Book Notes: "One Beautiful Dream," by Jennifer Fulwiler

So, this is a book I gulped down. Jennifer Fulwiler’s writing voice is so good—if this was fiction, you’d call her a compelling protagonist, one you’re rooting for, and one who makes you want to know what’s going to happen next.

(On that note, may I just say, Wow, I miss Jen’s blog! I was a fan of it over a decade ago, and I’m sure she’s doing wonderful things on her radio show now, and she’s clearly still writing glorious books, but…I miss her blog. It just has to be said.)

So, what is One Beautiful Dream about? It’s about fulfilling a creative vocation while mothering a whole passel of kids. Which totally makes it what you'd call “relevant to my interests.”

In it, Jennifer tells the story of writing her first book, while not just mothering the kids she had, but gestating and giving birth to a few more. It’s about how she learned to stop treating her vocation as a mother as if it were an enemy of her vocation as a writer—as if in order to make room for her writing, her mothering vocation had to be the lion she held back with a whip and a chair.

I really love this bit, which I think sums up a lot of what the book’s about:

There is a tendency with anyone who loves any kind of work to fantasize that if you just had endless time for it, you’d be able to achieve perfection in this field. Yet what I’d discovered is that when you put love first, not only does your life improve, but your work improves…In my case, I faced interruption after interruption in my house full of babies. And, in the process, I finally learned how to write a book.

It is, like all good memoirs, a story that spends time on details that support the theme, and elides past those that don’t. For instance, from my experience as a NICU mom, I’m sure that a whole book could have been written about Jennifer’s experience of having a baby in the NICU, yet she only spends a short span of pages there.

And that’s okay, because that’s not what this particular book is about…but little spaces like that make me realize how much I’d like, someday, to read about the bits that happened in the spaces.

If she ever feels like writing those books, that is. Jennifer’s an author I’d trust to decide when and where to tell which stories--no author should feel pressure to write the things she doesn't want to write.

But all I have to say is: at this point, I’m here to read whatever books she feels like writing. I definitely recommend this book.


Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell


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Book Notes: "No Moon To Pray To" by Jerry Guern

(Note: I first posted this review to my Goodreads account.)

TL;DR: This is Dracula in the world of Brother Cadfael. Dark and violent and not for everyone, but I liked it.

Okay, here's the longer review:

Have you ever read a book that made you feel:

1) I need to give lots of caveats before I recommend this book because, boy! it is NOT for everyone, BUT---

2) I really want to recommend this book, because there are some people who will LOVE it, and I don't want those people to miss it?

"No Moon To Pray To" is that kind of book. It's not going to be right for everyone, but I sure hope it finds the audience it's right for, because that audience is going to love it.

So, what are my caveats?

1) The theology isn't perfect. If I hadn't read a review by a reader I trusted, I would have put it down after the prologue.

2) It's violent. Like, very violent. And some of that violence involves children.

But, to counter those caveats, here are two corresponding notes:

1) I don't think the theology is perfect, but I do appreciate that it takes theology seriously. The theology MATTERS in this book, and I love that. (Also, much of the imperfect theology is seen through the eyes of clearly biased and compromised characters. So, it doesn't actually say much, if anything, about the theology of the author.)

2) The violence matters to the story, and it never feels like the author loves it or is wallowing in it. It's not voyeuristic. (I almost said it's not creepy, but...vampires are kinda necessarily creepy. "It's not TOLD creepily," might be a better and truer statement.)

So, with those caveats out of the way, who should read this? Who is that audience who shouldn't miss this book?

People who love the fantasy genre. People who want to read something that could be described as "Dracula as told in the world of Brother Cadfael." People who like something a little meatier in their speculative fiction. People who like it when novelists take Christianity (or any religion, really) seriously--that is, who think that what people believe actually makes a difference in the real world. Or, better yet, that you can tell what someone believes by what that person does. (At least sometimes. At least a little.)

People who want to read a page-turner. Because, if nothing else, "No Moon To Pray To" is definitely that.

I really liked it. I had trouble falling asleep the night I finished it because all the shadows seemed darker and scarier, true, but...I really liked it. Looking forward to seeing what Jerry Guern writes next.

