Jane Fonda’s autobiography surprised me more than perhaps any other book I have ever read or listened to.
Fonda has worked impressively hard to acquire the life wisdom that she shares so generously and goodhumoredly with the reader, and hearing one of the great actresses of our time tell her own story makes this audiobook as exquisitely pleasurable as a Broadway opening night.
The epigrams at the start of each chapter alone are invaluable, and the Hollywood stories are inherently fascinating, but what I loved most about My Life So Far was what I learned about myself. I came away from this book acutely and poignantly aware of the importance in life of fostering inner transformation in the way that Fonda has. I am simply a better human being for having listened to this incredible book.
My Life So Far is a powerful account of an extraordinary woman. Oscar winner, controversial political activist, groundbreaking fitness guru, wife, mother, lover, philanthropist - just some of the roles Jane Fonda is known for. In this candid book, written by Fonda herself, there are messages for women of all ages as she holds a mirror up to her own life but lets us see ours reflected there. Now in her 60s, Jane Fonda looks back over a life in which she won Oscars for her roles in Klute and Coming Home and produced blockbuster hits Nine to Five and…
I first read this Dickens classic in middle school, and it has stayed with me ever since, yet every reread of A Tale of Two Citieshits me like that first time.
Today, we would label and limit this Victorian novel as a work of historical fiction, written as it was nearly a hundred years after the French Revolution that centralizes the plot. Instead, it is one of the most poignant, surprising, and rollicking tales of adventure ever told. Sydney Carton is the breakout character—debauched, insinuating, lovelorn, self-loathing, utterly fascinating, and ultimately heroic—he uses up more adjectives than the whole cast of characters in most other books.
Dickens threw everything but the kitchen sink into this one while mastering every single element that goes into great fiction, period.
Sydney Carton is a lawyer who has wasted his abilities and his life. Now he has to make a difficult choice about what is really important to him, which could be a matter of life or death. The French Revolution is running its violent course; lives are ruined as a new France is created. How did the gentle Doctor Manette and his daughter Lucie become caught up in France's struggles? What is the real identity of the handsome Charles Darnay, who wins Lucie's hand in marriage? And why does the shadow of La Bastille Prison hang over them all? The…
Author envy can be incredibly energizing, but what I felt while reading No Two Persons was on a whole other level.
This is a story about a book—a debut novel that ends up connecting different characters in the very way that all authors dream about. But Bauermeister is, to my knowledge, the first one to illustrate that journey from an idea in a writer’s head and querying and submission to galley, audiobook, publication, and beyond.
The entire time I was reading No Two Persons, I kept wishing I had thought of this—had written it—had a bookstore still so that I could put it in my customers’ hands. Anyone who loves books will be even more in love upon reading this one.
One book. Nine readers. Ten changed lives. New York Times bestselling author Erica Bauermeister’s No Two Persons is “a gloriously original celebration of fiction, and the ways it deepens our lives.”*
That was the beauty of books, wasn’t it? They took you places you didn’t know you needed to go…
Alice has always wanted to be a writer. Her talent is innate, but her stories remain safe and detached, until a devastating event breaks her heart open, and she creates a stunning debut novel. Her words, in turn, find their way to readers, from a teenager hiding her homelessness, to…
A surprise phone call from her late fiance's family sends Vivien Lowry of Bloomsbury Girls off on her next adventure.
Struggling as a playwright, she moves to Italy to reckon with her past and create a new future as a scriptwriter in Rome. Here, she encounters the greatest male bastion of them all, the Vatican.
Vivien ends up entangled between the church and the censors while romantically caught between two men: an enigmatic American film financier who is not who he says he is and a socialist Italian prince and independent filmmaker who ends up under house arrest over a censored screenplay. Each of them has a wartime experience from their past that they must revisit in order to move on - Vivien most of all.
