The sub title for this book is – Use your spending power to create a cleaner, greener world- and that’s just what they show you how to do. Diane explains how every dollar you spend impacts manufacturers decisions and how pointing your spending dollar can influence how products are made and the environmental impact they have. One of the examples of this change is tea. Usually tea is grown with lots of pesticides by farmers who are not paid a fair wage and whose children usually have to work in those fields. Thanks to the demand for organic teas many … Continue reading →

Annie Lamott has raised her son Sam as a single mother since his birth. She looked forward to the day she would be a grandmother, but not now, not while Sam was so young, not while she was still so young. But baby Jax was not to be denied and this is a touching story of one woman’s trip into grandparenthood along with interviews with her son. Through these interviews we get to see Sam’s world change as he becomes a father. Annie bounces between wanting to allow Sam and Amy the space to figure this parent and relationship thing … Continue reading →

Patrick Swayze has been apart of our lives for a long time. We watched him act, watched him dance, but in this book we get to know the man behind the big screen. Patrick was a dancer his whole life and he fell in love with a dancer. The love story that Patrick and Lisa share is one almost unheard of in the shadow of those big lights. Yet somehow, they managed to do it. Patrick and Lisa shared almost everything in life. This book is a story of where Patrick came from and who he became, before he became … Continue reading →

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to parent nineteen children? I never thought about that as a goal for myself and when the Duggar family kept getting bigger and bigger, I thought those people must be crazy! I am always fascinated with stories about large families and this book is wonderful. It’s amazing that anyone can raise that many children and live debt free. That alone is enough to write a book about, but Michelle and Jim Bob give us more. In the book they explain more about their faith. Not really the deep down what they … Continue reading →

Simple Prayers by Michael Golding needs to be unwrapped slowly, savored, tasted, smelled, rolled around on the tongue to catch both the bitter and the sweet. Then again, comparing this novel to a complex confection, a tired cliche, doesn’t do it justice. “Pansies, chrysanthemums, violets, daisies, lilies, lilacs, pinks. Their perfume sent wild ribbons into the air, and their color woke the rabbits. Spring had finally come to Riva di Pignoli. And flowers were just the beginning.” The novel takes place in a small island near Venice in the fourteenth century, a setting that is both dreamlike and throbbing with … Continue reading →

Wow, this book starts off with a hard question and doesn’t really get any easier. As a mother your first instinct is to protect your child from harm. What do you do if you are faced with the decision to save your child, or someone elses? What if the seconds it takes to help another child could mean your childs death? Are you responsible if someone else’s child is harmed while you are saving your own? How do you make these choices? This is what Rose McKenna faces the first day she volunteers as a lunch mom at her daughters … Continue reading →

In a little coffee shop in Kabul, a quiet revolution is taking place. A free-spirited American brings a group of men and women together to change lives, to change stereotypes and to change the future. Yazmina, a new widow is taken as payment for her uncle’s debts. When she is discovered to be pregnant, she is beaten and left for dead. Sunny, an American who owns a successful coffee shop takes her in. There Yazmina must hide the secrecy of her pregnancy from Sunny, Halajan, an older window with a few new ideas, and the others that make up the … Continue reading →