Jennifer Shoop (Author of Small Wonders)

Jennifer Shoop is currently reading Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude by Ross Gay	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
3 hours, 12 min ago · like · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude by Ross Gay. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude by Ross Gay <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Jennifer Shoop wants to read Love and Other Words by Christina Lauren (Goodreads Author)	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Feb 02, 2026 03:50PM · like · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Love and Other Words by Christina Lauren. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — Love and Other Words by Christina Lauren <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Jennifer Shoop wants to read The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Feb 02, 2026 03:46PM · like · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Jennifer Shoop wants to read Dandelion Is Dead by Rosie Storey	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Feb 02, 2026 03:45PM · like · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Dandelion Is Dead by Rosie Storey. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — Dandelion Is Dead by Rosie Storey <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Jennifer Shoop rated a book really liked it The God of the Woods by Liz Moore (Goodreads Author)	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
As a mystery, GOTW earns top marks for its whondunit mechanics. I was genuinely surprised by what happened to Bear Van Laar, and fell for many of the book’s red herrings — I thought Sluiter was too obvious to be true, but contemplated Peter Van Laar ...more
Feb 02, 2026 03:44PM · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of The God of the Woods by Liz Moore. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — The God of the Woods by Liz Moore <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Jennifer Shoop rated a book really liked it The Berry Pickers by Amanda Peters (Goodreads Author)	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
In The Berry Pickers, Amanda Peters tells the story of a young Mi’kmaq girl, Ruthie, who is kidnapped by a white couple devastated that they are unable to produce their own child. Ruthie’s absence from her family leads to five decades of family traum ...more
Feb 02, 2026 03:44PM · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of The Berry Pickers by Amanda Peters. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — The Berry Pickers by Amanda Peters <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Jennifer Shoop rated a book really liked it The God of the Woods by Liz Moore (Goodreads Author)	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
As a mystery, GOTW earns top marks for its whondunit mechanics. I was genuinely surprised by what happened to Bear Van Laar, and fell for many of the book’s red herrings — I thought Sluiter was too obvious to be true, but contemplated Peter Van Laar ...more
Feb 02, 2026 03:43PM · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of The God of the Woods by Liz Moore. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — The God of the Woods by Liz Moore <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Jennifer Shoop rated a book really liked it Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy (Goodreads Author)	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Charlotte McConaghy’s Wild Dark Shore explores the porousness between life and death, and the wearying responsibility of stewarding the living through the buffeting dangers of the world while they are here. McConaghy makes the point that we are capab ...more
Feb 02, 2026 03:42PM · like · see review
Jennifer Shoop rated a book really liked it Orbital by Samantha Harvey	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
his month’s Magpie book club pick was Orbital by Samantha Harvey — a sweeping poetic meditation on our planet via the shifting lenses of an international group of astronauts orbiting the earth on the way to the moon. From a narrative standpoint, the ...more
Feb 02, 2026 03:41PM · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Orbital by Samantha Harvey. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — Orbital by Samantha Harvey <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Jennifer Shoop rated a book really liked it Orbital by Samantha Harvey	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
his month’s Magpie book club pick was Orbital by Samantha Harvey — a sweeping poetic meditation on our planet via the shifting lenses of an international group of astronauts orbiting the earth on the way to the moon. From a narrative standpoint, the ...more
Feb 02, 2026 03:41PM · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Orbital by Samantha Harvey. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — Orbital by Samantha Harvey <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">

Jennifer Shoop is currently reading

Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude
by Ross Gay

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Love and Other Words
by Christina Lauren (Goodreads Author)

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Jennifer Shoop wants to read

The Safekeep
by Yael van der Wouden

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Dandelion Is Dead
by Rosie Storey

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Jennifer Shoop rated a book really liked it

The God of the Woods
by Liz Moore (Goodreads Author)

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1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

