in 1947. It was only with the introduction of automated lights by the U.S. Coast Guard in the 20th Century that the lighthouse keepers became obsolete and passed into history. "Must" reading for lighthouse history enthusiasts and women's studies groups, Women Who Kept The Lights wonderfully details the careers of 30 of these vigorous women.



2. Until I found this book listed by Amazon.com, I never realized women *were* lighthouse keepers. Clifford and Clifford's book will banish forever the image of the lighthouse keeper as crusty old batchelor, and will bring a renewed sense of awareness of the many accomplishments of which women are capable. The careful research done by the authors brings out a rarely publicized image of the women who tended the big lights, carefully pollishing the reflectors and the glass, keeping the lighthouses clean and functional, welcoming and educating visitors and doing their part - often heroically, to keep the vital paths of sea and lake open and safer by running these lights (often operating more than one beacon), running foghorns(either through mechanical devices or by hand), even saving lives. Through each vignette, a larger and more complete image emerges of the lives of the women who tended lighthouses, often while caring for invalid fathers and husbands, as well as bearing and raising children in these often-isolated locations. I must admit, I wish there had been more material on the west coast of America, and hope there might be a sequal. The photographs and sidebars added substance to this excellent publication. This will be a worthwhile addition to any library, especially if the reader enjoys American history and the role of women in American culture.

5 comments about Learning to Float: The Journey of a Woman, a Dog, and Just Enough Men.

1. The author takes time out from her journalist job and boyfriend conflicts to meander down the coast from Maine to the tip of Florida. She starts out with a dog and a small tent, but returns the dog to one of her men and continues on alone.
   Her indecisiveness over committing to marriage is the overall theme running through the book. Trying to sort this out, she alternates between a well-turned phrase and some purple prose as she matches scenes from the road trip to her relationships over the years.
   Sprinkled in are flashbacks of homespun moments with her grandfather at the family's cottage in Maine. The reader meets each boyfriend as she mulls over her failed and rejected relationships. She doesn't understand what works, what doesn't and the reader hasn't a clue either.
   Along the way there are indifferent encounters with an assortment of characters. There are some nice descriptions of people and places.
   It interested me enough to keep reading to the end, but never produced any real insights into love and relationships that I could see.



2. I started reading this book after I found it on the Barnes and Noble book club list. I just got done reading a very depressing book and I was in the mood for something light and happy and that is just what I found. Lili Wright has an awesome writting style that reminds me of one of my favorite shows, Sex and the City. Lili reveals her past relationship flaws and insecurities she has in order to find more about herlself and about love. She travels to all the places that she spent time with past flames and doing this she feels she will gain closure. This just creates more confussion and she realizes she needs to find out about herself and not about the past men in her life. I enjoyed this book but at times her life seemed a little too much like a soap opera. Read this book if your in the mood for a crazy romantic tale but I wouldn't recommend this book to someone who doesn't like a lot of drama. I would give this book 3 stars.



3. What begins as a promising self-study lapses into old war stories of late-teen bed hopping, drugs, and aimless amorality. Only a puerile mind could care about how Lili gets herpes and loses her self-respect.



4. For anyone who has ever asked questions about the way they live their life, especially in relation to others, this is a book to explore. Following Lili Wright as she examines the world inside and outside herself, you can feel the learning and growing amid the struggling. As one who struggles while learning and growing, especially when looking at the world from the inside-out, I appreciated her honesty and candor about her experiences.



5. When I picked up this book at a little bookstore at the beach, I was on a week-long vacation from a job I disliked and trying both to relax and to do some soul-searching. As Lili says, there are those people who have their personal lives in order and whose professional lives are a mess and those whose professional lives are in order but their personal lives are a mess. I had always lived in the second camp - but, at the time, I was facing chaos in my professional life and needed a break from reality.

   From the moment I started reading "Learning to Float," I literally could not put it down. Lili speaks to readers like an old friend - airing her dirty laundry and taking us through the painful, yet liberating, process of trying to figure out what she needs to do to be happy.

   "Learning to Float" is a deeply personal book. Yet, for others who are facing - or have ever faced - a time in life when we have to reassess our priorities and figure out what we need to do next, "Learning to Float" reassures us that we are not alone and provides inspiration that we, too, can find our way.

No comments about Mujeres Malas De LA Biblia: Lo Que Podemos Aprender De Ellas.

2 comments about Transforming the Faiths of Our Fathers: Women Who Changed American Religion.

