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Mailbox Monday #646

August 30, 2021 by

Mailbox Monday has become a tradition in the blogging world, and many of us thank Marcia of The Printed Page for creating it.

It now has its own blog where book bloggers can link up their own mailbox posts and share which books they bought or which they received for review from publishers, authors, and more.

Velvet, Martha, and I also will share our picks from everyone’s links in the new feature Books that Caught Our Eye. We hope you’ll join us.

This is what we received:

Dialogues with Rising Tides by Kelli Russell Agodon, a lovely gift wrapped poetry book from the poet.

In Kelli Russell Agodon’s fourth collection, each poem facilitates a humane and honest conversation with the forces that threaten to take us under. The anxieties and heartbreaks of life―including environmental collapse, cruel politics, and the persistent specter of suicide―are met with emotional vulnerability and darkly sparkling humor. Dialogues with Rising Tides does not answer, This or that? It passionately exclaims, And also! Even in the midst of great difficulty, radiant wonders are illuminated at every turn.

What did you receive?

Filed Under: mailbox monday, meme Tagged With: ,

Cover Reveal: Bloomsbury Girls by Natalie Jenner, author of The Jane Austen Society

August 26, 2021 by

I absolutely loved Natalie Jenner’s debut novel, The Jane Austen Society. Today, I’m happy to be part of the cover reveal of her new novel, Bloomsbury Girls.

“Jenner’s novel, The Jane Austen Society, pays homage to Austen in a way that many other variations don’t. She understands the Austen characters and their motivations, but in creating her characters and their motivations they are not talking to us as Austen’s characters but fans of Austen’s words, her thoughts, her dreams.”

Natalie Jenner says, ““I never intended for Evie Stone to be a major character in my debut novel, let alone inspire my second one, Bloomsbury Girls. But as time went on, I found I could not leave her behind in Chawton with the other society members. And then one day I rewatched a favourite movie, 84 Charing Cross Road, and I remember thinking, there’s a whole other story in here still to be told, of an upstairs-downstairs motley crew of booksellers, and right away the figures came to life.”

Check out the Synopsis:

“One bookshop. Fifty-one rules. Three women who break them all.”

The Internationally Bestselling author of The Jane Austen Society returns with a compelling and heartwarming story of post-war London, a century-old bookstore, and three women determined to find their way in a fast-changing world.

Bloomsbury Books is an old-fashioned new and rare bookstore that has persisted and resisted change for a hundred years, run by men and guided by the general manager’s unbreakable fifty-one rules. But in 1950, the world is changing, especially the world of books and publishing, and at Bloomsbury Books, the girls in the shop have plans:

Vivien Lowry: Single since her aristocratic fiancé was killed in action during World War II, the brilliant and stylish Vivien has a long list of grievances – most of them well justified and the biggest of which is Alec McDonough, the Head of Fiction.

Grace Perkins: Married with two sons, she’s been working to support the family following her husband’s breakdown in the aftermath of the war. Torn between duty to her family and dreams of her own.

Evie Stone: In the first class of female students from Cambridge permitted to earn a degree, Evie was denied an academic position in favor of her less accomplished male rival. Now she’s working at Bloomsbury Books while she plans to remake her own future.

As they interact with various literary figures of the time – Daphne Du Maurier, Ellen Doubleday, Sonia Blair (widow of George Orwell), Samuel Beckett, Peggy Guggenheim, and others – these three women with their complex web of relationships, goals and dreams are all working to plot out a future that is richer and more rewarding than anything society will allow.

I’ve probably made you wait long enough for the cover, but Natalie Jenner says, “As with The Jane Austen Society, Bloomsbury Girls features multiple characters and storylines revolving around one very charming location: this time, the quintessential Dickensian-type bookshop.”

WITHOUT further ado, here’s the cover for Bloomsbury Girls:

Isn’t it just gorgeous? I cannot wait to read this novel. I loved The Jane Austen Society because it was so well done. Jenner has a way of bringing multiple characters to life — they feel like friends. Bloomsbury Girls is bound to be just as good, if not better.

I cannot wait to see what everyone thinks of the book.

About the Author:

Natalie Jenner is the author of two books, the instant international bestseller THE JANE AUSTEN SOCIETY and BLOOMSBURY GIRLS. A Goodreads Choice Award finalist for best debut novel and historical fiction, THE JANE AUSTEN SOCIETY was a USA Today and #1 national bestseller and has been sold for translation in twenty countries. Born in England and raised in Canada, Natalie has been a corporate lawyer, a career coach and, most recently, an independent bookstore owner in Oakville, Ontario, where she lives with her family and two rescue dogs. Visit her website, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and GoodReads pages.