As a mystery, GOTW earns top marks for its whondunit mechanics. I was genuinely surprised by what happened to Bear Van Laar, and fell for many of the book’s red herrings — I thought Sluiter was too obvious to be true, but contemplated Peter Van Laar ...more

Jennifer Shoop rated a book really liked it

The Berry Pickers
by Amanda Peters (Goodreads Author)

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1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

In The Berry Pickers, Amanda Peters tells the story of a young Mi’kmaq girl, Ruthie, who is kidnapped by a white couple devastated that they are unable to produce their own child. Ruthie’s absence from her family leads to five decades of family traum ...more

Jennifer Shoop rated a book really liked it

The God of the Woods
by Liz Moore (Goodreads Author)

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Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

As a mystery, GOTW earns top marks for its whondunit mechanics. I was genuinely surprised by what happened to Bear Van Laar, and fell for many of the book’s red herrings — I thought Sluiter was too obvious to be true, but contemplated Peter Van Laar ...more

Jennifer Shoop rated a book really liked it

Wild Dark Shore
by Charlotte McConaghy (Goodreads Author)

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Charlotte McConaghy’s Wild Dark Shore explores the porousness between life and death, and the wearying responsibility of stewarding the living through the buffeting dangers of the world while they are here. McConaghy makes the point that we are capab ...more

Jennifer Shoop rated a book really liked it

Orbital
by Samantha Harvey

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his month’s Magpie book club pick was Orbital by Samantha Harvey — a sweeping poetic meditation on our planet via the shifting lenses of an international group of astronauts orbiting the earth on the way to the moon. From a narrative standpoint, the his month’s Magpie book club pick was Orbital by Samantha Harvey — a sweeping poetic meditation on our planet via the shifting lenses of an international group of astronauts orbiting the earth on the way to the moon. From a narrative standpoint, the plot is low-battery; the sole distinctive happenings in the novel are the death of one of the astronaut’s parents while the astronaut is in orbit, and the gathering, impact, and dispersal of a typhoon, as witnessed from space. In this sense, the book is a novel, but barely; it unfolds in crisp time (16 orbits over 24 hours) but we don’t have any climax or denouement — instead, a drifting sense of wondering and wonderment at the condition of being a human being in the Milky Way, the various ways we have marred our globe politically and environmentally, what it means to create art and bear witness to beauty while here for our millisecond of consciousness. (Among other “lightweight” topics – ha! I tried to explain the book to several friends while in Bermuda and perhaps the most concise way to capture it: “it’s asking what it means that we are here on this planet.” No big deal.) I found the book’s sense of narrative weightlessness — the way we drift in and out of its characters’ consciousnesses, the elegant approach and handling of the philosophical, the accretive and epithetic style, and the sporadic appearance of Chie’s lists (as though these have glided into the text and are bobbing gently against Harvey’s prose) — a fascinating and deft achievement on Harvey’s part: the text performs the experience of floating in space, especially in the way it continuously returns to what it means to be a part of earth, to belong to it. Earth exerting its gravity. The passage that best captured the novel’s peripatetic space-pulse for me:

“Companionship is our consolation for being trivial. And so, in loneliness and curiosity and hope, humanity looks outwards and thinks they might be on Mars perhaps, the others, and sends out probes…Maybe one day we’ll look in the mirror and be happy with the fair-to-middling upright ape that eyes us back, and we’ll gather our breath and think: OK, we’re alone, so be it. Maybe the whole nature of things is one of precariousness, of wobbling on a pinhead of being, of decentering ourselves inch by inch as we do in life, as we come to understand that the staggering extent of our own non-extent is a tumultuous and wave-tossed offering of peace.”

Wow — ! I underlined dozens of passages like this for the sheer gorgeousness of the writing. It is breathtakingly poetic, and immediately invites the reader into a contemplative state. The novel’s ethos reminded me of Rilke’s “Go to the Limits of Your Longing,” in which he writes: “Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.” Harvey embodies that spirit, witnessing the terrifying while permitting herself to back-stagger at the magnificence of earth and the expanse of space. There is room — in fact need — for both, she seems to say, a message I found hopeful...

