Sunny's bookshelf
Sunny's bookshelf photo by Judy Solomon

Online book reviews since 2011, the very best in reviewing – connecting good readers with equally good writers

Religion

American Gospel
Fiction
Ann Ronald

American Gospel

American Gospel – Lin Enger’s immensely engaging novel of a messianic Minnesota preacher you will find it hard to turn away from. As I have

Read More »
Vox
Fiction
Ann Ronald

Vox

Vox, Christina Dalcher’s novel makes use of Atwood’s template for modern feminist dystopian novels, placing it squarely in the United States. Not quite dystopian, eh?

Read More »
Agnostic, A Spirited Manifesto
Books for Curious Readers
Sunny Solomon

Agnostic, A Spirited Manifesto

Agnostic, A Spirited Manifesto.  Something to believe in, or not. Can there be an agnostic Christian, agnostic Buddhist, agnostic Jew, or an agnostic Catholic? (Yes,

Read More »
Mercy House
Fiction
Ann Ronald

Mercy House

MERCY HOUSE Alena Dillon’s novel, Mercy House, uniquely blends laughter with tragedy, pain with redemption. Its setting is a Bedford-Stuyvesant shelter for abused women. Run

Read More »
A Good Neighborhood
Fiction
Sunny Solomon

A Good Neighborhood

A GOOD NEIGHBORHOOD Therese Anne Fowler’s latest book, A Good Neighborhood, is one very good novel. The first thing that will catch your attention is

Read More »
Wild Blueberries
Autobiography/Memoir
Sunny Solomon

Wild Blueberries

WILD BLUEBERRIES It has been a long time since a memoir has brought me such laughter and warmth. Peter Damm, now a resident of Berkeley,

Read More »
A Long Way Home
Autobiography/Memoir
Martha Hildreth

A Long Way Home

A LONG WAY HOME Saroo Brierley’s memoir, A Long Way Home, was the basis for the 2014 Academy Award nominated film, Lion, that featured much-praised

Read More »
Autobiography/Memoir
Neal Ferguson

Educated

EDUCATED, A MEMOIR In 2014 at age twenty-seven, Idaho-born Tara Westover received a Ph.D. in history from Cambridge University, UK. Remarkable? Yes. Made more remarkable

Read More »
Historical Fiction
Ann Ronald

Paris Metro

PARIS METRO I picked up Wendell Steavenson’s novel, Paris Metro, expecting a terrorist thriller to warm my blood on a cold winter’s evening. If I

Read More »
History
Neal Ferguson

Fields of Blood

Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence Since reading and swooning over Karen Armstrong’s A History of God twenty years ago, I have

Read More »
Religion
Ann Ronald

The Gnostic Gospels

A conversation with a friend who is far more religiously astute than I led me to ask him to recommend a book or two about

Read More »