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The Understudy’s Handbook by Steven Leyva

August 25, 2021 by

Source: Purchased
Paperback, 108 pgs.
I am am Amazon Affiliate

The Understudy’s Handbook by Steven Leyva is musically New Orleans, but also a collection of poems about learning a role that you may or may not take on.  It takes on the pomp and circumstance of the city and reveals an underbelly of sadness and want, while paying homage to the beauty of the city and its culture. The dichotomy of New Orleans comes to life in Leyva’s poems.

 From "Inamorata" (pg. 5-6)

...
and a funk in the other
     Nola when your bounce
         leaps from speakers

comes the great gyrate
    the whole line
        all heredity backing it up

...

Where'd you sleep
   last night? In the pines?
        Nola you fat and fine

the quick-quick-slow
        that repeats
         like being sick and tired

of being sick
    and tired or late again
            on last week's rent
...

Leyva’s poems are beautiful songs full of love, passion, and sadness. It’s a collection that pays homage to the past and invents a future. It’s about leaning into a bi-racial skin and finding a path that makes the most of an American life that is not always easy and is not always the most glamorous. It’s about breaking out of the molds assigned to us and creating our own lives and incorporating cultures in ways that make the most sense for our own well-being.

Poems like “Ear Hustle” unearth the dark past of an Americanized New Orleans culture in which powdered faces from beignets are unaware of the ancestors who cut the cane for that sugar. There’s that undercurrent of culture that he explores in his poems, but not to seek a rescue but to pay homage to the sweat and the work — to the understudy of society’s labors. These poems are multilayered, while the surface appears playful and musical. It’s a collection that celebrates rather than shames, though some poems do illustrate some of the shames of American history.

One of my favorite poems in this collection, “Sonnet for the Side Eye,” examines nature’s destructive tendencies (like Hurricane Katrina’s impact on New Orleans) with humanity’s obsession with naming that destruction. Leyva is tackling a great many things in this collection, but this poem in particular takes our obsession with categorizing things head on. So much divisiveness stems from these labels. But how do we as humans get to the point where we no longer label our fellow humans as a way to harm them or treat them as “other?”

Don’t miss The Understudy’s Handbook by Steven Leyva. I heard him read at a poetry event online and had to get my hands on this book, and I wasn’t disappointed.

RATING: Cinquain

Check out this interview with Steven Leyva in ArtsFairfax.

Filed Under: challenges, New Authors Challenge, poetry, Poetry Reading Challenge, purchased, Read in 2021, reviews Tagged With: , , ,

The Weather Pop-Up Book by Maike Biederstaedt

August 24, 2021 by

Source: Media Masters Publicity
Hardcover, 14 pgs.
I am an Amazon Affiliate

The Weather Pop-Up Book by Maike Biederstaedt, which publishes in early September, is a great introductory book for elementary school kids to learn about tornadoes, storms, drought, and more. Earthquakes are not touched on, but the author does speak to the benefits of storms and the destruction they can cause. Moreover, the pop-up storms are larger than life and well executed. The book opens and closes easily without any snags.

Younger kids may need help pronouncing some of the terms, but the explanations are on the right level for kids to understand. Older elementary kids will grasp these concepts more easily as they begin to study Earth science in school. This would make a great addition to any teacher’s library to provide students with visual representations. The author does make the push for a move toward renewable energy and more sustainable agriculture, but it isn’t overly preachy.

The Weather Pop-Up Book by Maike Biederstaedt is definitely a good starter book for kids to learn about their environment, natural disasters, energy use, and agriculture. Weather can be something that seems not only destructive but also magical, if you understand it.

Rating: Quatrain

Filed Under: challenges, children's fiction, New Authors Challenge, nonfiction, Read in 2021, Reference, review copy, reviews Tagged With: , , ,

Mailbox Monday #645

August 23, 2021 by

Mailbox Monday has become a tradition in the blogging world, and many of us thank Marcia of The Printed Page for creating it.

It now has its own blog where book bloggers can link up their own mailbox posts and share which books they bought or which they received for review from publishers, authors, and more.

