5/5 ⭐ | Unsettled: A Memoir by Laurie Woodford

Forty-eight years old, divorced and living in New York, author Laurie Woodford was having what some might call a mid-life crisis.  Hungry for adventure, tired of the same old, or in fact a mid-life crisis, whatever you call it, it was the catalyst to what became a laugh out loud hilarious memoir, “Unsettled.”

Prepare to cry from laughing, live vicariously, and gain perspective of the world through the travels laid across these pages.  With dating encounters that will have you belly laughing, like a gentleman with a wandering eye to the smooth, hairless complexion of someone entirely outside of Laurie’s self-described attraction to very hairy men.  To travel adventures like caring for a seventeen-year-old dog in exchange for a free place to lay your head, or to coming home early from work to construction workers using your fridge and unit as their own personal lunchroom, the stories within are truly entertaining.

Asia to South America, Mexico to Arkansas and Oklahoma, “Unsettled” packs the true realities of adventuring, dating in your fifties, and working in foreign countries.  Organized successively as a collection of experiences and events, author Laurie Woodford keeps readers coming back for more of her encounters and adventures.  Detailing the lonely, the learning, the challenges with time differences, and moving on, this memoir provides the good, the bad, and the hilarious of Woodford’s unsettled adventures.

Aptly named, and expertly presented, “Unsettled” is quite the memorable collection of travelling escapades.  Laurie’s hysterical antics and sidesplitting experiences made for an amusing and quick read.   

Click HERE to get your copy today!

Picturing a Nation: The Great Depression’s Finest Photographers Introduce America to Itself by Martin W. Sandler

Publication Date: October 12^th, 2021

Rating: 5 Stars

Picturing a Nation is an outstanding pictorial history of the great depression.  Sandler does a great job of setting up the background on the accumulation of this book.  For instance, he informs readers about the Resettlement Administration, created in 1935, which made the monumental decision to create a historical section, staffed with photographers, to capture ways in which the administration was directly helping the farmers and citizens in an effort to provide the government evidence of its use of funds.  However, what they didn’t anticipate was the fame, accolades, and emotions these pictures would encapsulate all these years later. 

Traversing the country, this book is split into regions such as South, Midwest and East with pictures and brief text setting the scene for the visual art on the page.  Ultimately, profiling eleven key figures involved in this project, this book documents the nation at a crucial time in history. 

Nothing like this had ever been done before, nor has anything like it been done since, as a mirror on the nation is held up for all to see.  This is a powerful and insightful reminder to where we’ve been and the history of our nation.

*Disclaimer: A review copy was provided; all opinions are my own.

Blog Tour: An Improbable Pairing by Gary Dickson

An Improbable Pairing [January 8, 2019] by historical romance novelist Gary Dickson chronicles the enduring themes of a young man’s coming of age and the rebellious love with a mismatched European high society Countess. Set in the golden years of 1960s Paris, Geneva, Gstaad, and Cannes, An Improbable Pairing provides an inside look into the worlds of haute couture, three-star gourmet restaurants, and lavish hotel suites—the domains of rank and privilege. But society’s privileged resist when an interloper threatens to upset their cozy structure.

In September of 1963, Scott Stoddard, an American graduate student, is traveling to Switzerland when he meets the Countess de Rovere, a French divorcee—he is smitten, and she is intrigued. What begins as a little coquetry soon becomes a serious love affair, much to the consternation of the Countess’s ex-husband and mother, not to mention the Countess’s friends of European high society. A meeting of equals poses problems enough, but what about one between two people who seem to have so many differences? And when a man of traditional attitudes couples with an independent and self-confident woman, something’s got to give. It won’t be the countess. As their liaison transcends an affair that cannot be dismissed, they all agree that something must be done.

An Improbable Pairing proves that love will prevail even when family and society are against the couple’s will. “Those of us fortunate enough to have been in love or to be in love remember or know the intensity and deliciousness of being infatuated with another person,” says Dickson. “Troubles and cares melt away and being with that person of our desire overtakes all reason. A kind of trance develops where we see no wrong, disregard any blemish, deny any fault. This is the feeling I hope to invoke with readers of An Improbable Pairing.”

