Wren in Black Book Reviews

March 5, 2022

Hope Never Dies: An Obama / Biden Mystery by Andrew Shaffer

“Barack once told me that, at the end of the day, every one of us is just part of a long-running story. All we can do is try to get our paragraph right.” – Andrew Shaffer, “Hope Never Dies” Review: If you’re wanting a serious mystery, then Hope Never Dies is not for you. Not […]

March 4, 2022

Harriet Tubman: Toward Freedom by Whit Taylor and Kazimir Lee

Review: I was exploring the Black History Month section of my local library when I came across Harriet Tubman: Toward Freedom, a graphic novel about Harriet’s journey into the South to rescue her brothers from slavery. I haven’t taught junior high in a couple of years now, and I’m getting woefully behind on my purchasing […]

March 2, 2022

By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept by Paulo Coelho

“If pain must come, may it come quickly. Because I have a life to live, and I need to live it in the best way possible. If he has to make a choice, may he make it now. Then I will either wait for him or forget him. – Paulo Coelho, “By the River Piedra, […]

February 28, 2022

The Stranger in the Lifeboat by Mitch Albom

“Beginnings and endings are earthly ideas. I go on. And because I go on, you go on with me. Feeling loss is part of why you are on Earth. Through it, you appreciate the brief gift of human existence, and you learn to cherish the world I created for you. But the human form is […]

February 26, 2022

Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi

“The truth is we don’t know what we don’t know. We don’t even know the questions we need to ask in order to find out, but when we learn one tiny little thing, a dim light comes on in a dark hallway, and suddenly a new question appears. We spend decades, centuries, millennia, trying to […]

February 25, 2022

A Ladder to the Sky by John Boyne

“Where do [writers] get [their] ideas? And the answer is that no one knows where the come from and nobody should know. They evolve in thin air, they float down from some mysterious heaven, and we reach and grab one, to grasp in our imagination, and to make it our own. One writer might overhear […]

February 23, 2022

Holy Envy: Finding God in the Faith of Others by Barbara Brown Taylor

“I can respect almost anyone who admits to being human while reading a divine text. After that, we can talk – about we highlight some teachings and ignore others, about how we decide which ones are historically conditioned and which ones are universally true, about who has influenced our reading of scripture and how our […]

February 21, 2022

The Darkness Outside Us by Eliot Schrefer

“The stars! All those nuclear explosions sending out light waves, a very few of whose fate is to dissipate on my retinas. I look into the voids in between, a nothingness more absolute than any vacuum on Earth. In space, without any atmosphere to cloud my view, even that void resolves into more distant pricks […]

February 19, 2022

The Mermaid Chair by Sue Monk Kidd

“At forty-two, I had never done anything that took my own breath away, and I suppose now that was part of the problem–my chronic inability to astonish myself. I promise you, no one judges me more harshly than I do myself; I caused a brilliant wreckage. Some say I fell from grace; they’re being kind. […]

February 18, 2022

Looking for Alaska by John Green

“Francois Rabelais. He was a poet. And his last words were “I go to seek a Great Perhaps.” That’s why I’m going. So I don’t have to wait until I die to start seeking a Great Perhaps.” – John Green, “Looking for Alaska” Review: Looking for Alaska is the second John Green book I’ve read […]