Read the full review here: https://magpiebyjenshoop.com/book-rev... ...more

Jennifer Shoop rated a book really liked it

Orbital
by Samantha Harvey

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

his month’s Magpie book club pick was Orbital by Samantha Harvey — a sweeping poetic meditation on our planet via the shifting lenses of an international group of astronauts orbiting the earth on the way to the moon. From a narrative standpoint, the his month’s Magpie book club pick was Orbital by Samantha Harvey — a sweeping poetic meditation on our planet via the shifting lenses of an international group of astronauts orbiting the earth on the way to the moon. From a narrative standpoint, the plot is low-battery; the sole distinctive happenings in the novel are the death of one of the astronaut’s parents while the astronaut is in orbit, and the gathering, impact, and dispersal of a typhoon, as witnessed from space. In this sense, the book is a novel, but barely; it unfolds in crisp time (16 orbits over 24 hours) but we don’t have any climax or denouement — instead, a drifting sense of wondering and wonderment at the condition of being a human being in the Milky Way, the various ways we have marred our globe politically and environmentally, what it means to create art and bear witness to beauty while here for our millisecond of consciousness. (Among other “lightweight” topics – ha! I tried to explain the book to several friends while in Bermuda and perhaps the most concise way to capture it: “it’s asking what it means that we are here on this planet.” No big deal.) I found the book’s sense of narrative weightlessness — the way we drift in and out of its characters’ consciousnesses, the elegant approach and handling of the philosophical, the accretive and epithetic style, and the sporadic appearance of Chie’s lists (as though these have glided into the text and are bobbing gently against Harvey’s prose) — a fascinating and deft achievement on Harvey’s part: the text performs the experience of floating in space, especially in the way it continuously returns to what it means to be a part of earth, to belong to it. Earth exerting its gravity. The passage that best captured the novel’s peripatetic space-pulse for me:

“Companionship is our consolation for being trivial. And so, in loneliness and curiosity and hope, humanity looks outwards and thinks they might be on Mars perhaps, the others, and sends out probes…Maybe one day we’ll look in the mirror and be happy with the fair-to-middling upright ape that eyes us back, and we’ll gather our breath and think: OK, we’re alone, so be it. Maybe the whole nature of things is one of precariousness, of wobbling on a pinhead of being, of decentering ourselves inch by inch as we do in life, as we come to understand that the staggering extent of our own non-extent is a tumultuous and wave-tossed offering of peace.”

Wow — ! I underlined dozens of passages like this for the sheer gorgeousness of the writing. It is breathtakingly poetic, and immediately invites the reader into a contemplative state. The novel’s ethos reminded me of Rilke’s “Go to the Limits of Your Longing,” in which he writes: “Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.” Harvey embodies that spirit, witnessing the terrifying while permitting herself to back-stagger at the magnificence of earth and the expanse of space. There is room — in fact need — for both, she seems to say, a message I found hopeful...

Read the full review here: https://magpiebyjenshoop.com/book-rev... ...more

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Preview — The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden

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Preview — Dandelion Is Dead by Rosie Storey

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Preview — The God of the Woods by Liz Moore

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Preview — The Berry Pickers by Amanda Peters

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Jennifer Shoop’s Followers (9)

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Jennifer Shoop

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Combine EditionsJennifer Shoop’s books

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See a Problem?

Preview — Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude by Ross Gay

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Preview — Love and Other Words by Christina Lauren

See a Problem?

Preview — The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden

See a Problem?

Preview — Dandelion Is Dead by Rosie Storey

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Preview — The God of the Woods by Liz Moore

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Preview — The Berry Pickers by Amanda Peters

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Preview — The God of the Woods by Liz Moore

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Preview — Orbital by Samantha Harvey

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Preview — Orbital by Samantha Harvey

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