In True Face by Jonna Mendez

March 08, 2024

Jonna Mendez makes no secret that In True Face started as her memoir of her life and career, twenty-five years in the CIA. It was a friend who asked, but what was it like being a woman and rising to a leadership position in the CIA in those years. She credits her...

Rental Person Who Does Nothing by Shoji Morimoto

January 08, 2024

Shoji Morimoto is so determined to do nothing that someone else actually wrote his memoir, Rental Person Who Does Nothing. Morimoto contributed to the book by answering questions. While the whole concept is fascinating, there are concepts that are very Japanese, and...

All the Beauty in the World by Patrick Bringley

August 02, 2023

I can see why Kaye Wilkinson Barley said she treasures this book. My friend, Donna, recommended Patrick Bringley’s All the Beauty in the World: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Me. They are both right. It’s a beautiful, sometimes moving, book. Patrick...

My Good Life in France by Janine Marsh

July 05, 2023

I have no idea how some of the books in my spare bedrooms arrived there. My Good Life in France by Janine Marsh is subtitled “in Pursuit of the Rural Dream”. Those of you who dream of living a pastoral life or renovating a house someplace in Europe after...

One Upon a Tome by Oliver Darkshire

March 22, 2023

Eccentric doesn’t even begin to describe the people and book collections of Sotheran’s, an antiquarian bookstore in London. Founded in 1761, they found a writer to tell their story, their own apprentice, Oliver Darkshire. Once Upon a Tome: The...