Peace of Christ to you,

Jessica Snell

This post contains Amazon affiliate links; if you purchase a book from this link, I receive a small percentage of the purchase price. I will probably use it to buy more books. (See full disclosure on sidebar of my blog.)

Book Notes: All Shall Be Well, by Deborah Crombie

All Shall Be Well, by Deborah Crombie, is the second in her Kincaid and James mystery series (you can read my review of the first book here).

In this book, Inspector Kincaid has the sad task of investigating the death of his neighbor--a neighbor it turns out he didn't know nearly as well as he thought he did.

As with the first book in the series, I enjoyed this book mostly for the sheer pleasure of its prose and the way Crombie describes many disparate people with the same detached, intelligent kindness. It's just a world that's rather nice to spend time in--even though there are a few awful people in it. (There have to be in a murder mystery!)

Though there was one particular character in this one--an emotionally abusive boyfriend--who soured a bit of the book for me. He wasn't in a lot of it, but everything about him was unpleasant. Not to totally contradict my last paragraph, but it was like he was the one character the author had no pity for (understandably), and so it just wasn't fun whenever he turned up on the page. I'm curious to see if having a character who is the "one exception that proves the rule" ends up being a pattern in the series.

Because, of course, I'm totally reading the next one.


Content warning for the usual things, but nothing egregious.


Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell



This post contains Amazon affiliate links; if you purchase a book from this link, I receive a small percentage of the purchase price. I will probably use it to buy more books. (See full disclosure on sidebar of my blog.)

Book Notes: "Reading the Christian Spiritual Classics: A Guide for Evangelicals," edited by Jamin Goggin and Kyle Strobel

Reading the Christian Spiritual Classics, edited by Jamin Goggin and Kyle Strobel, is, as the title says, a guide for evangelicals. It starts by explaining what the spiritual classics are and then, helpfully, gives instruction on how to read them, how to avoid the dangers in reading them, and shows why they're worth reading. Then it goes into a chronological overview, introducing and giving context to works from the church fathers to the Puritans.

Full disclosure: I know at least five of the contributors to this book. But I didn't just read the sections of the folks I know--I read the whole thing, and enjoyed both being reminded of works I've loved, and being introduced to new-to-me classics.

To close, I really love this paragraph by Betsy Barber:

Due to the historical strangeness of many of these writings, it is beneficial to practice hospitality as we read: to entertain these ideas as guests. As with guests, you may not appreciate or benefit from all they say, but give them prayerful space and consideration for a time. Listen to the common family-of-God dialect in their words. 

You could do worse than just taking this book and reading through all of the works the contributors talk about, taking their chapters as a map to unfamiliar territory. I'm grateful for the work these contributors did in providing such a helpful "field guide" to modern evangelicals who want to read these primacy sources in church history.


Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell



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Book Notes: "Quintessence," by David Walton

"Quintessence," by David Walton, is, as the back-cover copy says, set in "an alternate Age of Exploration" where "alchemy is a true science."

And that, right there, was just about all it took to sell me on this book. I'm fascinated by the Elizabethan age, and the metaphysical poets, and Shakespeare, and...and, and, and. In that time period, alchemy and science were sometimes pursued by very similar means, and the only difference between the two is that science ended up working and alchemy didn't.

So positing a world where that turned out differently is interesting from the start. And Walton followed it up with a nicely-paced plot and great description.

This is definitely a book where the setting is the strongest part of the story (and there were a couple of nice shout-outs to Lewis' Dawn Treader, if you keep your eyes open for them), but the characters worked, too. I especially liked that he had religious characters whose beliefs felt real, and integral to their personalities. They didn't all agree--you had Protestants, Catholics, and atheists, just for a start--but it felt like the author was determined to give them each their own best arguments, and not just throw up straw men for his heroes to knock back down.

(One possible exception is the Inquisitor character--but, granted, it's hard to make someone from the Spanish Inquisition sympathetic.)


I enjoyed this one. Walton gave me a new world, with fascinating new creatures, and a plot that kept me wondering what was going to happen next. Recommended if you enjoy the time period, or just like well-written speculative fiction.



Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell


This post contains Amazon affiliate links; if you purchase a book from this link, I receive a small percentage of the purchase price. I will probably use it to buy more books. (See full disclosure on sidebar of my blog.)