1. I highly recommend this book of personal stories by women who shaped religious feminism. It is an excellent resource for understanding the diversity of religious feminisms--Christian (Protestant, Catholic, Evangelical), Jewish, Muslim, Mormon, and Goddess spirituality.



2. Thanks go to Ann Braude for her stellar work in breaking down the artificial divide between feminism and religious belief! This book shows that feminists have taken much of their inspiration from religious traditions and from the power of belief in their own lives. This book makes fascinating reading and will help to correct the bias against faith in the historical accounts of feminism.

No comments about The Lady: Aung San Suu Kyi: Nobel Laureate and Burma's Prisoner.

5 comments about Firstlight: The Early Inspirational Writings of Sue Monk Kidd.

1. I just purchased this title for a friend who is retiring. The book is full of uplifting and thought-provoking essays and personal experiences that will beg to be read over and over. I was surprised to learn that Sue Monk Kidd (Secret Life of Bees and Mermaid's Chair)wrote for Guidepost Magazine, and this is a compilation of many of those selections.



2. Firstlight by Sue Monk Kidd is a book I return to over and over. It contains a number of essays she wrote when in her thirties for the spiritual magazine, Guideposts. In her late twenties, early thirties the author seriously began to examine the reality of her inner life, the meaning and purpose of her life, and become serious about being a writer. Not surprisingly, when Guideposts asked that she assemble her essays into a book, Mrs. Kidd had her doubts that her writing from that period in her life would still have merit and represent her as she is today.
   
   But these are beautiful essays, each one. They are not outdated, nor do they reveal an immaturity that might well have existed when she wrote them. What raises her writing above the numerous spiritual books published today is her focus on stories. She expresses her spiritual wisdom in the form of stories, and her stories are both insightful and touching as well as expressed with a directness and clarity of style that makes them irresistible.
   
   Kidd is not a preacher; she is a born storyteller and a born writer. She believes that telling stories and spirituality are inextricably bound together, that delving into the mysterious interior realm of her soul is the very source of her creativity. She explains that all this began for her when reading Thomas Merton's autobiographical book, The Seven Storey Mountain, that this book had "a life-altering effect on me when I read it at the age of twenty-nine," and that it was this book that led her to become a writer.
   
   She believes that "creativity is essentially a spiritual experience, a conversation between my soul and me." She tells us of her "raw longing for the Divine," her "irrepressible hunger for that deepest thing in myself." She dedicates herself to the articulation of her spiritual quest. A difficult feat and one in which she triumphs. Her subject, broadly speaking, is the soul, the spirit of existence that is called by many names in different cultures but is in essence nameless. It is her belief in the inextricable interaction between the spiritual and the creative that speaks to me, that opens me to her writing and to the person she is. Her philosophy serves as roadmap for me into my own creativity, which is often as elusive as the wind.
   
   The question to which the title of her book refers is the vulnerability in all of us that can lead to the illumination of who we are, perhaps even how we wish to change. She suggests that we try to find the moment, and perhaps more than one moment, when our hearts first opened, when an experience became the "Firstlight" that touched us in a way to perhaps change us forever, to start us on our own path of communion with something greater than ourselves, a path of revelation that connected us to our creativity, to our powerful potential that can guide us to hitherto unknown experiences and emotions. How this happened for Sue Monk Kidd needs to be read rather than revealed here. But I cannot resist emphasizing, perhaps at the risk of repeating myself, her belief in stories. Her words tell this best: "I believe in stories," she writes. "The world has enough dogma. It's stories we need more of, stories that reverence the still, small voice that sings our life. As Anthony de Mello observed, 'The shortest distance between a human being and Truth is a story.' Jesus, himself, told stories about the most common things in the world: a lost sheep, a seed that falls on rocky ground, a woman who sweeps her house in search of a coin, a man whose son runs away from home. 'All personal theology,' de Mello instructs us, 'should begin with the words: Let me tell you a story.'"
   
   Sue Monk Kidd's stories are just as simple as those mentioned above. She describes watching her two young children playing in the snow, laughing as they fall backward like "a toppled snowman." How they yell to her over and over to watch them, how she would exclaim her delight with assurances and shout out "grand superlatives" at what they were doing. How touched she is by her realization that their need for approval and admiration is cut deeply into their little souls. And how vitally important it is that she tell them that they are indeed wonderful.
   
   Another story tells about the father of a six-year-old lying in a hospital bed in a deep coma. He comes to her day after day, bringing her flowers, sitting by her bed, stroking her hair, keeping up a quiet conversation about her dog, her brother, the weather, anything he thinks might interest her. Never tiring, hour after hour. Never losing hope.
   
