Claire Conger

I’m in love with Eve Babitz’s writing! Slow Days, Fast Company: The World, The Flesh, and L.A. is made even better as an audio book narrated by Mia Barron.
Ms. Barron reads the story as if it were a memoir and brings to it a sensuality that I do not achieve when I read the story myself.

[Read more →]

“I don’t have time to be married!” wails Julie in Julie and Julia, a movie about Julia Child and devote Julie Powell. What Julie really should have cried, was “I don’t have time to work all day at my stupid government job!”  Read more... (347 words, 17 images, estimated 1:23 mins reading time)

[Read more →]

The Secret Life of Bees” (2002), spiritual writer Sue Monk Kidd’s first novel, tells the story of a fourteen-year-old girl escaping from her father and discovering what happened to her mother. It’s a page-turner, populated with wise women and stupid men, and told in the voice of the girl. This voice, well crafted by Ms. Kidd, carries the story, and, unlike her second novel, The Mermaid Chair, Ms Kidd keeps this story moving. (I couldn’t read The Mermaid Chair, and my posting Stephen King’s Backstory Well Done in Carrie explains why.)  Read more... (2 words, 2 images, estimated 0 secs reading time)

[Read more →]

I tried hard to read Sue Monk Kidd’s The Mermaid Chair and I just couldn’t do it. I got through 30 or so pages of the paperback and gave up, then I got through two discs on the sound recording and gave up. Why could I not read this book?  Read more... (293 words, 7 images, estimated 1:10 mins reading time)

[Read more →]

The Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing, a book of seven interconnected short stories by Melissa Bank, has excellent advice about dating: Be yourself!

Dr Phil, I’m sure, would agree.  Read more... (332 words, 6 images, estimated 1:20 mins reading time)

[Read more →]