It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

This meme is hosted by Kathryn at Reading Date.

Books I completed this past week are:

In Cuba I Was a German Shepherd by Ana Menendez
The Spinster and the Rake by Anne Stuart
No One Can Pronounce My Name by Rakesh Satyal
The Royal We by Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

A Hard and Heavy Thing by Matthew J. Hefti
Paint Your Wife by Lloyd Jones
Dear Fang, With Love by Rufi Thorpe
America's First Daughter by Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie
Metis Beach by Claudine Bourbonnais
Smoke by Dan Vyleta
Coco Chanel by Lisa Chaney
The New York Time Footsteps by various authors
The Resurrection of Joan Ashby by Cherise Wolas
The Bottom of the Sky by Rodrigo Fresan
One House Over by Mary Monroe
Burntown by Jennifer McMahon
Everything She Didn't Say by Jane Kirkpatrick
The Girl Who Never Read Noam Chomsky by Jana Casale
Surviving Paradise by Peter Rudiak-Gould
The Diary of a Bookseller by Shaun Bythell
A Breath of Snow and Ashes by Diana Gabaldon

Reviews posted this week:

not one thing

Books still needing to have reviews written (as opposed to the ones that are simply awaiting posting):

Visible Empire by Hannah Pittard
The Garden of Small Beginnings by Abbi Waxman
Love Hate and Other Filters by Samira Ahmed
A Song for the River by Philip Connors
In the Shadow of 10,000 Hills by Jennifer Haupt
Beautiful Music by Michael Zadoorian
Still Life with Monkey by Katharine Weber
America for Beginners by Leah Franqui
Tenemental by Vikki Warner
Meet Me at the Museum by Anne Youngson
The Lido by Libby Page
The Invisible Valley by Su Wei
The Last Equation of Isaac Severy by Nova Jacobs
The Showrunner by Kim Mortishugu
I Found My Tribe by Ruth Fitzmaurice
Paris by the Book by Liam Callanan
Terra Nullius by Clare G. Coleman
Christmas in July by Alan Michael Parker
Nothing Forgotten by Jessica Levine
Housegirl by Michael Donkor
Wildwood by Elinor Florence
All Day at the Movies by Fiona Kidman
Weedeater by Robert Gipe
The Mannequin Makers by Craig Cliff
Chemistry by Weike Wang
The Summer Wives by Beatriz Williams
Come Back to the Swamp by Laura Morrison
The Animal Gazer by Edgardo Franzosini
Melmoth by Sarah Perry
Sound by Bella Bathurst
Celine by Peter Heller
In Every Moment We Are Still Alive by Tom Malmquist
The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris
You'll Always Have Tara by Leah Marie Brown
The Taster by V.S. Alexander
Dear Mrs. Bird by AJ Pearce
Calypso by David Sedaris
A House Among the Trees by Julia Glass
Postcards from the Canyon by Lisa Gitlin
The Family Fang by Kevin Wilson
Sycamore by Bryn Chancellor
The Home for Unwanted Girls by Joanna Goodman
As Wide As the Sky by Jessica Pack
Indian Horse by Richard Wagamese
Plum Rains by Andromeda Romano-Lax
Second Wind by Nathaniel Philbrick
Leave No Trace by Mindy Mejia
Paper Is White by Hilary Zaid
Hotel Silence by Audur Ava Olafsdottir
The Vain Conversation by Anthony Grooms
The Beauty of the End by Debbie Howells
The Widows of Malabar Hill by Sujata Massey
The Last Suppers by Mandy Mikulencak
Ostrich by Matt Greene
The Mercy Seat by Elizabeth H. Winthrop
Maggie Boylan by Michael Henson
We All Love the Beautiful Girls by Joanne Proulx
Every Note Played by Lisa Genova
Shores Beyond Shores by Irene Butter
The Shakespeare Requirement by Julie Schumacher
Fiction Can Be Murder by Becky Clark
Tigerbelle by Wyomia Tyus
Wolf Season by Helen Benedict
Beasts of Extraordinary Circumstance by Ruth Emmie Lang
The Second Mrs. Hockaday by Susan Rivers
London Road by Tessa Smith McGovern
Invitation to a Bonfire by Adrienne Celt
Love, Nina by Nina Stibbe
Love Literary Style by Karin Gillespie
The Secret of the Irish Castle by Santa Montefiore
The Cactus by Sarah Haywood
The Amazing Story of the Man Who Cycled from India to Europe for Love by Per J. Andersson
A Cast of Vultures by Judith Flanders
The Governess Game by Tess Dare
In-Between Days by Teva Harrison
The Wrath and the Dawn by Renee Ahdieh
In the Heart of the Canyon by Elisabeth Hyde
Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman
Penelope Lemon by Inman Majors
I'd Rather Be Reading by Anne Bogel
Royally Screwed by Emma Chase
The Wangs Vs. the World by Jade Chang
Southern Lady Code by Helen Ellis
Country of Red Azaleas by Domnica Radulescu
The Book Lovers' Appreciation Society by assorted authors
Don't Point That Thing at Me by Kyril Bonfiglioli
Hope Has Two Daughters by Monia Mazigh
The Friend by Sigrid Nunez
The Widow Nash by Jamie Harrison
The Child Finder by Rene Denfeld
Miss Featherton's Christmas Prince by Ella Quinn
The Radium Girls by Kate Moore
Rainbirds by Clarissa Goenawan
Sassafrass, Cypress, and Indigo by Ntozake Shange
Mean by Myriam Gurba
Maeve in America by Maeve Higgins
After the Bloom by Leslie Shimotakahara
The Legendary Lord by Valerie Bowman
Someone You Love Is Gone by Gurjinder Basran
The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal
Thousand-Miler by Melanie Radzicki McManus
Christmas on the Island by Jenny Colgan
In Cuba I Was a German Shepherd by Ana Menendez
The Spinster and the Rake by Anne Stuart
No One Can Pronounce My Name by Rakesh Satyal
The Royal We by Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan

Waiting on Wednesday

This meme was hosted by Breaking the Spine and is meant to highlight some great pre-publication books we all can't wait to get our grubby little mitts on. I'm choosing to continue the tradition even though she has stopped.

My Favorite Half-Night Stand by Christina Lauren.

The book is being released by Gallery Books on December 4, 2018.

The book's jacket copy says: Millie Morris has always been one of the guys. A UC Santa Barbara professor, she’s a female-serial-killer expert who’s quick with a deflection joke and terrible at getting personal. And she, just like her four best guy friends and fellow professors, is perma-single.

So when a routine university function turns into a black tie gala, Mille and her circle make a pact that they’ll join an online dating service to find plus-ones for the event. There’s only one hitch: after making the pact, Millie and one of the guys, Reid Campbell, secretly spend the sexiest half-night of their lives together, but mutually decide the friendship would be better off strictly platonic.

But online dating isn’t for the faint of heart. While the guys are inundated with quality matches and potential dates, Millie’s first profile attempt garners nothing but dick pics and creepers. Enter “Catherine”—Millie’s fictional profile persona, in whose make-believe shoes she can be more vulnerable than she’s ever been in person. Soon “Catherine” and Reid strike up a digital pen-pal-ship...but Millie can’t resist temptation in real life, either. Soon, Millie will have to face her worst fear—intimacy—or risk losing her best friend, forever.

Perfect for fans of Roxanne and She’s the Man, Christina Lauren’s latest romantic comedy is full of mistaken identities, hijinks, and a classic love story with a modern twist. Funny and fresh, you’ll want to swipe right on My Favorite Half-Night Stand.

The Five Stages of Preparing for a Colonoscopy

Everyone knows about the five stages of grief, right? But did you know about the five stages of preparing for a colonoscopy? Since my five year reprieve from this most unappealing of tests is over (you can read about that adventure here), I am unfortunately placed perfectly to explain this little known set for you. I am currently hovering between stages two and three and let me tell you, it's not pretty now but it will get worse.

Stage One: So hungry you want to gnaw your own arm off. You might be hangry but you are not allowed to have a Snickers to fix it, Betty White.

Stage Two: Sad from lack of calories.

Stage Three: Feral. As in you are surreptitiously sniffing the dirty dishes in the dishwasher and actually considering licking them clean like the dog. (Be warned that if the dog catches you doing this, you might have to fight to retain alpha dog status.)

Stage Four: Nauseated from the clean-out meds and subsequent Great Lakes worth of water you have to ingest in an amount of time that would give any frat boy pause.

Stage Five: Shooting skin scorching flames directly out of your colon.

