Lisa Lawrence > Recent Status Updates

What a welcome change of pace! Fun and moving quickly.

Yep, I started this last night and could not put it down. If not for tremendous will power and the sunny day calling, I might have been late to work - it is so compelling. A girl in slums so disgusting, given hope by another Ugandan survivor who has games to teach -- and life lessons, too.

The Bundrens should be a literary family like the Joads, used in crosswords or other references. They are almost Biblical in scale. The writing requires close attention lest you miss the scandal skimmed by and embedded in the narrative. Fun ... for nerds like me.

It's full of strong images and rhythm, even a couple of words I had to look up. I am enjoying it, though I have one character I can't identify... Who is Lafe?

I'm going to require a written flowchart to keep the characters straight. A challenging read but full of grit and what I imagine to be real life.

The stories and lessons about how God can use our broken, imperfect lives to spread His love... every one of us. Even me! ❤

Interesting start, as always w/ this author. She develops her characters so well, even the dead ones.

A book to enjoy in small bites: love in action and being open to opportunities.

Good! Tsunami as described through eyes of native boy: what will he become when all is destroyed?

Wonderful adventure! I am a fan of this author and can't wait to read more. It's like Dickens distilled in just the right way: enough detail to allow the smells and sights of street life in London with humor and savvy to make it more palatable.

How have I missed this author? Delightful story weaving historical people like Dickens in London.

Sense of impending disaster... not what I was looking for in a "get well" read. Excellent build-up, however, though ominous.

Good! Always work to get into a different culture, get past foreign names ...to find the same humanity underneath.

Okay, this is over for me. I have too many issues w/ processed foods as it is... Dear Jurgis is headed for despair, and I can't stand the trip.

Small print on an old edition ... Lithuanian names and language...
Sad immigrants trying to avoid being swindled in Chicago... not sure this is the time for this novel.

Dark and hopeless Work Pickens better start making better choices, or I will have to quit spending time w/ him. Pat Conroy liked the book, or I would have quit 20 pages back.

We draw our stories from real experience. This quote: "Alice noted that her hand was shaking and urged herself to remember the fact for when she next needed to depict the bodily effects of shock, its ice wash hitting a person..."

Slow starter.

Civil rights. Women's rights. This book published in 2004, about life in a southern town in 1958... still relevant.

Can't wait to find out how it ends... such an unexpected twist!

Just started this... already found a quote: "Everyone born of God overcome the world."

Louisa's service as a nurse during the Civil War was described in her letters home about the individual soldiers, their stories and experiences on the hospital wards. These were published and revealed the author's talent for writing about real events rather than fantasy.

Wonderful but thought-provoking. No fluffy romance, this one. Classic Moyes.

This is a young adult biography written in 1933, so it is quite sanitized as compared to the 2010
Lost Summer of LMA. Though the second is historical fiction, the letters provide real contrasts in the depiction of father Bronson Alcott.