Velvet, Martha, and I also will share our picks from everyone’s links in the new feature Books that Caught Our Eye. We hope you’ll join us.

This is what we received:

Billy Summers by Stephen King, which I purchased on Audible.

Billy Summers is a man in a room with a gun. He’s a killer for hire and the best in the business. But he’ll do the job only if the target is a truly bad guy. And now Billy wants out. But first there is one last hit. Billy is among the best snipers in the world, a decorated Iraq war vet, a Houdini when it comes to vanishing after the job is done. So what could possibly go wrong?

How about everything.

This novel is part war story, part love letter to small town America and the people who live there, and it features on of the most compelling and surprising duos in King fiction, who set out to avenge the crimes of an extraordinarily evil man. It’s about love, luck, fate, and a complex hero with one last shot at redemption.

More Anon: Selected Poems by Maureen N. McLane from the publisher for review.

More Anon gathers a selection of poems from Maureen N. McLane’s critically acclaimed first five books of poetry.

McLane, whose 2014 collection This Blue was a finalist for the National Book Award, is a poet of wit and play, of romanticism and intellect, of song and polemic. More Anon presents her work anew. The poems spark with life, and the concentrated selection showcases her energy and style.

As Parul Seghal wrote in Bookforum, “To read McLane is to be reminded that the brain may be an organ, but the mind is a muscle. Hers is a roving, amphibious intelligence; she’s at home in the essay and the fragment, the polemic and the elegy.” In More Anon, McLane―a poet, scholar, and prizewinning critic―displays the full range of her vertiginous mind and daring experimentation.

Blue Window by Indran Amirthanayagam for review.

Blue Window/Ventana Azul captures modern love in all of its contradictory emotions, expressed online, face to face, and in memory. The poems speak to all of our love entanglements and any reader can identify with the love and loss poured into these pages. Acclaimed Chilean poet laureate Raul Zurita stated that: “Indran Amirthanayagam as an immigrant of the language, has not only rendered that language a magisterial book, Blue Window, but also a poem, “Illusion”, that is amongst the most moving love poems in the history of Spanish.” In these times of the pandemic, where all over the world we have developed a new relationship to the window, among windows, on a Zoom screen with Cyrano moved from the street outside to every windowsill, wherever the internet has travelled, on fiber optic cables set deep into the oceans, on internet balloons flying over large swatches of jungle and brush, bringing people the world over to hear poems of love and loss and love renewed, we give you Blue Window/Ventana Azul.

The Murderous Sky by Rosemary Daniell for review.

Poetry. Women’s Studies. In THE MURDEROUS SKY Rosemary Daniell confronts with searing honesty and stunning poetry the pain of her daughter’s addiction and her son’s schizophrenia. Since giving us A Sexual Tour of the Deep South in 1975, Rosemary Daniell has published numerous other volumes of poetry, fiction and memoir, as well as shepherding the famous Zona Rosa writing workshops. She returns to poetry with what is perhaps her most personal and haunting book; winner of the William Faulkner-William Wisdom Poetry Award, THE MURDUROUS SKY: POEMS OF MADNESS & MERCY is a work that will resonate for decades to come. As Gordon Walmsley says, “It took courage to write these poems, and it takes courage to read them.”

The Book of Labrinths and Mazes by Silke Vry and Finn Dean for review from Media Masters Publicity.

This brilliant book on mazes and labyrinths in history and the modern world encourages young readers to really think about why these puzzles are so appealing. Filled with photographs, drawings, artwork, illustrations, and puzzles, it takes a thematic approach to these enigmatic works. Why are we sometimes afraid to get lost—and why does the idea excite us? How do mazes and labyrinths figure in history and mythology? What can nature tell us about humankind’s obsession with lines, spirals, and patterns? Along the way children will learn about the labyrinth designed by Daedalus for King Minos in the ancient city of Crete; the mystery of the Hemet Maze Stone in southern California; and the magnificent labyrinth at the Cathedral of Chartres. They are encouraged to trace their fingers along a labyrinth to experience its soothing effect, to solve maze-related number puzzles, and to create their own mazes and labyrinths. Packed with fun facts and engaging ideas, this book will help children understand why mazes and labyrinths are so popular, while inspiring them to identify and create these fascinating puzzles in their own world.

The Weather Pop-up Book by Maike Biederstaedt for review from Media Masters Publicity.