Book Notes: "A Share in Death," by Deborah Crombie

I picked this up as vacation reading and it was such a pleasant surprise! The best mystery novels are, at their hearts, sympathetic paintings of a variety of human characters, and "A Share in Death" nailed both the accurate, pleasing brush-strokes and the kind-but-clear-eyed view of human foibles.

I can't remember where I heard about Crombie, but when I checked out the first page of the book, I found this lovely little bit of prose:

Duncan Kincaid's holiday began well. As he turned the car into the lane, a shaft of sun broke through the clouds and lit a patch of rolling Yorkshire moor as if someone had thrown the switch on a celestial spotlight. 

Drystone walls ran like pale runes across the brilliant green of pasture, where luminous sheep nibbled, unconcerned with their importance in the composition. The scene seemed set off in time as well as space, and gave him the sensation of viewing a living tapestry, a world remote and utterly unattainable. The clouds shifted again, the vision fading as swiftly as it had come, and he felt an odd shiver of loss at its passing. 

That was enough to convince me that the author was going to take me on a journey that I would enjoy, and I was happy to be proved right.

Our hero, Duncan Kincaid, is an inspector for Scotland Yard, off on holiday to a borrowed timeshare in an old and sprawling mansion. Of course, it turns into a working holiday when someone is murdered. All of the suspects are Kincaid's fellow vacationers there in the mansion, closing off the murderer and his potential victims in a neatly contained setting, the better for us to get to know them and try to figure out whodunnit.

It's odd, I suppose, that murder mysteries should be such delightful reads, full of sympathetic characters and interesting conversations and beautifully-rendered visions of pretty countryside locations, when they always have such  horrible crimes at their hearts.

But, the best of them are that way, and this was, if not one of the best, one of the very, very good.




Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

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Book Notes: "Lord Peter: The Complete Lord Peter Wimsey Stories," by Dorothy L. Sayers

"Lord Peter: The Complete Lord Peter Wimsey Stories," by Dorothy L. Sayers, was the end of my read (and, in most cases, re-read) through the Wimsey books.

And this is the point where, instead of writing a proper post, I'm tempted just to sigh the sigh of a deeply-contented reader, and let that be enough.

But, I'll resist that temptation. Here are a few notes on what I noticed this time through the collection:


-In these short stories, I kept noticing echoes of her novels. It was as if some of the short stories had bits of DNA that eventually were cultured/adapted/incorporated into larger entities. For example, the beach-and-sand-and-footprints clues in The Unsolved Puzzle of the Man with No Face felt like a bit of a trial run for some of the "how'd he do it?" questions in the novel Have His Carcase.


-In some of the stories, Lord Peter didn't really feel like Lord Peter. It felt like Sayers had an idea for a nifty little puzzle, and she had Lord Peter solve it because he was the character to hand, not because it was a puzzle he'd be naturally drawn to solving. For example, in The Adventurous Exploit of the Cave of Ali Baba, Lord Peter goes incognito in order to infiltrate a mysterious society, but it felt like you could have substituted any other determined, well-financed, brilliant gumshoe into his place, and the story wouldn't have changed much.


-In some of the stories, Lord Peter is ABSOLUTELY Lord Peter, and couldn't be anyone else. I mean, the opening of The Haunted Policeman is not only my favorite opening of a short story ever, but no one but Lord Peter and Harriet could have ever had that conversation.


-Speaking of Lord Peter and Harriet: the domestic story of Talboys is just wonderful. I love it so much.


Should you read this? Yes, of course you should. Stop asking such silly questions.


Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

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Book Notes: "The Magic Mirror: Concerning a Lonely Princess, a Foundling Girl, a Scheming King and a Pickpocket Squirrel," by Susan Hill Long

The Magic Mirror, by Susan Hill Long, was a recent read-aloud of ours, and it was a good one.

It's a children's fantasy, set in a medieval world, complete with a recognizably Catholic belief system. That background presence of religion was actually one of the things I enjoyed about the book; it's not that I agreed completely with the religious beliefs of any of the characters, but it just felt more like a real world when there were people of faith, common superstitions, churches as part of the urban landscape, etc. It was interesting to read about a world where God was God, and God was good, but there were still bits of minor magic floating about, almost as if they were just another bit of creation.

