Insightful, emotional journey
345201
A view into the life that made him exactly who he is and where he chose to be. I've been a huge fan for years and am grateful to him for sharing his story with us, both in this well - written book and through music.
488206
My deepest regard for the author. His sharing of the depths of his grief and his faith are intensely moving. The authors faith journey during his pain is profoundly descriptive and is perhaps a pathway for us all to journey along to better understand our own grief and it's connection to love and suffering.
2037571
When I started reading Imagine Me Gone, I wasn't in the right place for it, emotionally. I found myself bored during Michael's long rants about music and more annoyed with him than empathetic during his relationship struggles. So, I shelved this book for a while. I picked it back up recently, and this time, it hit me straight in the feels and never let go.

I connected with this story on several, very close levels. In short, this book hit extremely closely to home. As I came to know and understand Michael more in the second half of the book, my annoyance with him in the beginning made me feel guilty for not being more understanding initially. As a result, I found myself even more understanding Alec's and Celia's conflicting emotions toward their brother. Their love, guilt, sense of duty, and irritation with him were all written in such realistic way, and readers can't help but be drawn into the family and become emotionally invested in their struggles.

Adam Haslett essentially nailed the intricacies of mental illnesses and the effects they have on the people who suffer from them and the people who love them. Margaret, Alec, and Celia each have their own issues as well, and the subtle way that Haslett wove them through their stories made them all the more powerful. The important messages he included about the need for quality mental health care, the importance of well-regulated medication, and the value of having a support system was poignant and compelling.
2287178
This book was both amazing and heartfelt.  Having lost several close family members after long illnesses, I know how confusing, heartbreaking, difficult, isolating, and emotionally and financially devastating this journey can be not only for the patient but also for the primary caregiver and the entire family.  Ms. Cooper showed great courage in re-visiting her daughters' illness and death in the hopes that it would bring about something positive for someone, might possibly make their journey just a little bit easier.  This book is written in an easy style, giving people practical information and tips, as well as emotional support.  Ms. Cooper provides insight to anyone who finds it necessary to navigate the health system, and coordinate the many necessary appointments, while also navigating the family dynamics that go along with it.  You can't help but feel how personal this story is, along with all of the raw emotions that were experienced as Bethany's illness progressed.  I am so glad that I read this book.  It reminded me that your life can change in an instant, and you need to have courage, faith, compassion, and humor to face the unimaginable.  Ms. Cooper has blessed us with Bethany's story, and I will be a little bit better because of it.
2214024
The Painted Veil takes us on an emotional journey that repeatedly emphasizes human frailties and strengths. Temptation, strangeness, sickness, boredom, and privilege in their turn intrude on the characters, drawing from them a rich vocabulary of emotional responses.

The photography of China is spellbinding as it is compelling, illustrating the peaks and low places of human misery and joy (not happiness, mind you, but joy). Costuming is low key, not distracting from the real business of character study. The lighting always cues us to the hidden and explicit emotional landscape, not one which is white or innocent, but one filled with complexity and color.
2832887
This is a compelling, hear-felt journey of personal discovery. From an idyllic early childhood, the author explores (sometimes painfully) her life to date in a marvelous way that is enchanting and mesmerizing.
Looking at life through her "third eye," vision quests, and other enablers, DeNicola accepts past life experiences in her search for spiritual understanding. Her prose and poetry are both despairing and hopeful and make this a page turner from start to finish.
1055678
We all experience the effects of death, grief, and grieving within our family and friends.  Often we feel helplesswhat can we do, what should we do?  This book, a journey of grieving, is a must-read; it provides an insight and awareness that is helpful to the person going through the journey and to the person who wants to help or do something to help that grieving family or friend.  And wouldnt that be all of us at one time or another?  Author Charles Schmidtke speaks candidly from first-hand experience about his journey of grief based on the illness and death of daughter Heidi, and more profoundly he directly and indirectly offers insight and advice.