In her hugely successful books Creatures of the Deep and What’s in the Egg, as well as her enormously popular series of greeting cards for the Museum of Modern Art, Maike Biederstaedt has established herself as one of the preeminent paper artists working today. Now Biederstaedt takes book engineering to new heights as she immerses readers in five electrifying weather scenarios. As each spread unfolds, a meticulously designed landscape emerges–a freighter balances like a nutshell between high waves in the sea; a tornado takes terrifying aim at a truck trying to outrun it; a rain-spewing storm cloud towers like a skyscraper over a farm house. Nature’s delicate beauty emerges in the intricate shapes of a snowflake and in the luminous arc of a rainbow. Each page features an informative description of its weather event and the book closes with sobering commentary on the effects of climate change. A wondrous introduction to weather for budding climatologists, this is also an artistic tour de force that collectors will treasure.

What did you receive?

Filed Under: mailbox monday, meme Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Until the Right One Comes Along by Chris Haley

August 19, 2021 by

Source: Poet
ebook, 90 pgs.
I am an Amazon Affiliate

Until the Right One Comes Along by Chris Haley is a highly emotional poetry collection about the search for the right partner. With moments of shallow assessment of other men, Haley’s narrator turns those observations on himself and finds his own appearance lacking. At more than one moment in the collection, the narrator considers himself unworthy of love and unattractive.

“When living is the dynamic you question daily”

“And for so many years I had thought I was not much to look at
Not much to glance Or stare at…

This is less a poetic collection and more of a memoir about the struggle of finding love in a world where instant gratification is prized over longevity and loyalty. He uses prose poems and rhyming verse, though the rhyming verse worked less well when I read it. The prose poems were the stand outs in this collection.

This is journey to find love is full of ups and downs, meeting someone who is the right fit but at the wrong time because you don’t love yourself enough. Meeting many wrong men to find that they only want a one-night stand.

Until the Right One Comes Along by Chris Haley explores the harsh realities of looking for companionship and love in today’s world as a LGBTQ+ person, which makes it doubly hard. It’s an emotional roller coaster, but ultimately, the message is you must first believe you are worthy of love in order to find it.

Rating: Tercet

Filed Under: ARC, challenges, New Authors Challenge, poetry, Poetry Reading Challenge, Read in 2021, review copy, reviews Tagged With: , ,

Later by Stephen King

August 18, 2021 by

Source: Purchased
Audible, 6+ hrs.
I am an Amazon Affiliate

Later by Stephen King, narrated by Seth Numrich, is another of those thriller and less-horror King novels.

(trigger warning for possible domestic violence and incest)

Jamie Conklin sees dead people, but you’ll learn this right from the start of this novel. His life is anything but conventional, especially because of his gift. However, his mother, who works in publishing, struggles financially as a single mother and victim of a Ponzi scheme. What I loved was Jamie’s character development, his innocence was whittled away little by little as others use him for his ability, but at the same time, he learns to think for himself and set some boundaries. His mother seems to have learned little from her romantic struggles, and I sense that she doesn’t think beyond the immediate needs and risks to the bigger picture in many cases. But she’s really more of a background character, like Jamie’s invalid uncle.

King always seems to have a firm grasp on childhood and the struggles kids face with parents, peers, and other adults. He makes their lives real and reminds us that we all had those struggles once. But his supernatural elements really bring the creep. Jamie must contend with some dark evils in this novel, and while not always successful, King’s supporting characters round out the story and provide the main protagonist with the direction he needs in a believable way.

Later by Stephen King provides the best in character development and story-telling, but there is a rushed element near the end that seems like it was tacked on a little too quickly. I wanted a little bit more here, but given that it is told from Jamie’s 20-something point of view after everything happened, it seems like he has more to process later on. Perhaps there will be more, later.

RATING: Quatrain

Filed Under: audiobooks, fiction, purchased, Read in 2021, reviews Tagged With: , , ,

Guest Post: Nancy Kilgore, author of Bitter Magic: The Otherworld in a Historical Novel

August 17, 2021 by

Today, I’d like to welcome Nancy Kilgore, author of Bitter Magic, to the blog to talk about writing historical fiction.

First, let’s check out the book:

Bitter Magic is told from Isobel’s perspective and also by Margaret Hay, a fictionalized seventeen-year-old noble woman who becomes interested in Isobel’s magic. Margaret only knows Isobel’s healing charms, and when Isobel confesses to dark magic, Margaret is shocked, all the more so when she hears Isobel name her as a witch during the trial. In this gripping and beautifully written tale, Kilgore’s characters debate whether Gowdie is fantasizing or a real witch, and whether young Margaret and the others are complicit. But their debate soon expands to consider the effects of Isobel’s poverty, being powerless, and ultimately the very nature of faith and forgiveness.