We follow our heroine, Maggie, as she sets off on an adventure. It's a travel story, with colorful characters who are (on purpose, I'd bet) reminiscent of Chaucer's pilgrims.

Maggie is our lodestar, and her plot is always foremost, but the author threw in so many other things! The book is full of side quests, complications, and minor characters. There's danger, and dire deeds, and I appreciated that the author didn't gloss over the evilness of the villains or the foibles of the heroes, BUT she also never wallowed in any of the bad stuff, nor did she write about it in a way that's inappropriate for school-age kids.

(Note: There's definitely stuff here that you'd want to talk through with your kids--I'm not saying it's void of troubling or controversial content. But I found that it was all presented in a way that sparked good conversation with my kids, and not in a way that left me feeling like I had to do damage control. And that's something I like in kids' books. YMMV.)

I really enjoyed this one, though I found it odder than I expected. Occasionally that oddity felt irritating, but mostly it just made for an engaging, colorful tale. My kids were fascinated by the characters, and crowed at all the plot reveals as the story progressed. Recommended.



Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell


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Book Notes: "The Wind in the Willows," by Kenneth Grahame

"The Wind in the Willows," by Kenneth Grahame is, of course, a classic. But it's a classic I hadn't read before (though I'd encountered bits of the chapter with Pan in various other publications).

It's a story about Mole, and his friends who live on or near the riverbank, particularly Rat and Toad and Badger.

I loved Mole. And I loved Rat, too, and I enjoyed and appreciated the venerable and valiant Badger.


I pretty much hated Toad, though, and I disliked almost every scene he was in.

I have a terrible feeling that the moral of the story is that We Are All Toad, and that we don't deserve the beautiful and joyous life on the riverbank, except that we have Friends who help us win back our Heritage, and so we are all Recipients of Grace, but... I still don't like Toad.

I expect I'll read "The Wind in the Willows" again. Because it is beautiful.


Except for the parts with Toad. Maybe I should be good enough to read those again.

But I don't think that I am.


Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell


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Mini Reviews: The Books I Read in March 2017

--I'm catching up on my book notes, taking them a month at a time. Since I'm behind, I'm only allowing myself a line or two on each book. I hope they still give you an idea of whether or not these would be books you'd enjoy picking up yourself!--



-"What the Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast: And Two Other Short Guides to Achieving More at Work and at Home," by Laura Vanderkam. This is a compilation of three short e-books. I don't share Vanderkam's optimism about how many things can be accomplished in one short weekend or morning, but I still appreciate her novel and hopeful way of looking at the number of hours we are all given in our days and weeks.



-"Eleanor and Park," by Rainbow Rowell. I listened to this one on audiobook. Beautifully and compellingly written, as Rowell's work always is. But I didn't enjoy it, mostly because the heroine's home life is so (legitimately, realistically) bleak and depressing. I also wouldn't pass it on to a teenager, b/c of the level of (probably also legitimate and realistic) sensuality. But beautifully done, all the same.



-"The Masqueraders," by Georgette Heyer. This was my favorite Heyer for a long, long time. ("Sylvester, Or, The Wicked Uncle" has since supplanted it from the top spot, but just barely.)

This romance, full of adventure and derring-do, disguise and weariness of disguise, a slow-burning friendship turned into passion, and one of the happiest and most harmonious sibling relationships I've ever seen in fiction, remains one of my very favorite stories. Prudence and her "mountain" win me over every time.



-"How to Manage Your Home Without Losing Your Mind: Dealing with Your House's Dirty Little Secrets," by Dana K. White. Lots of housekeeping books say they're for people who aren't naturally good at housekeeping.

This one actually is.




-"The Hobbit," by J. R. R. Tolkien. Just finished listening through this with Adam and the kids. Delightful, as always.



-"Busman's Honeymoon," by Dorothy L. Sayers. It was my first time making it through this--which is shocking, given my love for "Gaudy Night"!  But l always stalled after the delightful exchange of letters at the beginning of the book. Still, I'm glad I've read it now, and next time I can revisit it with pleasure, knowing that while it might be a bit uneven, it has all the charm and interest and deep feeling I've come to expect from Sayers' accounts of Lord Peter and Harriet.

(Also





--SPOILER ALERT--




the ghosts! Why did I never know about the ghosts???)




Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell





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Mini Reviews: The Books I Read in February 2017

--I'm catching up on my book notes, taking them a month at a time. Since I'm behind, I'm only allowing myself a line or two on each book. I hope they still give you an idea of whether or not these would be books you'd enjoy picking up yourself!--



-"The Zoo Job (Leverage #2)," by Keith R. A. Candido. I didn't enjoy this as much as the first Leverage novel, but it was still a fun read. No need for any explicit content warnings that I recall, but just the kind of normal language and such you might expect on a network drama.



-"Unf*ck Your Habitat: You're Better Than Your Mess," by Rachel Hoffman. This one clearly deserves a language warning! If that doesn't bug you, though, there's some good stuff here, especially for people dealing with mental or physical disabilities, who still want to live in a decent home. The author clearly comes from a different philosophical/political/theological viewpoint that I do, but her practical suggestions are brilliantly helpful, and I love her down-to-earth version of advice-giving.



-"The Corinthian," by Georgette Heyer. This was such a fun reread, because I was a lot younger last time I read this. When I read it through this time, I picked up on so much subtle humor that totally went over my head before. Heyer has so much fun in this one. She never tells you what the hero is thinking, not explicitly, but she doesn't have to, because it's all there in the action and dialogue.

Heyer is just so good.


Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell



This post contains Amazon affiliate links; if you purchase a book from this link, I receive a small percentage of the purchase price.  (See full disclosure on sidebar of my blog.)

Mini Reviews: The Books I Read in January 2017

--I'm catching up on my book notes, taking them a month at a time. Since I'm behind, I'm only allowing myself a line or two on each book. I hope they still give you an idea of whether or not these would be books you'd enjoy picking up yourself!--



-"Have His Carcase," by Dorothy L. Sayers. In which our hero and heroine alternately romance each other and get cranky at each other. Featuring a lovely coastline walk I'd love to take, minus the murder. Delightful, as always. (Lord Peter and Harriet Vane 4Ever.)



-"Murder Must Advertise," by Dorothy L. Sayers. Of the Lord Peter Wimsey books which do NOT feature Harriet Vane, I'd put this or "The Nine Tailors" at the top of the heap. Seeing Lord Peter go undercover in not just one, but two! roles...it's a thing of beauty. Please read this. It's marvelous.




-"The Con Job (Leverage #1)," by Matt Forbeck. Great fun if you're a fan of the show. The "Con" of the title is Comic Con in San Diego, making this a con pulled at a con--a happy thought that justifies the book's entire existence. The author has so much fun with the combination of these characters in that setting, and I had a great time reading it. Cautions for the sort of language and situations you'd expect to find on a network television drama.



-"Gaudy Night," by Dorothy L. Sayers. The best of novels. What else can I say?  Well, this, I guess: after reading it through this time around, I found myself telling my sister-in-law, "Every time I read this, I copy out more quotations from it. Eventually I'm going to have retyped this book word-for-word onto a document on my computer."



-"Christmas at Thompson Hall and Other Christmas Stories," by Anthony Trollope. Not my favorite of Trollope's work, but I enjoyed dipping into this bit of Victorian fiction over the holidays. The story set in the United States during the Civil War was especially interesting. (It's always interesting to read treatments of America by foreign visitors.)


Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell


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Book Notes: "Write Without Crushing Your Soul: Sustainable Publishing and Freelancing," by Ed Cyzewski

"Write Without Crushing Your Soul," by Ed Cyzewski, is a mix of practical advice and theoretical musings about the business of being a freelance writer. And, as such, it suited me very well. I like books that are basically intelligent people writing down their free-ranging thoughts on their area of expertise, and then giving their best advice to me, the reader.

Here are a few quotations from the book that I found particularly helpful:

The last thing you want to do is waste your time on something that isn't your first priority to begin with. In fact, my goal for myself and for you is to spend the vast majority of each day writing.

Just think of a new way to promote your book every week and leave things at that. You can do as much or as little as you want, and that removes a lot of the pressure and stress. Promotion simply becomes a small thing you add to your schedule each week rather than an all-consuming monster that threatens to take over your life for several months. Mind you, this may not be as effective as the industry standards for publicity, but there's no guarantee that either will work any way. Why not opt for the path that leaves you with a potentially healthier outcome?

