Wow...

Three Things I Know are True was so powerful. And so well written and so real and so timely and just so so good.  This is Betty Culley's first book and I see from her bio that she was a pediatric hospice nurse.  What a calling, huh?  One of my very dear friends was a hospice nurse and I think that it takes a very special person, someone who is very attune to the needs and feelings of others, plus someone with a TON of other gifts to serve in this way.
What a gift that Culley also is sharing her insights and gifts in writing. 
Such a heart-breaking, hellish, beautiful story. 

Complicated

The love story in The Opposite of Always is complicated.  Aren't all love stories?  Isn't life complicated?  It is.  And this was a complicated and beautiful story.  It just seemed a wee bit too long for me, but I still would highly recommend it.  Faith and life and death and time travel and Groundhog Day and love all rolled into one. 

A New Book from Sharon Creech

Is always a wonderful thing.  And I didn't know this one was coming out, but Saving Winslow was just what I have come to expect from and love about Sharon Creech.  I wonder when Ms. Creech discovered that she was such a gifted writer.  She really has "it," whatever it is, that can get right in the heart and soul of a reader.  Saving Winslow is a beautiful love story. 

Memory

Memory is a selection of images, some elusive, others imprinted indelibly on the brain. The summer I killed my father I was 10 years old. My brother Poe was 9, and my sister Cisely has just turned 14.

That's Not What Happened addresses that in a powerful way. 

ER Stories...

People of the ER is another book by Dr. Philip Allen Green.  I really, really loved the first one I read by him, and this one was the same way.  I just found every one of the short stories to be so well written and so different and interesting.  Sometimes short story collections are hard to write about because they can be uneven.  Even when it is a collection by the same author, but this wasn't the case with this book or Meet Cute, so maybe that bodes well for all of the short story collections that 2018 will bring my way!  Lots of great sermon illustrations in here, too! 

The Doctor's Side

I have read nurse books and paramedic books and the doctors don't always come across so well.  So I thought that reading Trauma Room Two would give me a little POV of at least one doctor, an ER doctor in a small rural town.  These stories are fictional (which I just learned here!) but based on true events.  Dr. Green has written an incredible book here.  There are sixteen short stories and I found every one to be top notch.  So