I wanted to read the book primarily because my colleague and good friend, Tara, is Heidis sister, and I knew their dad had written the book. What surprised me was that with each chapter I detected within myself a new awareness and a self-examination of my views on death, grief, and grieving.  Most importantly, I came away with new tools for understanding the on-going process.  Ironically, this morning I began writing a note with a sympathy card, but thinking of this book, my note to the family was different than it would have been before I read the book. Through his personal experience and that of his family, the author gives some solid, realistic advice that I will not forget--it will bring tears and smiles.  This is a book to share or buy as a gift.
942058
The book its a voyage unto itself. Through Dr. Kita's personal experiences, along with inspirational stories from his patients, he sends you on a insightful, spiritual journey that connects the dots between body, mind and soul. Life's emotional blows, as well as our own thoughts, can impact our health -- for better or worse. Dr. Kita gives us wonderful tools to empower us a to a richer, deeper sense of self - and this is where true health lies.
3634638
This is an evocative and moving book about love, courage, loss, longing and the power of continued connection between mother and son. With a whole new realm of connection possibilities to consider, it beckons the mind and heart to stretch wide open.  Its an emotional, often mysterious, heart crushing AND heart lifting account of a young life extraordinarily well-lived and the loving and energetic bond that continues still between Melody and Dev.  This story is an intimate and emotional journey that invites the reader to sit still and contemplate whats possible. Bring a box of tissue and also prepare to smile through your tears as the power of love does its magic.
1959541
Joan Weimer's journey begins with a heart-stopping airplane plunge, then takes her to some of the most famous mystical sites of Europe--sacred labyrinths and shrines of the mysterious Black Madonna--and brings her back home again, to her everyday work and everyday life. These are the external dimensions, the physical map, of her pilgrimage. Inwardly, the journey is even more complex: a dramatic movement from the isolating alienation of Weimar's self-confessed skepticism through a radical questioning that, like the labyrinths she walks, takes her into a new understanding of her own profoundly spiritual self. It includes, as well, a clearer comprehension of her mother's dark and painful rejection that turns, in the end, into a paradoxical and powerful recognition of acceptance.

I first met Joan Weimer through her fine memoir, BACK TALK (a selection of the Story Circle Network's Reading Circle), in which the story of her physical pain and disability is interleaved with the story of Constance Fenimore Woolson, a nineteenth-century American expatriate who committed suicide in Venice. It is a richly imagined, novelistic memoir enriched by Weimer's scholarship and creatively enlivened by her refusal to be defined by that scholarship. Awestruck strikes some of the same notes and chords in a similar melodic structure, except that it is a two-part invention, since the author's husband, David, actively participates in her quest, sometimes encouraging, sometimes resisting her growing insights and awareness of herself. Fellow travelers, we learn, do not always take the same paths.

The immediacy and urgency of Weimer's journey is emphasized through her use of the present tense and her often poetically-charged language. The mausoleum of Galla Placidia, she writes, is a beautiful place:

"...but it's not what I want to see right now. Never mind, we're going there anyway. We're swept up in a sluggish river of tourists, channeled between barriers, packed together so tightly it's impossible to go against the flow. We wash ashore at the mausoleum, where we find the tiny space so packed that we can see only a few inches of the mosaics over people's heads." (p. 78)

But it's not just that the language is powerfully metaphoric. The journey is, too, which is nowhere as clear as in the chapter on labyrinths, "Walking a Winding Path." As with any long journey (Weimer and her husband were traveling through several European countries), she often finds herself wishing for a more direct route, as she traces her laborious way to the center and back out again: "In and out, journey and arrival, it's all one path..."(p. 75)

Some readers may find the poetic imagery of this carefully crafted memoir occasionally overwhelming, and be distracted by the nagging question: But did it really happen this way, with all of these coincidences and synchronicities? For myself, I would put the question differently. How much of this journey actually happened in physical space and time, and how much of it happens in the mind, in the creative and recreative memory, in the process of writing? Reflection, as Weimer muses over and over, gives us the power to frame and reframe our experience, so that the story of any journey is as much about storying as it is about journeying. Personally, I found myself wishing that Weimer had turned her memoir into a novel, so that concerns about truth could be redirected from real experience to creative imagination.

That said, I read with a deep pleasure to the end and closed the book feeling that I have taken the journey with her as she walks the labyrinths and searches for the Black Madonna through the shadow figure of her own mother. It is a compelling and worthwhile journey.

Susan Wittig Albert is the author of WRITING FROM LIFE: TELLING YOUR SOUL'S STORY and the founder of the Story Circle Network, a non-profit organization that encourages women to write about their lives. This review is excerpted from a longer review published on the website of the Story Circle Network.
3327072
It has been said that the greatest journeys are those of the heart.  Carina Burns has written of such a journey, a very personal but in many ways universal search for identity and meaning.  With an eye for detail, she describes aspects of the many places she has visited or called home.  She has candidly described both the joys and challenges of life as a Third Culture Kid.