...here's how I've found a sustainable way forward--at least for now. In order to write sustainably, you need to relentlessly be yourself. That isn't necessarily the same thing as following a calling or your dreams. The difference is essential, in fact.

Not an earthshaking read (though that last bit of advice might be earthshaking, if you really followed it), but encouraging and interesting. Recommended.

Peace of Christ to you,

Jessica Snell

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Book Notes: "The Lifegiving Home," by Sally & Sarah Clarkson

"The Lifegiving Home" is a book about homemaking, written by mother-daughter writing pair Sally and Sarah Clarkson. After a fairly short introductory section, the rest of the book is divided up into twelve chapters, one for each month of the year, wherein the Clarksons discuss things like "Days to Commemorate: Marking Growth with Celebration" and "Creating a Framework for Home: Rhythms, Routines, and Rituals."

When I first picked it up, I assumed that this book was primarily written for wives and mothers, but it turns out that one of the authors is a single woman, and it became clear as I read on that "The Lifegiving Home" is aimed at all Christian women, which was a really nice surprise.

(The other surprise was that I ended up liking the chapters written by Sarah--the daughter of the team--better than those written by Sally. I was surprised by this because Sally is the writer I'd heard of--and read--before. But having read her, I'm pretty sure she's the sort of mom who's delighted by the fact that her daughter is starting to lap her.)

The main thrust of this book is that our homes are a tool and a staging area for loving the Lord by loving other people. It's absolutely a theme I resonate with. Here's a quotation that sums up the best of the book, for me:

When you understand the reality of incarnation, the way that the physical trappings of our lives and our use of time and space are places where God either comes in His creative presence or remains at bay, you understand that nothing is neutral. Nothing. You can't just waste an hour on the Internet. You can't just miss one sunrise in its beauty. No room is just space. No hour is meaningless. No meal is mere sustenance. Every rhythm and atom of existence are spaces in which the Kingdom can come, in which the story of God's love can be told anew, in which the stuff of life can be marvelously turned into love.

What I liked best about the book was also, weirdly, what I also liked the least: the authors did a beautiful job of describing what a "lifegiving home" might look like. The most inspiring part of the book was simply being reminded that our everyday work in our homes is important, and then being shown, in concrete examples from the authors' own lives, what that might look like. But those same reminders and examples eventually, for me, grew a bit weary-making. For example, the idea of playing "lilting Celtic music" to promote a beautiful atmosphere was lovely the first time I heard it ... but by the end of a long book, I never wanted to hear about "lilting Celtic music" ever again.

To be fair, I think that kind of repetition is hard to avoid in a book like this, and I appreciate the authors' willing vulnerability in using their own lives as examples of the principles they were talking about. Most of their examples were beautiful, encouraging, and refreshing. But I think the book probably could have been a bit shorter, had a few fewer lists of ideas, a little less repetition, and not really suffered for the loss.  (Note: if you read a chapter each month, instead of reading the whole book at once, the repetition probably wouldn't be much of an issue.)

But, I'd be remiss not to also talk about why the concrete reminders were the best part of the book, too. The pictures Sarah and Sally painted of ordinary, good family life were inspiring, and they were inspiring because they were reminders both that all of this quotidian labor matters, and also that all of this quotidian labor really can be done well. It's not an impossible task. It's a good thing, it matters, and it can be done well.

That's a reminder I can stand to hear most days.

And, finally, because I am a Christian-church-year nerd, I have to say how much I enjoyed Sarah's December chapter, where she geeked out about the glories of Advent and all twelve days of Christmas.  I loved it.  The whole thing was awesome, and if I tried to copy out all of my favorite quotations from that chapter, this review would probably be twice as long as it already is. So, let it suffice for me to type out my favorite sentence, which comes in the context of Sarah explaining that the feasting part of the Christian cycle of feasts-and-fasts isn't about hedonistic over-indulgence, but, rather:

The point is to put flesh and expression to joy.

Yes. Exactly this.

In fact, I think you could safely say that the point of this entire book is that homemaking can be one way to put flesh and expression to love.

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

This post contains Amazon affiliate links; if you purchase a book from this link, I receive a small percentage of the purchase price.  (See full disclosure on sidebar of my blog.)