Category: Books

The Road to Sugar Loaf, by Eric T. Reynolds, is a novel about the Women’s Suffrage movement. Largely set in the Flint Hills of Kansas, we follow a group of friends as they fight for a change that was once thought impossible, women’s right to vote. It was a hard, long battle.

Eric also understands the disability struggle. Some of the things said in reference to Kathryn stung me personally.

What I really want to see is more work by people with disabilities about life with disabilities. I’ve seen very little of that. I feel that the disability community has less of a voice than any other group, and that’s what I’ve been fighting to change.

While The Road to Sugar Loaf was really about Women’s Suffrage, I appreciate that Eric’s lead character was a person with disabilities. I would like to encourage him to continue with that pattern and perhaps write about living with disabilities on a deeper level.

I liked this novel very much. It was a fine read, and it stirred my emotions quite a bit.

“Jesus Christ, why did Chris have to die?”

That question, and other similar things, have been going through my head since the night I got the news that Chris Kuell had died. I had an article under consideration at Breath & Shadow, and it was taking much longer than usual for Chris to get back to me. He also had not responded to the two query letters I’d sent to see if he’d received the article.

So, I went to the Ability Maine website to see if there was anything going on. That’s when I saw the post about Chris’ death. One of the last emails I’d gotten from Chris was back in December. He emailed because he hadn’t received my response to a contract, and he thought Covid might have kicked my ass. A couple months later, it’s Chris who’s taken.

Chris told me about Morris in an email he’d sent earlier that same month.

I told him his book sounded like something I want to read and that I put it on my to-read list. I was eager to get to it. But I’m a slow reader and by the time I got to Morris, Chris was gone.

Now that I’ve finished Morris, I want to tell Chris how much I love this book, how much it means to me, how much I appreciate that someone finally wrote a book like this, someone who truly gets it and isn’t just pretending to understand what it’s like to be a person with disabilities.

I also want to tell him how honored I am that a couple scenes in Morris were inspired by works of mine. There’s a police detainment scene that’s similar to the police detainment I wrote about in my article Walking with Cerebral Palsy.  Chris’ fictional cop even says the same thing that my nonfictional cop had said.

Another scene had a description of how a combat veteran still sees the war years later as he goes about his life. The description of this, how it happens, how it works, and what it’s like, was so similar to how my character in my still unpublished story Memories of War continued to see the war years later.

Although Chris didn’t buy that story, he had seen it a few years ago. Those descriptions in my story had come from my own experiences with flashbacks and the reliving of things, that often have me screaming in the middle of the night. My descriptions were not created from research on the subject. I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure no one could have described it that way without having read my work. Other people experience such things, but I think they would describe it their own way.

Morris is a collection of stories, but I don’t think “collection” is the right word to describe this book. Though each story in Morris could stand on its own, all of the stories are connected, and Morris reads more like a novel, with each story being a chapter.

It starts in the Vietnam War era. Johnny comes home from the war in a wheelchair. He goes through a crisis stage, heavy drinking, anger, wondering how he’s going to get through life, hating how people see him and feeling that he’s not a man, or that the woman he loves, Allison, doesn’t see him as a man. All very accurate feelings, that I often feel myself.

I think every person with disabilities needs someone like Johnny’s uncle Ken. Someone who knows we can do things, who gives us the opportunity to do things, and is willing to make the accommodations so that it is possible for us to do things. The opposite of people who hold us back, treat us like children, give us reasons for why we can’t do things and why we shouldn’t bother trying.

Whatever our disabilities are, we can do all kinds of shit. The problem isn’t that we can’t do things, the problem is the opportunities are often not there, and people are often unwilling to make the accommodations. We can do things, but we often have to do them differently and it can often take us more time to do it than it would take a nondisabled person.

But we can do it. In our own ways, in our own times.

Uncle Ken believed in Johnny, and he gave him an opportunity with accommodations. Uncle Ken owned a furniture shop, where he made furniture, and he modified his shop so Johnny would be able to work there and build furniture himself.

While working for Uncle Ken, Johnny is struck with the idea to build a guitar for Allison. This guitar links the stories in Morris together, as it changes hands and is carried from place to place, through the generations.

Jesus Christ, why did Chris have to die? The stories in Morris are brilliant. They are amazing. They say things that need to be said, that people need to hear, to understand. Much of it is things that I have tried to say myself, many times, but I’m easily brushed off. I don’t think people brushed off Chris so easily.

The author notes at the beginning and the end of this book make it clear that Chris did not expect he was going to die anytime soon. He had plans to write and publish more books. He was the guy we needed in our corner. He was a fierce advocate for people with disabilities.

He understood the pain, the anger, the exclusion, the loneliness, the struggle. But he also understood that people with disabilities can have happy lives too. All of that, and more, is communicated in Morris.

There were times when I had thought to ask Chris, how was it that he seemed to have it all together? How was it that he didn’t seem beaten down like me?

I feel that I got two answers to those questions from Morris.

After Brian, who’s condition is more severe than Tony’s, helps Tony improve his guitar playing, Tony asks Brian how he has it all together. Brian, who doesn’t talk much, tells Tony, “I play the blues, I don’t sing them.”

I take that to mean Brian doesn’t have it together any better than Tony does, and he feels all the things that Tony feels. But instead of expressing those feelings with words, Brian expresses those feelings by playing the guitar.

