Poet Olive Senior was new to me, and I’m most grateful for the introduction. The images from Caribbean life gave me a Sunday Sentence the week I read this book. I received this poetry collection from a “Secret Santa” (who’s not so secret-I know that she lives in Jamaica). GARDENING IN THE TROPICS by Olive Senior (Insomniac Press).Miranda Richmond Mouillot New Directions).

Books that I receive directly from authors/publishers will be noted as complimentary review copies. For the most part, this page will reflect what I post about my reading on Goodreads. explores how she has found meaning and purpose within that decade that for so long she thought of as lost how she has faced the 'flunk' represented by those years, and has embraced a way to 'start' anew.Now that I’m easing away from an official book-reviewing practice, I’m using this space to share brief remarks on my reading. However, as Hall begins to grasp how purposefully Hubbard has created the unique language of Scientology-in the process isolating and indoctrinating its practitioners-she confronts how language can also be used as a tool of authoritarianism.Hall is a captivating guide, and Flunk. In the secluded canyons of Hollywood, she finds herself increasingly drawn toward the certainty that Scientology appears to offer.In this candid and nuanced memoir, Hall recounts her spiritual and artistic journey with a visceral affection for language, delighting in the way words can create a shared world. Hall compellingly reveals what drew her into the religion-what she found intriguing and useful-and how she came to confront its darker sides.As a young woman from a literary family striving to forge her own way as an artist, Hall ricochets between the worlds of Shakespeare, avant-garde theater, and soap opera, until her brilliant elder brother, playwright Oakley Hall III, falls from a bridge and suffers permanent brain damage. Ron Hubbard, and the ascension of David Miscavige. Her time in the Church, the 1980s, includes the secretive illness and death of its founder, L. Start., Sands Hall chronicles her slow yet willing absorption into the Church of Scientology. Hall compellingly reveals what drew her into the religion-what she found intriguing and useful-and how she came to confront its darker sides.As a young woman from a literary family striving to forge her own way as an artist, Hall ricochets between the worlds of Shakespeare.

Flunk. Start. by Sands Hall