Thank you, Carina, for sharing your journey with us and by so doing enriching our own.
1335158
Chaste is a quick insightful read that many can relate to. Many people find themselves judged or labeled without anyone really taking the time to understand the person. This book shows how life's experiences define who you are whether you like it or not. Embracing those experiences as people's definitions of who you are can be both painful and heart warming. The character development of Kat and Quinn are strikingly deep. The author's style allows for reader reflection and comparison to similar experiences or feelings while reading Chaste. The back and forth character chapters is refreshing and makes the book move quickly. This book deals with themes - grief, death, teen relationships, sex, and religion - in a simple yet bemused way.
4361460
I enjoyed Elizabeth Gilbert's "Eat, Pray, Love". When I read it, it was a book I "needed", but thinking about it after my time of need had passed, I was left with a sense that it did not encapsulate what a voyage like that would really entail.
"The Yellow Envelope" managed to bring to the surface discomforts and fears that I've held inside for much of my adult life. It's not just a grand adventure spanning half the globe, it's a journey into the human condition. When faced with someone else's hardship, poverty, sadness, loss or any of a multitude of negative states, many people turn away, don't look, walk away. Not out of lack of empathy, or caring, but because they don't know how to process being presented with those conditions.
Kim and Brian's  journey, and their use of the yellow envelope, opened up a great number of questions for me, or rather, caused me to face these questions. I realized that I'm often paralyzed from doing "good" out of my fear of seeing pain, or poverty, or despair.
This book takes the reader down a path that illuminates how to move beyond that, and incorporate the ugly side of things into the joyful life experience.
I'm not sure if this is really a "review" or more of a personal observation, but all I can say is that this book touched me in a way that few have. I'll be buying a hard copy so I can re-read it, and mark it up with highlighters and pens to better learn the lessons contained. :)
1250845
For a concept so simple, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry is a rollercoaster of emotion. Harold, a bored retiree in an unhappy marriage receives a letter from an old friend, Queenie, and learns she is dying of cancer. He sets out to mail a letter back, but doesn't stop walking once he reaches the post box at the end of the street. He experiences that helplessness we all feel when presented with hopeless news from a loved one ... so he walks, because he has to do something .

Most of the 300+ pages are with Harold during his walk and in his memories, with a few flashes to his wife who is not-so-patiently waiting at home (but also going through her own kind of journey). Early on and then several times throughout, Harold doubts his 600 mile journey. And as a reader, you lose hope as he does. But readers will also feel his successes just as purely. He's walking to keep Queenie alive, his first attempt at having faith, but as he walks he explores long lost, and often painful, memories of his past, while also absorbing the stories of those he meets along the way.

"He understood that in walking to atone for the mistakes he had made, it was also his journey to accept the strangeness of others. As a passerby, he was in a place where everything, not only the land, was open. People would feel free to talk, and he was free to listen. To carry a little of them as he went."

This story proves that it truly is about the journey, not necessarily the destination.
1455335
I was contacted by Peter Difatta, the author of Finding Pluck, upon his seeing my interest in this book. He'd very graciously asked if I'd mind giving an honest review if he sent an ecopy. The following is my best attempt at reviewing a book filled with so many emotions, mere words don't seem adequate.

Finding Pluck was engaging, drawing me in with the unique storyline. As I read, I found myself engrossed, trying to figure out the mystery involved, which at times left me breathless from the emotional overload. Finding Pluck is a fictitious journey with facts sprinkled in, and a heartfelt message that touches the soul. I accidentally stumbled upon this book on goodreads, and I'm so glad I did. Peter's tale has left me with a yearning for change, a craving for justice & true equality, and such overwhelming sympathy. This is definitely a story that will stay with me.
4313079
There are times in life when we experience such strong feelings that mere words cannot convey our emotions and reactions to others.  Artis Henderson is a writer who shatters that paradigm and brings the reader into her deeply personal journey as a child who loses her father and, years later, as a wife who loses her husband, both quite unexpectedly.  The editor of the book describes the writing as impeccable prose and it is that and more.

This is not a book with lots of action and suspense.  Readers are informed in the beginning of the deaths, but have no idea of the intense honesty and introspection they soon find.  The book has a few chapters where the time of events are not-chronological, but the story is easy to follow unlike some others where time transitions are used but are not smooth.

The authors feelings, thoughts, worries, even youthful inexperience, is laid bare as she tells her story as the wife of an Army helicopter pilot who dies in a helicopter crash in Iraq.  Her entry to the military culture with its language of acronyms and unique sayings is awkward.  She also finds the militarys expectations of spouses to be unrealistic but brings in other spouses attitudes and opinions to show a wider and more total range of how many military spouses, and widows, feel.

I felt as though I was sharing a heartfelt conversation with a dear friend as I read the book.  We are in the same generation and although I have not personally experienced the losses and events that the author did, I am familiar enough with the military culture to understand her difficulties with the overall culture, language, frequent relocations, and separations from loved ones due to military orders.  The author shows how she found healing as she transitioned from her life as she imagined it while young, to her acceptance of her life as a military spouse, to her category on her newly issued military ID card as an unremarried widow, to where she is now as a successful writer living in New York.  She shared her heartbreaking journey and follow-on healing with honesty and clarity and as a reader, I feel privileged to have journeyed with her.

This is no doubt the best book I have read in quite a long time and I highly recommend it!
1698519
Ritter does a phenomenal job relating a story that addresses a question that everyone has pondered:  is this what I should be doing with my life?  We follow the main character, Tyne, on a real yet also very spiritual journey of discovery, both of himself and the world around him.  Ritter's attention to detail enables the reader to easily find himself/herself sharing experiences with Tyne as he rides through the Southwest and learns from those he meets along his journey. Tyne's emotional and thought-provoking adventure is one that every person can relate to and Ritter does a brilliant job of helping his readers discover more about themselves as they travel with Tyne.