Later, Isaac tells Tony how his anger, if he doesn’t keep it inside, will result in him losing the woman he loves. Isaac knew, because he had been there himself.

The closing chapter of Morris filled me with hope.

Well, damn. At first, I thought what I needed was a buffalo dog like Reggie. But I’ve come to realize that what I really need is a friend like Drinder. Because Drinder makes pizza.

Lawrence M. Schoen’s Conroyverse contains four different works of science fiction. A short story, two novels and a novella, I think it was. All the works are connected to the same universe.

I’m struggling to find the right words to explain what Conroyverse is.

Okay, Schoen wrote the first story, Buffalo Dogs, which tells the story of how Conroy came by Reggie. Then he wrote a series that had to do with Conroy, Reggie, Left John and all those guys, and he wrote spinoffs from that.

So, Conroyverse takes the first story of each spinoff series and puts them in one book.

I very much enjoyed this book, from the beginning to the end. It was comfortable reading, fun, science fiction, adventurous and humorous. I laughed a lot while reading, though some of it did hurt my heart too.

I feel like my review here doesn’t really convey how much I love this book, but I’m telling you, it’s a great read and I believe you would love it too.

It was the name of this anthology, Grandpa’s Deep-Space Diner, that caught my attention. There’s just something about the title that grips your heart and makes you want to crack open this book and see what it’s all about.

Edited by Jessica Augustsson, Grandpa’s Deep-Space Diner contains a collection of stories by a number of writers. The stories are brilliant, and they all have something to do with food.

Some of the stories were quite lovable. I had tears in my eyes as I read James Rumpel’s Gramma’s Special Cookie Jar. It reminded me so much of my own grandma. I have a cookie jar that was hers, that I had given her for Christmas one year, and that I had gotten back after she died.

Other stories had me thinking about the restaurants my uncle owns in Flint and Lapeer, called Maude’s Alabama BBQ, which were named after my grandma, Lona Maude.

I’m going to go ahead and order some food from Maude’s right now.

Jude-Marie Green is a magnificent writer. Her stories have an incredible flow to them, and her use of the language is brilliant. She loves dogs and cats, and she knows the value of grandparents and stories.

Glorious Madness is a collection of fourteen stories, science fiction and fantasy. I was pleased with every one of them, and some of them touched my heart deeply, or broke it.

If I could ask Jude-Marie Green one question about this book, I would ask her how she came up with the idea to make storms the intelligent life on a planet. That was completely new to me. I never would have come up with something like that.

Impressive collection.

Don’t be a cube. Pick up a book and go back in time.

Remember the line from the Reading Rainbow song, “I can go anywhere…”? That’s more or less the case with The Artifacts, a novel by Eric T. Reynolds. I found this book quite fun.

Kayla buys a Victorian house on the outskirt of Sycamore Falls and moves in. Her property is vast and it includes the highest of the Flint Hills. On top of this hill is an old farmhouse that has not been lived in for generations.

In the farmhouse, there is a library with books that will take you back in time. When Kayla discovers this library, she is unable to resist going back to the earlier days of Sycamore Falls. She learns much about the town and secrets are unlocked.

I don’t feel like my review is going to do this novel the justice it deserves. I’m not feeling very crafty today and I’ll probably butcher it, but it’s my practice to write something about the books I read and I don’t want to make an exception for this one.

The Prince of Tides. I have seen the movie. It’s a movie that I remember well and often find myself thinking about. But the novel Pat Conroy wrote takes the story much deeper than any a movie ever could.

Tom Wingo is a southern from Celleton, South Carolina. He and his siblings, Luke and Savannah, grew up in a small house on an island. Their father, Henry, is a shrimper and their mother, Lila, was a house wife.

Tom gets word that Savannah had attempted suicide again and that she is in the hospital. He goes to New York City where Savannah has been living her entire adult life and spends the summer telling Savannah’s psychiatrist, Susan Lowenstein, the stories their lives in Celleton county so Lowenstein can understand Savannah better.

This is complex story with very believable characters and situations. Henry Wingo had been a violent, abusive father and husband, and Lila, although not quite as brutal with her fists, was abusive with words. Henry and Lila had scarred their children for life.

The story is full of heartbreak, joy, struggle, heroism, suffering, forgiveness and so much more. At times, I had tears in my eyes as I read. Other times, I laughed out loud.

I’m not pleased with my review here. It’s lacking much. There’s so much more about this novel that I didn’t touch on. I’m having one of those days where I can’t find the right words.

But this novel, I recommend it highly. There’s much to be learned from it.

This is brilliant. Sarah Wagner‘s Hardwired Humanity is a fun read. We’re talking about artificial intelligence so well done you’d think they were human.

Some people want to create an A.I. army to replace humanity as we know it. But in order to perfect their creation, they need a chip from an A.I. on the run. That’s where things get crazy.

A fine science fiction thriller.

I really enjoyed this book. Gustav Gloom and the People Taker is the first of a series by Adam-Troy Castro.

Gustav is thought to be the saddest boy in the world. He lives in a dark house and has only shadows to keep him company, at least until the What family moves into the house across the street.

It’s an adventure that takes place in a big, scary house where nothing makes sense at all. I laughed a lot while reading this book. I’d say the Gallery of Awkward Statues was my favorite chapter.