I know I've made you all want to rush right out there and schedule one of these but it's a temporary discomfort to ensure your health. So if you have a family history (like me) or are over 50 (unlike me), suck it up buttercup and get it done. And the anesthesia they give you for the actual procedure itself (notice it's not in the stages--it's the reward that you get after you conquer the rest) is so lovely you might just want to propose to your anesthetist.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

This meme is hosted by Kathryn at Reading Date.

Books I completed this past week are:

The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal
Thousand-Miler by Melanie Radzicki McManus
Christmas on the Island by Jenny Colgan

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

A Hard and Heavy Thing by Matthew J. Hefti
Paint Your Wife by Lloyd Jones
No One Can Pronounce My Name by Rakesh Satyal
Dear Fang, With Love by Rufi Thorpe
America's First Daughter by Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie
Metis Beach by Claudine Bourbonnais
Smoke by Dan Vyleta
Coco Chanel by Lisa Chaney
The New York Time Footsteps by various authors
The Resurrection of Joan Ashby by Cherise Wolas
The Bottom of the Sky by Rodrigo Fresan
One House Over by Mary Monroe
Burntown by Jennifer McMahon
Everything She Didn't Say by Jane Kirkpatrick
The Girl Who Never Read Noam Chomsky by Jana Casale
Surviving Paradise by Peter Rudiak-Gould
The Diary of a Bookseller by Shaun Bythell
A Breath of Snow and Ashes by Diana Gabaldon
The Royal We by Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan

Reviews posted this week:

Plumdog by Emma Chichester Clark
The Company They Kept edited by Robert B. Silvers and Barbara Epstein
Swimming with Elephants by Sarah Bamford Seidelmann

Books still needing to have reviews written (as opposed to the ones that are simply awaiting posting):

Visible Empire by Hannah Pittard
The Garden of Small Beginnings by Abbi Waxman
Love Hate and Other Filters by Samira Ahmed
A Song for the River by Philip Connors
In the Shadow of 10,000 Hills by Jennifer Haupt
Beautiful Music by Michael Zadoorian
Still Life with Monkey by Katharine Weber
America for Beginners by Leah Franqui
Tenemental by Vikki Warner
Meet Me at the Museum by Anne Youngson
The Lido by Libby Page
The Invisible Valley by Su Wei
The Last Equation of Isaac Severy by Nova Jacobs
The Showrunner by Kim Mortishugu
I Found My Tribe by Ruth Fitzmaurice
Paris by the Book by Liam Callanan
Terra Nullius by Clare G. Coleman
Christmas in July by Alan Michael Parker
Nothing Forgotten by Jessica Levine
Housegirl by Michael Donkor
Wildwood by Elinor Florence
All Day at the Movies by Fiona Kidman
Weedeater by Robert Gipe
The Mannequin Makers by Craig Cliff
Chemistry by Weike Wang
The Summer Wives by Beatriz Williams
Come Back to the Swamp by Laura Morrison
The Animal Gazer by Edgardo Franzosini
Melmoth by Sarah Perry
Sound by Bella Bathurst
Celine by Peter Heller
In Every Moment We Are Still Alive by Tom Malmquist
The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris
You'll Always Have Tara by Leah Marie Brown
The Taster by V.S. Alexander
Dear Mrs. Bird by AJ Pearce
Calypso by David Sedaris
A House Among the Trees by Julia Glass
Postcards from the Canyon by Lisa Gitlin
The Family Fang by Kevin Wilson
Sycamore by Bryn Chancellor
The Home for Unwanted Girls by Joanna Goodman
As Wide As the Sky by Jessica Pack
Indian Horse by Richard Wagamese
Plum Rains by Andromeda Romano-Lax
Second Wind by Nathaniel Philbrick
Leave No Trace by Mindy Mejia
Paper Is White by Hilary Zaid
Hotel Silence by Audur Ava Olafsdottir
The Vain Conversation by Anthony Grooms
The Beauty of the End by Debbie Howells
The Widows of Malabar Hill by Sujata Massey
The Last Suppers by Mandy Mikulencak
Ostrich by Matt Greene
The Mercy Seat by Elizabeth H. Winthrop
Maggie Boylan by Michael Henson
We All Love the Beautiful Girls by Joanne Proulx
Every Note Played by Lisa Genova
Shores Beyond Shores by Irene Butter
The Shakespeare Requirement by Julie Schumacher
Fiction Can Be Murder by Becky Clark
Tigerbelle by Wyomia Tyus
Wolf Season by Helen Benedict
Beasts of Extraordinary Circumstance by Ruth Emmie Lang
The Second Mrs. Hockaday by Susan Rivers
London Road by Tessa Smith McGovern
Invitation to a Bonfire by Adrienne Celt
Love, Nina by Nina Stibbe
Love Literary Style by Karin Gillespie
The Secret of the Irish Castle by Santa Montefiore
The Cactus by Sarah Haywood
The Amazing Story of the Man Who Cycled from India to Europe for Love by Per J. Andersson
A Cast of Vultures by Judith Flanders
The Governess Game by Tess Dare
In-Between Days by Teva Harrison
The Wrath and the Dawn by Renee Ahdieh
In the Heart of the Canyon by Elisabeth Hyde
Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman
Penelope Lemon by Inman Majors
I'd Rather Be Reading by Anne Bogel
Royally Screwed by Emma Chase
The Wangs Vs. the World by Jade Chang
Southern Lady Code by Helen Ellis
Country of Red Azaleas by Domnica Radulescu
The Book Lovers' Appreciation Society by assorted authors
Don't Point That Thing at Me by Kyril Bonfiglioli
Hope Has Two Daughters by Monia Mazigh
The Friend by Sigrid Nunez
The Widow Nash by Jamie Harrison
The Child Finder by Rene Denfeld
Miss Featherton's Christmas Prince by Ella Quinn
The Radium Girls by Kate Moore
Rainbirds by Clarissa Goenawan
Sassafrass, Cypress, and Indigo by Ntozake Shange
Mean by Myriam Gurba
Maeve in America by Maeve Higgins
After the Bloom by Leslie Shimotakahara
The Legendary Lord by Valerie Bowman
Someone You Love Is Gone by Gurjinder Basran
The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal
Thousand-Miler by Melanie Radzicki McManus
Christmas on the Island by Jenny Colgan