Please give Nancy a warm welcome:

The Other World in a Historical Novel

When I started writing Bitter Magic, an historical novel set in 1660 Scotland, I found myself stepping into a new world, a world where religious beliefs were a matter of life or death, with English fighting Scots, Catholics fighting Protestants, and leaders and kings changing sides unpredictably.

This was also a time when almost everyone, including the religious and educated gentry, believed in the existence of an Otherworld, a world between heaven and earth that was populated by supernatural beings – elves, fauns, and fairies – and that only those with second sight, what we’d call psychic, could see.

Isobel Gowdie, whose true story inspired Bitter Magic, was a peasant eking out a subsistence living on the estate of her laird. She was also a “cunning woman,” a psychic and powerful community leader, and she regularly visited this Otherworld.

In Bitter Magic, as in her documented confession, Isobel’s Otherworld is a place of singing and dancing, of bountiful feasts and beautiful clothing, and never being cold. She communes with the fairies and brings back their secrets to use in her healing and magic practice.

But in Isobel’s lifetime, the western world was undergoing upheavals and big change. The Catholic church had tolerated traditional earth-based spirituality, even allowing Christian prayers and invocations to be integrated into the charms and rituals of the common folk, the wise women, and healers. But the Protestant Reformation aspired to a new era of rationality and enlightenment. The church would no longer be mired in the mud of Catholic corruption or “pagan” superstition. All that had to go. Women, who were connected to the earth through menstruation and childbirth, could not be “enlightened” and therefore could not be leaders in the new era. The “wise women” had to go.

And so began the witch craze of the 17 th century. Fueled by King James I, who had converted from Catholicism to Protestantism, and his treatise, Daemonolgie, the churches decided that not only were cunning women “witches,” but witches were demons in human form, who had to be destroyed.

I used to hold a stereotypical image of that era that is echoed in many witch novels: the good wise woman is suspected of witchcraft because she heals with herbs and rituals; she is hunted, tortured, forced to confess evil deeds she is innocent of, and burned at the stake by the bad Christians.

But in my research, I found a more complex picture. Yes, the church and the government did decree that witchcraft was punishable by death. But not all Christians believed this absolute, and not all accused “witches” were innocent. The moral and ethical standards that our contemporary world ascribes to the “wise women” are not necessarily factual.

The wise women like Isobel who practiced magic and visited the fairies were not thinking in terms of “good” or “bad”. Magic was not about ethics. Isobel’s magic existed in a dimension without morality. It could heal or harm and often did not distinguish between the two.

On the other hand, the Christian reformers were highly ethical as well as idealistic. They believed they were working to bring a new era of love into the world, the Kingdom of God. But with these high standards, that most people couldn’t meet, there was also a reaction against it, whether internal or external. These “others,” the “witches” were evil and to be feared as much if not more than one’s own internal sinful nature. But there were also many who did not cave into this culture of fear, and I was as intrigued by them as by the strange life of Isobel Gowdie.

In Bitter Magic, I have sought to bring alive the world of Isobel, a world of mystics, shamans, and magic, with all of its nuanced characters and complex belief systems, in an extraordinary time in history.

Photo Credit: Kathy Tarantola Photography

About the Author:

Nancy Hayes Kilgore, winner of the Vermont Writers Prize, is the author of two other novels, Wild Mountain (Green Writers Press, 2017,) and Sea Level (RCWMS, 2011,) a ForeWord Reviews Book of the Year. She has published in a She Writes Press anthology, in Bloodroot Literary Magazine, Vermont Magazine, The Bottle Imp, and on Vermont Public Radio. Nancy is a graduate of the Radcliffe Writing Seminars and holds a Master of Divinity degree and a Doctorate in Pastoral Counseling. She is a former parish pastor, a psychotherapist, a writing coach, and leads workshops on creative writing and spirituality.

Filed Under: guest post Tagged With: , , ,

Mailbox Monday #644

August 16, 2021 by

Mailbox Monday has become a tradition in the blogging world, and many of us thank Marcia of The Printed Page for creating it.

