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Dirty Deeds (Cole McGinnis #4)
Dirty Deeds (Cole McGinnis #4)
Rhys Ford | 2014 | Contemporary, Crime, LGBTQ+, Mystery, Romance
8
8.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
Sheila Pinelli is back in Cole's life, and he wants to find her and make sure that she can't hurt anyone ever again. Due to a mistake, she is released without the officer knowing that she should have been detained. This takes Cole on a journey to find her and also draws him into finding some missing women as well. Claudia comes back to work too, and I love her wisdom and style!

Ending on a cliffhanger regarding Bobby, this is a well-written and fast-paced addition to the Cole McGinnis series. Definitely recommended.

* I received this book from the author in return for a fair and honest review. *

Merissa
Archaeolibrarian - I Dig Good Books!
Mar 20, 2016
  
AG
A Grand Man ( Mary Ann series 1)
6
6.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
75 of 220
Book
A Grand Man ( Mary Ann series 1)
By Catherine Cookson
⭐️⭐️⭐️

Set on Tyneside, the part of the world which Catherine Cookson knew and understood so well, this heartwarming and humorously observed book skillfully weds an authentic and unsentimentalized background to the kind of fairytale story that we all like to believe could come true and which the Mary Ann Shaughnessys of this world know to be true.

A little girls love for her Da is priceless. Catherine Cookson brings live and determination to all her books. This is the first in the Mary Ann Shaughnessy books a little girls journey in a tough environment. Love this author.
  
Thundercats Volume One: Omens
Thundercats Volume One: Omens
6
6.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
Thunder

Thunder

Thundercats .... Hoooooo!!!

*sword kerching sound*

The Thundercats was a childhood favourite of mine, so when I saw this on sale (in 2025), I thought I might as well give it a go.

Pleasingly, this requires no foreknowledge of the cartoon, with this starting right at the very beginning, with the Thundercats fleeing Thundera whilst being pursued by the Mu'tants and crash-landing on 'Third Earth', to find that their leader Jago has perished in the journey and that his son 'Lion-O' hibernation pod has malfunctioned so that Lion-O is now fully grown.

They have yet to directly encounter Mumm-ra the ever-Living.

I think I'll keep an eye out for more of these.
  
Dirt Road
Dirt Road
James Kelman | 2016 | Fiction & Poetry
10
9.3 (3 Ratings)
Book Rating
Kelman's best novel yet. Gets to the heart of human emotion. (0 more)
Nothing (0 more)
Kelman is an expert in understanding people
Kelman’s new novel Dirt Road is story that takes both characters and reader on a journey right from the outset, but the journey is more than it seems. The novel begins in the West coast of Scotland where we learn that Murdo - a sixteen-year-old boy - and his father Tom are mourning the death of their mother/wife and sister/daughter. Searching for solace, they embark on a journey to Alabama, U.S.A to spend time with Uncle John and Aunt Maureen. For Murdo, family is just a happy memory, a moment in time captured in a photograph, ‘The family was four and not just him and Dad’, whilst for Tom, family is the bond that holds them together. Throughout the journey, Tom strives to guide his son and keep him on ‘the right path’, yet Murdo, as we will learn, has a path of his own to find. Stifled by the fathers influence, the boy has a tendency to stray, thus when they reach Allentown Mississippi, Murdo stumbles upon a family of musicians led by Zydeco performer Queen Monzee-ay. Murdo is as drawn to music as his father is to family, the boy himself is an accomplished accordion player, and when he is offered an opportunity to play a set with Queen Monzee-ay in two weeks’ time, we watch as the road between father and son diverges and choice and risk becomes the key plot in the story.
While this may appear a simple story line, Kelman’s exploration into the fragmented relationship between father and son gives the reader an honest analysis of family and grief. The third person narrator, with bursts of free indirect discourse from Murdo, allows the reader both an internal and external insight into the constraints of family. This parallel leaves the reader feeling uncomfortable, yet with a conflicting heart. This is Kelman’s unique writing style at its best.
Dirt Road is more than a novel of grief and family relationships though; it is a novel of risk, of following new paths with uncertainties, about leaving behind the familiarities and safety of the past and following the heart. It is about deep connections; for Murdo this is through music and the feeling of freedom that he associates with music, whilst for the other characters it is about cultural connections and Scottish ancestry. Kelman’s clever use of parallels shows the reader the intensity of human connections whilst suggesting that change and progression is possible. This great novel will linger in your thoughts for weeks after you put it down, and it brings to mind a poem by Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

For the full poem visit (https://www.poetryfoundation.org).

Dirt Road by James Kelman
Canongate Books (14 July 2016)
  
Jewels of Truth: The Journey of the Soul Continues, Vol. 3
Jewels of Truth: The Journey of the Soul Continues, Vol. 3
Atrayo | 2015 | Mind, Body & Spiritual
6
6.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
Genre: Non-fiction, Spiritual, Non-romance

Page Count: 258 pages

My rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Your spiritual journey of self-improvement continues in volume three of the Jewels of Truth series by Ivan A. Pozo-Illas, a.k.a. Atrayo. In this new compendium of 365 statements of spiritual wisdom, Atrayo shares daily inspirational tools to explore all of the must-haves in your life, including love, faith, forgiveness, and certainly, God(dess).


From these poignant and concise statements, rather than lengthy diatribes, you can easily and quickly find the essential kernel of truth to help you on your journey today.

No matter your religious or spiritual traditions or background, this volume is written from an all-inclusive perspective. Jewels of Truth: The Journey of the Soul Continues is the sacred and uplifting result of clairvoyant automatic writing as the genesis motivation to reach the masses. The channeled spirit teachers are all angelic in divine nature. They are nameless as a united continuum of the Holy Spirit.

Spirituality has a core need in our lives. No matter where you are on your journey, these messages of hope are shared in love.

Let me start off by saying that I am really not qualified to be reviewing this book. Ivan A. Pozo-Illas was generous enough to donate to the Borgen Project in exchange for an honest review. While I am happy to do it, I am probably not doing this book justice.

As someone with absolutely no background in philosophy or religion, this was a difficult book to get through and review.

I do know that despite the author’s claims of it being all-inclusive for all religious backgrounds, the book was more tilted to the Christian faith, with most of the proverbs talking about God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. There were plenty of mentions of God(dess) as well, which was the basically only indication these statements of wisdom were not strictly for Christian. While Mohammed, Buddha, and Krishna are mentioned maybe four times, and always in a list of other important religious figures from different religions (never for their specific teachings), Jesus is mentioned 22 times, usually in passages like this:

It has been written in the Biblical New Testament that “Jesus the Christ” once stated that to enter the “Kingdom of God” one must be as innocent as a child in spirit.

On top of that, these statements of wisdom, to me at least, were pretty long and wordy. It was difficult to get through. A lot of the time I did not understand what was being said, but that could just be chalked up to my own ignorance on the subject.

This is probably more useful to people more educated about spirituality than me, but it is definitely not for the everyday person, at least not most of it. There were some things that were interesting, like this quote celebrating diversity in religions.

No one religion can have a monopoly on God and/or on his favoritism. To say so is a lie and a sin to the diversity within Creation itself.