Editors' Picks
See the reviews our editors have chosen this month:
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Linda Crill's travel-memoir, Blind Curves, should be part of your book collection if you ever find yourself at a point in life when you want to make yourself over.
Linda, 57 and two years widowed, was tired of sympathy and all the things suggested she do after losing her loved one. But even she was surprised at the distance she went to break free of one life and ready herself to move on to a new one.
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The Secretary: A Journey with Hillary Clinton From Beirut to the Heart of American Power is a fascinating and deeply personal book that could only have been written by someone with the life experiences of author Kim Ghattas. Part biography, part memoir, and part history lesson, it's the story of both a former First Lady turned Secretary of State and a foreign journalist trying to reconcile her past experiences with what she's learning about the "large sticky web of diplomacy."
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The first orphan train book I read was James Magnusson's 1979 novel, Orphan Train. Before then I'd never heard the stories, but by the 1990s orphans and their train experiences had become common knowledge, made public by a spate of novels for both adult and young readers, with occasional nonfiction first-person accounts.
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Jennifer Finney Boylan wrote about her transition from male to female in her memoir, She's Not There: A Life in Two Genders. She chose not to "revisit that aspect of things" in this memoir, because, as she writes, "The surgery is not the most important thing about any transgender person's story, dramatic and astonishing as it might be..."
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There's a youthful exuberance about Holley Rubinsky's stories in South of Elfrida. Born in 1943, Rubinsky proves in this collection that stories can be fresh and original no matter what a writer's age.
While Rubinsky mentions Canadian locales such as the Okanagan and Toronto, the people of South of Elfrida are based primarily in and around Tucson, Arizona. There's a delightful quirkiness about these ordinary people on the move...
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Review of the Month
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The Map Maker's War, by Ronlyn Domingue
Each time we open a book, we go to a new place, meet people we've usually not known before, and enter into their story. It's been quite some time since I've opened the cover of a book and felt myself drawn immediately into sacred space as I was by Ronlyn Domingue's compelling The Mapmaker's War.
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Reviewed by Mary Jo Doig
As I have grown to seek and find deeper levels of my own story, I find I am also passionate about reading and nurturing other women's stories. Since 2001 I have been a SCN member, have led my internet writing circle 7 for six years, and have been editor of Story Circle Journal's "True Words From Real Women" for five years. I have found so many different ways to express my soul's longings in SCN. Writing book reviews is yet another way for I can both deepen and share my experience with a book that has been particularly meaningful to me.
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Our Favorite Authors
We're getting up close and personal with our favorite writers. Check out our author interviews to read what these great writers have to say.
Now you can listen to interviews with authors as well. Linda Wisniewski, previously on the editorial staff at StoryCircleBookReviews, talks about her memoir, Off Kilter. Go to our podcast page for the link, and check out all the other interviews there.
We have reviews of books by over seven hundred authors. You're sure to find your favorite here. If not, contact us and request a review or, better yet, join our team and write one.
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Briefly Reviewed...
We receive more wonderful books than we can possibly review. Here is a selection of titles, briefly described, that represent the wide range of recently-published memoirs written by strong women who have been there, done that, and lived to tell the tale. Recommended!
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Reviewers' News
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Congratulations to Lynn Goodwin & Lisa Shirah-Hiers for their promotion to STAR reviewer status! We always enjoy reading their reviews & interviews.
Editor Susan Albert announced the upcoming author-publication of her new novel, A Wilder Rose, the story of Rose Wilder Lane, Laura Ingalls Wilder, and the writing of the Little House books.
We're looking for strong reviews of books by, for, and about women. If you'd like to join our review team, check out our guidelines.
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Join Our Review Team
We're looking for strong reviews of books by, for, and about women. If you'd like to join our review team, check out our review guidelines.
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Have a Book You'd Like Us to Review?
We review books written by women, for women, with an emphasis on women's lives. Check out our guidelines before you query us.
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Story Circle Network supports this book review website, and volunteer editors and book reviewers provide the content. You can also lend your support by buying books through our links to Amazon, or by making a donation.
We do not accept payment for book reviews.
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About Story Circle Network
This book review site is sponsored by the Story Circle Network, a non-profit membership organization that serves women who want to tell their life stories in diaries, journals, personal essays, poetry, and memoir. The Network is for every woman who aims to claim the power of her experience, who wants to map her journey, and who is determined to name herself. If you're that woman, please join us.
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