Monday Mailbox

This past week's mailbox arrivals:

In Another Time by Jillian Cantor came from LibraryThing Early Reviewers and Harper Perennial.

Cantor writes really cool novels so I'm really looking forward to this one about a bookshop owner and Jewish, rising concert violinist who fall in love before WWII but who are somehow separated by the war.

Winter Garden by Kristin Hannah came from me for myself.

A book club choice for the coming year, I do have a fascination with Russia so I hope this one about mothers and daughters will hold my interest.

The Fated Sky by Mary Robinette Kowal came from me for myself.

I read the first Lady Astronaut book on my friend C.'s advice and although I generally drive a wide berth around science fiction, especially so called hard sci-fi, I loved it and couldn't wait to get my hands on the second book.

The Spinster and the Duke by Anne Stuart came from me for myself.

I like historical romance and I like to support indie presses and this one sounds like a quick, enjoyable read.

If you want to see the marvelous goodies in other people's mailboxes, make sure to visit Mailbox Monday and have fun seeing how we are all doing our part to keep the USPS and delivery services viable.

Sunday Salon: Searching for a Bookstore

If you're anything like me, you search out bookstores wherever you go. In fact, I not only try to leave space in my luggage for books to bring home with me, I have been known to leave extra shoes or clothes out of my packing if I think their inclusion will cut down on available book space. My family lives in fear of the day I decide it will just be easier to go naked than pack clothes that will take up room in my luggage. (And, to be honest, their fear might be justified if it ever becomes legal to saunter around in public naked.) So it is no surprise at all that the most recent vacation we took, a trip to the Bahamas with two other couples, included the quest for a bookstore. Things did not go as planned.

I had done a little online research for bookstores in Nassau but one evening when we were already monopolizing the hotel concierge, I asked where the best bookstore on the island was thinking that surely a local person would be a better source than strangers on the internet. She confidently told me "Book World," which sounded promising of course and plans were made to trek there the next day. Originally it was just going to be my long-suffering husband (probably hoping to rein in my buying) and me but one of the other couples decided that it sounded like an interesting outing so they tagged along. Our first decision was to take the local jitney for $1.25 a person instead of a taxi for $18-20.  Because who wants to be dropped directly at the door to your destination, right?  If we walked to the end of the property and went left, a bus stop would be there. Should be easy enough. Except apparently the end of the property didn't mean taking the driveway out to the road, it meant doing that and then walking and walking and walking and walking and walking (well you get the idea) along the entire length of the enormous property. We finally saw a hut similar in description to what we were looking for but it was on the other side of the road. With no other option visible, we crossed the road to it whereupon we accidentally interrupted a mother doing a Bible reading with her young son. She graciously told us that we needed to get back to the other side of the road and keep walking (more walking!) until we saw an unmissable green bus shelter. Turned out it wasn't green but it was unmissable and we finally sat down to wait for the bus.