   Firstlight is a book about stories; specifically, stories taken from the author's own life. Stories of her experiences that have led to the many changes she has made in her life. She shares with us the stories that have touched her, affected her in a deep way. In reading them, I too am touched; I too am changed. I eagerly recommend this book to anyone who wishes to be on a similar journey.
   
   by Duffie Bart
   for Story Circle Book Reviews
   reviewing books by, for, and about women



3. One of my favorite books of all time is Sue Monk Kidd's "Secret Life of Bees." This collection of her early inspirational writings for Guideposts and other publications is a delight. She was well known in those circles for years before her blockbuster book. As she says, she always had a desire to pay attention to her soul, a 'repository of the inner Divine, the truest part of us' from which so much of her writing sprang. This is very thought provoking reading, the type that you will want to savor and mull over for awhile.



4. In a word, this book is inspirational. The tone is evident even in the book's packaging: its beach-sunrise jacket photo and its airy page design. If you need an emotional lift --- or know someone who does --- FIRSTLIGHT will provide it.
   
   Over her writing career of nearly 30 years, Sue Monk Kidd has endeared herself to two audiences. First, to readers of Guideposts magazine and devotionals, for which she wrote very concrete, first-person, anecdotal narratives. A sample: "Late one winter night it snows in South Carolina. When the sun comes up, a dazzling white quilt lays across our small backyard.
   
   " 'Oh-h-h, Mommy.' In the bedroom both children cling to the windowsill speechless. It is their first snow..."
   
   In memoirs published from 1988 to 1997, her spiritual journey reflected a more contemplative outlook and eventually a feminist theology that endeared a different readership. Then her fiction (THE SECRET LIFE OF BEES and THE MERMAID CHAIR) turned her and her unorthodox characters into conversational centerpieces all around town, coast to coast.
   
   Now here's the trick. Can this new collection of "early writings" bridge her two audiences? I say yes, assuming a reader is not scouring for theological tenets but for feel-good inspiration that encourages faith in a slightly vague Divine.
   
   Many of the untitled selections within the book's 13 chapters are from Guideposts publications, anecdotes about childhood, motherhood, marriage and Sue's early nursing career. But it seems that most of the chapter topics (with titles such as "Awareness," "Solitude," "Simplicity of Spirit" and "Gracious Space") are grounded in essays that are more reflective than anecdotal. A sample from the first chapter, titled "The Crucible of Story": "The inner story creates identity, transforming our vision of who we are. Creating story is an act of self-knowing...Knowing who I am hinges on remembering who I have been in the past and embracing the hope of who I may be in the future."
   
   It's a different kind of writing --- less personal, less concrete. But the complementary styles work well together, the anecdotes illustrating the reflective points.
   
   In the introduction, Sue explains how she warmed up to the idea of compiling these writings that are foundational to her spiritual and literary journey. At first she was hesitant: "I wanted to be read and known for who I am now." But eventually: "Opening myself to the creation of this book, so aptly titled FIRSTLIGHT, became an unexpected act of reclamation...a bridge...a gift of reunion."
   
   My favorite piece in the book is a short "Availability" anecdote, recounting a visit to a homeless shelter and Sue's conversation with James, a resident who eagerly shows her his "book" --- a scrapbook featuring worthless incidentals (a restaurant napkin, a calendar, a few autographs) that "represented James's list of blessings. Blessings he read and reread."
   
   Just as you, or I, might read and reread Sue Monk Kidd's FIRSTLIGHT.
   
   --- Reviewed by Evelyn Bence



5. Stories and essays filling FIRSTLIGHT with inspiration come from the author's early writings for Guideposts and other publications and are centered around spiritual insights and 'firsts', following her early years as a spiritual thinker. Anyone with an interest in the life and thought of Sue Monk Kidd in particular will find FIRSTLIGHT filled with both autobiographical insights and spiritual inspiration, making it a pick both for religious collections and for the general-interest public lending library.

2 comments about High, Wide, and Frightened.

1. Louise Thaden won prizes in a world men ruled. A businesswoman, professional flier, wife and mother she was among those who shown the brightest in aviation's golden age. But her book is choppy, with anecdotes bumping into one another with no transistions. Some of the anecodtes take longer to set up than to tell, and a few were no doubt more impressive in the experience than in the telling. You will get a taste of daring, discomfort and pride here, but it is more a garnish than a course to remember.



2. A good book about a female aviator. Louise Thaden, not as famous as Amelia Earhart, but probably a better pilot. She was supported and sponsored by Oliva and Walter Beech, of Beech Aircraft Co.