Books Lauren Kay Johnson Recommends for Gift-Giving
The Military Spouse Book Review
by andria816
3M ago
Hello, everyone! This is our last Holiday Book Recommendations installment for the year, featuring Lauren Kay Johnson with some book recs for both children and adults. Childrens’ bookstores (or childrens’ book sections) are wonderful places to be and there’s nothing like finding a delightful and colorful book for some small member of the family. Lauren’s opening caveat, about having spent the year reading mostly slobber-covered board books to her adorable twin girls (whom we call, at Wrath-Bearing Tree, “The Goddesses”), is charming and reminds me of one of our favorite holiday posts, Simone G ..read more
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MilSpouse Holiday Book Recommendations Are Back!
The Military Spouse Book Review
by andria816
4M ago
Hello friends! It’s that time of year again, snow is on the ground here in Colorado, and we’re probably all thinking at least a little about holiday shopping. But more than that, we are thinking about meaning. Our holiday feature is one of my favorites, and reads like a little holiday letter to our military reading-and-writing community. Each submission makes me smile and realize how much I enjoy this cool group of people. So this season, how about giving the gift of literature? (I’m saying this while wearing a sandwich board outside King Soopers that just says, “BOOKS” and chanting at strange ..read more
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MilSpouse Book Review is back: and we’re honoring Middle West Press!
The Military Spouse Book Review
by andria816
1y ago
It’s been a while, friends. I took a year’s tenure as editor-in-chief of the fantastic Wrath-Bearing Tree Literary Journal, (and had edited fiction and nonfiction there since late 2017). I cannot recommend Wrath-Bearing Tree highly enough as an astute, darkly funny, important publication that examines our relationship to issues of war, peace, and social justice and tries to see through old patterns of human behavior to achieve something more equitable, something new. WBT is a fantastic little (growing) guerilla magazine sneaking in on a larger war-lit scene, changing the tone of the conversati ..read more
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‘A Scathing Indictment’: Kayla Williams Reviews Erik Edstrom’s ‘Un-American’
The Military Spouse Book Review
by andria816
4y ago
by Kayla Williams Erik Edstrom subtitled Un-American “A Soldier’s Reckoning of Our Longest War,” but this does quite not do justice to his topic’s scale. Instead, the profound, urgent questions he asks about the justification not only for U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, but for any armed military conflict, amount to a scathing indictment. Some never think deeply about the true costs of war – not just for combatants, but also for civilians caught in the crossfire downrange and even for Americans who pay indirectly as resources flow away from domestic concerns. Others of us engage glancingly wi ..read more
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Happy New Year! Let’s Read (Part II): Book Recommendations for Your New Year
The Military Spouse Book Review
by andria816
4y ago
Lisa Stice: Toward Antarctica by Elizabeth Bradfield Made up of haibun-inspired poems and photography, Toward Antarctica chronicles Bradfield’s work in Antarctica. While the book follows in the footsteps of other polar explorers, this collection looks at this fragile region through the eyes of a naturalist to expose the environmental shifts. Toward Antarctica shares why it is so vital to protect this living ice that so many species call home and that so many other species the world-over depend upon to secure an environmental balance. Raising by Vivian Wagner Raising is a comprehensive look ..read more
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Happy New Year! Let’s Read
The Military Spouse Book Review
by andria816
4y ago
Here, four friends of the Military Spouse Book Review offer their recommended reads for the New Year. For birthdays, anniversaries, holidays all year long — consider giving a great book! In a special mini-feature, our first two contributors, Jehanne Dubrow and Alison Buckholtz, provide suggestions that may be of particular interest to Jewish readers. Jehanne Dubrow:   The Weight of Ink by Rachel Kadish: This gorgeous novel reminds me-in all the best ways–of A.S. Byatt’s Possession. Moving back and forth between the small Jewish community that lived in London in the 1600s and two historians o ..read more
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Antipodes and Middle Grounds: Abby Murray’s ‘Hail and Farewell’
The Military Spouse Book Review
by andria816
4y ago
Reviewed by Lisa Stice Labels seem to have taken on more presence in these last few years. They pretend to be absolute and almost convince us that they truly are. Democrat; Republican. Liberal; Conservative. Female; Male. Service member; civilian. Pro-choice; pro-life. Well, and the list could probably go on for pages, but I won’t let that happen. In reality, no one person, situation, issue, or whatever is so wholly one thing. When millions of cells collide with various experiences and observations, things just naturally become complicated. I like that sort of complicated. I like movies in whi ..read more
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It’s That Time of Year Again! Friends of the Mil Spouse Book Review Recommend Their Best Reads of 2019 (Part I):
The Military Spouse Book Review
by andria816
4y ago
Kayla WilliamsKayla Williams Recommends: 1. Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women’s Anger by Soraya Chemaly. I’ve spent years fearing my anger and trying to bury it, then being surprised at the ways it leaked out around the edges of my control. This volume helped validate that not only are there plenty of things to be legitimately enraged about, but also the myriad ways in which suppressing that natural response is toxic. Trying to take the lessons to heart is changing the way I communicate with myself and those around me, as well as how I’m trying to raise my daughter. 2. Frankenstein in B ..read more
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Places and Names: Terri Barnes Reviews Jhumpa Lahiri’s THE NAMESAKE
The Military Spouse Book Review
by andria816
4y ago
“True to the meaning of her name, she will be without borders without a home of her own, resident everywhere and nowhere … She feels overwhelmed by the thought of the move … to a city that once was home and is now, in its own way, foreign.” — from The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri This quote resonates with my military life experience, as did many of the descriptions in Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake. Some of the characters in this book spend their lifetimes separated from their homes and families forging new identities independent of but influenced by both their origins and their geographic location ..read more
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The Body in Question: Book Review by Alison Buckholtz
The Military Spouse Book Review
by andria816
5y ago
Jury duty gets a bad rap. That’s why Hannah, the 52-year-old woman at the center of The Body in Question, the new novel by Jill Ciment, readies her most persuasive excuses as she waits with other prospective jurors at a courtroom in central Florida. But when finally asked for any reason she would not be able to serve, she stays quiet, surprising herself.  Perhaps, she surmises, she needs a break from caretaking: her responsibilities toward her 86-year-old husband, an award-winning former journalist, have become onerous as he has aged.  Perhaps it’s because her own career as a photographer has ..read more
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