The bus ride was uneventful and having no sense of where to get off or truly where the bus was ultimately going, we opted to get off the bus when everyone else did in downtown Nassau. (To be fair, this is where the people at the hotel told us we should get off.) GPS chided us for this, telling us that we were still 7 minutes away. We all shrugged and decided to walk. Yes, more walking. We walked out of the touristy part of town into an area with abandoned and boarded up buildings. There were no people anywhere, just trash and broken glass. But we kept walking, because, well, books. Still walking many minutes later, we consulted the GPS. Despite having walked for more than 10 minutes past the original promised 7 minute walk, GPS cheerily told us it was just 5 more minutes. I was developing large, painful blisters on both the bottoms and tops of my feet. Our friend M. asked if we could walk on the shady side of the street because he was too hot, which sounded like a reasonable request until we realized there was no shady side. He promptly started unbuttoning his shirt to try and cool off.  We weren't entirely sure how far he intended to strip, he was so overheated.  Meanwhile, looking at the map, we opted to take a shortcut in hopes that we'd cut off a minute or two. Unfortunately the shortcut dead-ended into a street that had literally no shoulder and constant traffic whipping past. Unwilling to play Frogger, we turned around and cut through a cemetery to the street we were supposed to be on, at which point GPS told us that we *still* only had 5 minutes to go to get to the bookstore. You might be wondering why we kept going but at this point there truly were no other options. We plodded on. M.'s wife T. kept telling us it was an adventure and it was all good.  I think she a little delusional and manic at this point, but whatever.  I was demoralized and grumpy and my feet hurt. M. was red as a tomato and sweating profusely. My husband was 100 yards ahead of the rest of us and on a mission to get there already (or maybe just a mission to keep enough distance between us that he didn't strangle me for suggesting this outing).

We finally did make it to Book World. Sweet relief! Except it was the worst bookstore ever. Y'all, it was an office supply store with two rows of school workbooks and one short shelf of general books. I tried my damndest to find something to buy to justify the marathon walk but I just couldn't.  An hour of walking in the heat and blazing sun only to leave empty handed.  :-(

We all agreed we had no interest in walking back so tried to call a taxi. When I heard they couldn't pick us up for an hour, I almost broke down in tears. Meanwhile I'm sure the rest of them were wondering if disposing of me would take an hour and where they could hide my body without having to walk too far. We called the hotel in desperation and they said that they could send a car for $104 or someone at the store could call us a taxi. (I'm pretty sure that the hotel just wanted to pass the problem on to someone else.) The cashier at Book World looked a bit taken aback when we asked if he knew of any taxis but a customer heard the question and directed us to walk (more walking!) up the short hill to the Super Value to see Mr. Wells, who was sometimes known to arrange rides for people. Does this sound ominous to you? Frankly, at this point we didn't care and dutifully trekked up the hill to see our own personal taxi fixer. Rather unsurprisingly, he was told that there were no taxis available for an hour. Of course, by this time, we were starving (all that walking, you know) and decided that we just wanted to be able to have lunch, preferably an authentic lunch since the rest of the trip had been a bust. Mr. Wells sent us into the Super Value to take a look at the deli offerings, assuring us that everything there was made on premises and was locally sourced. We were so demoralized by this point, we actually looked at the food even though there would have been nowhere to eat it. We didn't get anything so I can't tell you what it tasted like but it looked like the same fried and over-sauced sort of stuff we can find in grocery store deli departments here. When we got back outside, Mr. Wells had a taxi for us (and seemed disappointed we had ignored his food suggestion). Or not a taxi, but a guy who worked at the store sweeping the floor who sometimes drove people places and would take us where we wanted to go. "We trust him because he works here. He's an employee." Who were we to argue?

