I was invited back to one of my favorite book podcasts, The Best Book Ever Podcast, hosted by Julie Strauss. This was my third appearance on the podcast and we discussed one of my all-time favorite novels, The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber. Faber's...
Rereading The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber
by MHill | Jun 20, 2023 | 2023 Book Reviews, Marion's All-Time Favorite Novels, Marion's Favorite Books, Marion's Favorites, Marion's Reading Life Blog, Rereading Series, Wisdom From Kammbia Column
"The rhetoric of a sermon was one thing; his wife's grim reality was another. Civilizations did not vanish smoothly and easefully; empires did not set like suns: empires collapsed in chaos and violence. Real people got pushed around, beaten up, robbed, made destitute....
Thinking of Jenny One Year Later…….
by MHill | May 29, 2023 | Marion's Favorites, Marion's Reading Life Blog, Reading Envy/Jenny Colvin, Wisdom From Kammbia Column
I found out one year ago this week that Furman University Librarian and Podcaster Jenny Colvin passed away at age 43. I wrote a post last year when it happened. It was a complete shock because we had corresponded a week before she passed away about recording my...
Wisdom From Kammbia Book Review 126: Moonlight & Vines by Charles de Lint
by MHill | May 6, 2023 | 2023 Book Reviews, Book Reviews, Charles De Lint, Marion's Favorite Books, Marion's Favorites, Marion's Reading Life Blog, Short Story Review, Wisdom From Kammbia Column
"Jilly's always saying that magic's never what you expect to be, but it's often what you need. I think she's right. And it doesn't matter if the experience comes from outside or inside. Where it comes from isn't important at all. What's important is that it does...
Wisdom From Kammbia Story Review 22: The Little Heidelberg by Isabel Allende
by MHill | May 4, 2023 | Marion's All-Time Favorite Short Stories, Marion's Favorites, Short Story Review, Wisdom From Kammbia Column, Wisdom of Kammbia Story Review
"The Little Heidelberg is a tavern a certain distance from the capital and located on a hill surrounded by banana groves; there, besides good music and invigorating air, they offer a unique aphrodisiac stew made heady with a combination of spices, too heavy for the...
Wisdom From Kammbia Book Review 125: The Language of the Night by Ursula K. Le Guin
by MHill | May 1, 2023 | 2023 Book Reviews, Marion's Favorite Books, Marion's Favorites, Marion's Reading Life Blog, Nonfiction, Rereading Series, Wisdom From Kammbia Column, Writing, Writing and Publishing Resources
"All Art is entertainment. That's so clear it's fatuous to repeat it. Art and Entertainment are the same thing, in that the more deeply and genuinely entertaining a work is, the better art it is. To imply that Art is something heavy and solemn and dull, and...
Wisdom From Kammbia Book Review 124: The Way of the Writer by Charles Johnson
by MHill | Apr 22, 2023 | Charles Johnson, Marion's Favorite Books, Marion's Favorites, Marion's Reading Life Blog, Nonfiction, Writing
As a writer, I have always been curious how other writers practice their craft, what they read, and how they conduct business. I believe you can learn a lot from other writers that are further down the writer's journey than you are. Charles Johnson's The Way of the...
Wisdom From Kammbia Story Review 21: River People by Yamile Saied Mendez
by MHill | Apr 3, 2023 | Marion's Favorites, Marion's Reading Life Blog, Short Story Review, Wisdom From Kammbia Column, Wisdom of Kammbia Story Review
"Malena had skills that no one could explain, not even her. When they were alive, her parents thought that her ability to speak to ghosts meant she was a bridge between this world and that of spirits, between their ancestral home in Ireland and the new one in...
Wisdom From Kammbia Story Review 20: Occupying Arthur Whitfield by Charles Johnson
by MHill | Mar 22, 2023 | Marion's Favorites, Marion's Reading Life Blog, Short Story Review, Wisdom From Kammbia Column, Wisdom of Kammbia Story Review
Charles Johnson came onto my reading radar for many years after I read his National Book Award-winning novel, Middle Passage. The novel told the story of Rutherford Calhoun, a freed slave who sneaks onto a slave ship heading back to the motherland to escape an...
Wisdom From Kammbia Story Review 19: The Past Is A Dream (The Launch of a Blacktopia) by Maurice Broaddus
by MHill | Mar 18, 2023 | Marion's Favorites, Marion's Reading Life Blog, Short Story Review, Wisdom From Kammbia Column, Wisdom of Kammbia Story Review
"No one ever considers the impact of a single life well-lived. The relationships made and lives touched. How a person might walk through history inadvertently." Those words of wisdom spoken by Nora Bradford, pilot of Ghana's first interstellar spaceship and longtime...