It now has its own blog where book bloggers can link up their own mailbox posts and share which books they bought or which they received for review from publishers, authors, and more.

Velvet, Martha, and I also will share our picks from everyone’s links in the new feature Books that Caught Our Eye. We hope you’ll join us.

This is what we received:

Exquisite Bloody, Beating Heart by Courtney LeBlanc from the poet/publisher for the Gaithersburg Book Festival.

This collection takes the reader on a journey through the injustices women face – in their careers, their daily lives, in the way they walk to their cars late at night; to smashing the patriarchy and claiming their rights over their bodies and their ideas; to a love better left remembered; to eventually finding a balance with a love that stands up and fights beside the poet.

Courtney LeBlanc’s Exquisite Bloody, Beating Heart understands that the body “is a war / zone,” especially, the female body, which LeBlanc explores through the lens of fairy tales, the story of Eve, her own journey through girlhood, womanhood, destruction, rebirth, and self-discovery. Each word in each poem is as necessary and life-giving as a heartbeat.  — Shaindel Beers, author of Secure Your Own Mask, Finalist for the Oregon Book Award

In her latest collection, Courtney LeBlanc bravely and fiercely examines the burdens women carry, the societal pressures, the cultural expectations: “the heavy world / digging into our shoulders and slumping our backs.” In many of her poems, she takes back agency – that others tried to take away – and never lets us forget the pluck that endures: “ready to bite” and “guns ablaze” and “I’m read / to burn” and “This body / is a weapon.” This collection is one that never flinches from hard truths, always insist on strength by revealing vulnerability, and even in its exploration of our human darkness, offers flames of hope.  — Shuly Xóchitl Cawood, author of Trouble Can Be So Beautiful at the Beginning

Exquisite Bloody, Beating Heart traces the path from snake to survival to highlight the complex and often conflicted experiences of womanhood. LeBlanc’s voice, both skillfully intimate and starkly blunt, speaks in blood, beauty and burden to show the many hungers and rips in the framework of femininity. With a close examination of the body, from vibrators to “belly gowls,” this collection asks us to consider the dichotomy of punishment and pleasure. “I did not have a map to the body” LeBlanc writes and allows this collection to be its own cartography, a new country of strength where every woman can [grow] the fruit. [Be] the vine and the rain and the light. [Be] the dirt.” This book is an anthem of urging and unlearning, reminding women to “be the key to her own opening, her becoming.” — Kelly Grace Thomas, author of Boat Burned

What did you receive?

Filed Under: mailbox monday, meme Tagged With: , ,

Thursday Time Out: Podcasts

August 12, 2021 by

There are times when you need a distraction, something pleasant to take your mind off the worries in your life and the divisiveness of the world. It’s been a year of that for me.

Fiction, sadly, is no longer the haven I thought, and I can barely concentrate enough to finish a chapter. Long form prose takes too much energy lately, and I don’t have it.

Poetry has been a balm for my soul over the last year (not writing it as much as reading or listening to it). I found a podcast that I really enjoy, though I’ve run out of new episodes as the producer takes a break to spend time with his new child and wife.

I found The Poet’s Voice quite by accident. I watched a Hallmark movie (yes, I know, but sometimes you just need something happy and fairy-tale like), Her Pen Pal, in which a wedding planner reconnects with her high school pen pal and first love. The male lead, Joshua Sasse, was unknown to me (though he was in Galavant, which was popular). I looked him up and found out that he had a love for poetry and had a podcast. I’m always amazed how innocuous moments in your life lead to great things.

If you’d love to hear Sasse and others talk about the poetry they love from W.H. Auden to Mary Oliver and Maggie Smith, you won’t be disappointed — Sasse and his compatriots breathe new life into these poems. They are performed as an actor would with enormous feeling and expression, making them come alive. Sasse even shares some of his late father’s poetry and some of his own. I highly recommend you take a listen.

Second, I’ve really enjoyed a podcast about the history and current goings on at the Boston Celtics. I’ve been a huge basketball fan for most of my life from the days of Larry Bird, Danny Ainge, Robert Parish, and others. View from the Rafters is an insider’s look at the team, how players are recruited, locker room antics and player camaraderie. There are interviews with current and past players, the backstory behind Doc Rivers’ Ubuntu call for teamwork and connection at all times, and so much more. If you love the team, this is a must listen.

You can listen to these on Spotify, Apple, and other places if you’re interested.

What podcasts have you listened to?

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