Reviews with TLC

When I first saw I Know How You Feel: The Joy and Heartbreak of Friendship in Women's Lives by F. Diane Barth on the Amazon Vine Program page, I scrolled on past. I didn't think it applied to me. My friendships are... just fine. Then I started thinking about it and ended up back on the page ordering it. I'm so glad I did. While there wasn't all that much that I didn't know or hadn't surmised from my own life experience, Barth gave me a different perspective on what the knowledge and experience I had actually meant. Barth writes in a tone that feels a bit like having a conversation with a friend. She even includes a bit of friendly advice at the end of each chapter with her "what you can do" section. As I read I Know How You Feel , my thoughts traveled back over my entire life in an attempt to better understand all the friendships I've had with women over the years. Barth touches on the emotions, the actions, the beliefs, the expectations, and th

Forks Over Knives: The Cookbook by Del Sroufe contains a wide variety of plant-based recipes that prove eating a plant-based diet can be satisfying. I've made many of the recipes in Forks Over Knives: The Cookbook and have enjoyed the vast majority of them.  Sroufe demonstrates techniques to make plant-based cooking accessible to anyone while keeping the recipes interesting. The vast diversity of these recipes provides something to tease just about any taste bud. The simplicity of the recipes makes Forks Over Knives: The Cookbook  great for those with little to no cooking experience while still containing recipes that will appeal to experienced cooks. I'd highly recommend Forks Over Knives: The Cookbook for anyone interested in trying a plant-based diet or even those who just enjoy trying out different methods of cooking.

No Justice: One White Police Officer, One Black Family, and How One Bullet Ripped Us Apart by Robbie Tolan and Lawrence Ross gripped my attention from the first page. It's the true story of Tolan surviving being shot by the police, his healing journey, and his attempts to find justice. Tolan and Ross tell the story like they're sitting in the room with the reader. They speak directly to the reader in Tolan's voice explaining his experience, his reactions, his perspective. He's honest about his anger, depression, and hope. He doesn't hold back about where his family had privileges poorer families might not have due to his father's baseball career as well as his own. He also explains how those privileges didn't protect him when he faced the police who accused him of stealing his own car in front of his own house. No Justice demonstrates how the court system, criminal and civil, works and doesn't work for those who are forced to participate in it. Tolan

I finally decided to work through Creative Knowing: 50 Self-Reflection Questions for Women by Christina Katz recently. I thought it would make for a nice daily writing exercise, since I'm editing a book right now. I didn't think of it much in terms of "self-reflection" when I started. As I worked through the questions, I had a variety of reactions. You can read about my reaction to the initial set of questions in my blog post, Favorites... Shmavorites . Some questions were easy to answer, others provoked an emotional reaction, still others made me think. Some of the questions made me smile. Others irritated me. Still others inspired me. And then there were those that felt mundane. I felt a resistance rise from time to time as I pondered answering a question. Sometimes that resistance came from my own reluctance to explore the topic. Other times it was because I found the question presumptive when I didn't see how it applied to me. Initially, I was reluctant to