We told the driver where we wanted to go and the address, and piled into his car, trying not to step on what were clearly his groceries piled on the floor in the back. He agreed with our destination and set off. As we drove along, we tried to confirm the cost that Mr. Wells had quoted us. You'll be as shocked (not) as we were to discover that we were going to be charged twice that. But at least we weren't walking. Then we noticed that our driver was heading away from where we wanted to be. In fact, he was taking us to Atlantis (not the hotel we were staying at, by the way). We tried to tell him he was taking us to the wrong place and he just kept telling us "Yes." Over the bridge to not our hotel we went. We resorted to pointing in addition to telling him where we needed to be and M. kept trying to show him the GPS. Obviously the driver had been told that you shouldn't look at your phone while driving so he came to a complete stop. In the middle of the road. Commence honking behind us. He started driving again, still in the wrong direction (and now on the wrong island). M. waves the phone with map on it again. Complete stop again. Honking again. Finally he did a u-turn and we headed off in the correct direction. Each time the GPS suggested that we'd need to turn in a mile or so, he tried to turn immediately, leading M. to finally resort to hand signals to direct us. M. has a really promising career ahead of him either as a football umpire signalling first down or as the ground crew guy who directs the plane to the gate. Then, less than a mile from the restaurant, the car died at a stoplight.  More honking.  He did eventually get it going again and when we got close enough to the restaurant that even I could limp there on my blister filled feet, we paid him and piled out of the car.

Not exactly the bookstore adventure I was hoping for but probably one I won't forget even if I have nothing to show for it now that my feet have healed. We did have a nice lunch and while I'd like to say that was the end of our adventures that day, there was still the crazy taxi ride back to the hotel to get through but that's a tale for a different day. Will I still try searching out bookstores wherever I go? Probably. But I might make room in my luggage for better walking shoes even if I have to sacrifice a book or two.

Review: Swimming With Elephants by Sarah Bamford Seidelmann

I have to admit I am a skeptic. A friend told me she watched me close the shutters and completely shut down when visiting a palm reader almost in a challenge to see if she could possibly be telling the truth or was just a scam artist. I have a hard time believing it when friends tell me about their alternative medicine adventures. I do know there is a mind body connection that we don't fully understand and that it is likely going to be an important thing. In general though, I prefer to put my health eggs in the verified by science basket and tend to scoff at more "woo-woo" varieties. It is hard to suspend my disbelief. (And in certain cases, I have no interest in staying open to debate. Vaccines are science. Cancer is not cured through alternative means. Etc.) But I also try to challenge myself on occasion, to look at a belief system not my own and see if it speaks truth to me, as it clearly does to the possessor of those beliefs, hence reading Sarah Bamford Seidelmann's memoir of her journey from medical doctor with a Western mindset to a shamanistic healer open to a spiritual world not accounted for in her medical training. Short answer, I still side with observable, provable science but I don't doubt that Seidelmann fully believes in her chosen path which she has chronicled in Swimming with Elelphants.

Seidelmann was a traditionally trained medical student when she started questioning whether patients are given the best course of treatment.  Or perhaps it's more accurate to say she questioned whether patients were given enough or if their drug protocol should be supplemented by other, less tangible things.  This idea would continue to haunt her and to resurface throughout the years.  The intensity of schooling, work, parenting, and home renovation threatened Seidelmann's marriage and her well being. In fact, she was overwhelmed and unhappy. A long sabbatical and travel beyond the Western world refocused her on the direction she wanted to move in. She embraced the mystical, dreamt of animal guides, and turned towards shamanism along the way to reinventing herself as a life coach and traditional healer.

Seielmann had the support and the money to enable herself to take the time to travel, to explore the dreams she found so inspiring, to change her path and it has worked out beautifully for her.  Not everyone has that luxury even if they have the inclination.  She details not only the journey she took but many of the otherworldly signs and unconscious visions that led her where she ultimately went. The narrative of these dreams might be fascinating to someone else moving in a similar trajectory to her but they were too frequent, too lengthy, and made my skepticism hit high alert. I just couldn't connect with the book, Seidelmann's choices (whether in terms of her career or in terms of her parenting and marriage), or her mindset and so it became increasingly difficult to continue reading. I did finish the entire book, rolling my eyes much of the time so this was clearly not meant for me. If you are a searcher, maybe this will speak to you in a different way and you will benefit from it. I just didn't.

Thanks to the publisher for sending me a copy of the book to review.