Gary Dickson is an inveterate traveler and a Francophile, sans merci. Educated in the United States and Switzerland in history, literature, and the classics, Gary lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Susie. Follow him on Goodreads, Instagram and Facebook.

An Improbable Pairing is now available on Amazon and other retailers.

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Question: What do you want readers to take away from Scott and Desirée’s connection and relationship in the story?

Gary Dickson: I want readers to understand and remember the architecture of the relationship between Scott and the Countess, Desirée. While built on the chemistry of attraction and love, it is buttressed by affection, intelligence and humor. To be in love is often chemistry, but to stay in love the relationship must be of such importance that the couple is willing to make the necessary modifications to their pre-conceived desires and attitudes in order for their love to survive and blossom.

Q: What makes An Improbable Pairing so different from other historical romance novels?

Dickson: Most historical fiction is heavy with obvious research piling on specifics sometimes not pertinent to the story. In the case of An Improbably Pairing, no research was necessary since the scenes and the culture of this period are so very familiar to me. As a result, the descriptions have the authenticity of first-hand experience rather than a ponderous factual approach. This story is light-hearted, fast-paced yet packed with accurate detail, as one reviewer remarked, “an almost cinematic description.”

Q: Do you have additional stories or books you are working on?

Dickson: Yes, many in the works! I have already written a sequel but with an espionage and thriller flavor called A Spy with Scruples, a continuation of the Scott and Desirée story. I also have an idea for a sequel to this novel, which is a continuation of the spy motif that takes place in Switzerland, New York, and Palm Beach, FL. I have also completed another novel, a melange of a fantasy, a mystery, and a romance within the speculative fiction genre. Additionally, I have written and will shortly publish a book of poetry, La Poesie De Bonne Bouffe/The Poetry of Good Eats. A series of 25 poems in French with English translations, celebrating French food specialties, a French and English recipe for each, and an acknowledgement page which details the places I’ve frequented and learned about these delicacies.

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About the Author:

Gary Dickson is an inveterate traveler and a Francophile, sans merci. Educated in the United States and Switzerland in history, literature, and the classics, Gary lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Susie.

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An Improbable Pairing is available January 8, 2019 on Amazon and other retailers.

This Will By My Undoing: Living at the Intersection of Black, Female, and Feminist in (White) America by Morgan Jerkins

Publication Date: January 30^th, 2018

Rating: 3.45 Stars

This book was a first for me. My first collection of essays, my first in depth read on what it is like to be a black female in America and the first book in which I will NEVER be able to truly empathize with an author, or characters the author has created within, because of my skin color. As author, Morgan Jerkins so eloquently wrote on page 170, “they were sympathetic, but they weren’t capable of true empathy – this fear wasn’t theirs to know.” This sentence houses one critical difference in my white world and Morgan’s black world: I simply cannot understand what she has gone through, and continues to go through, the fear she has faced, and continues to face, because I will never have to experience it on the same level as her. Granted, on one level I can relate to the fear all females will encounter at some point, but her fear goes further than anything I will ever experience, she is a layer beyond anything I CAN experience – her skin color compounds her fear.

This Will Be My Undoing is full of raw emotion. Jerkins, allows us into her interpersonal most thoughts as we experience life through her. She allows us to experience an otherwise uninteresting cheerleading tryouts, through the mind of a black 10-year old. She takes us through her personal thoughts on her body, relationships and academic encounters. Even people I otherwise idolize, such as Michelle Obama, take on an entirely different meaning for her. The talent and voice portrayed within strongly resonated with me (albeit some were TMI), causing me to re-evaluate my own experiences, encounters and world events through a new lens. Jerkins’ skill appears effortless within each essay, while her drive toward success is palpable, and she appears to be only just beginning.

*Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.