Book cover of Lives of Girls and Women

Book description

Through the women and men she encounters, Del becomes aware of her own potential and the excitement of an unknown independence. Alice Munro's previous books include "Dance of the Happy Shades" and "The Beggar Maid", which was nominated for the 1980 Booker Prize.

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Why read it?

2 authors picked Lives of Girls and Women as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Great adventure doesn’t always mean jungles, star-wastes, or derring-do. The human heart – what one poet called "the wilderness behind the eyes" – can be as electrifying as any firefight. In this tradition, Alice Munro won the 2013 Nobel Prize in Literature. Lives of Girls and Women is her second novel, and like all great adventure stories will tell you more about yourself than you ever suspected. As Sir Walter Scott said of Jane Austen: "That young lady has a talent for describing the involvements and feelings and characters of ordinary life."

From William's list on well-written slam-bang adventures.

In this book of linked short stories, we meet protagonist Del Jordan as a child fascinated by words and their relationship to all she is beginning to discover. We watch her grow into a precocious young woman who seeks out experience that will help her understand who she is and what she wants. Unflinchingly honest about her desires as a woman and a person, she makes fearlessly original observations about the people and places in her life. This is the story of a remarkably observant writer through whose eyes we see the world as an entrancing place in all its…

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Book cover of Resonant Blue and Other Stories

Resonant Blue and Other Stories by Mary Vensel White,

The first collection of award-winning short fiction from the author of Bellflower and Things to See in Arizona, whose writing reflects “how we can endure and overcome our personal histories, better understand our ancestral ones, and accept the unknown future ahead.”

In “Driftwood,” a woman in a sleepy desert…

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