Kate Padilla has long enjoyed reading, and for the last decade, combined her writing skills and book pleasure to review books for Authorlink.
Kate’s journalism career began in high school with a weekly column in her hometown newspaper, and later, after graduating from the University of Wyoming, she moved into newspapers as a reporter and editor and also as a radio news director. She subsequently worked as a U.S. Senate staffer helping write legislation and then as a public lands manager for the Department of Interior until her retirement. Now, she is an award-winning poet, artist and writer living in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Her passion is exploring, traveling to places not often frequented by tourists, ranging from Albania in the Balkans to isolated Honduran islands in the Caribbean.
Not surprisingly Kate favors foreign authors because they immerse her in other worlds and cultures, books such as those written by Nobel Prize winner Naguib Mahfouz, who writes about the Arab world, or Milan Kundera, from Czechoslovakia. Any book written by women with Latin or Mexican roots is a must, she says, listing authors Isabel Allende and Sandra Cisneros as idols. She never passes up a poetry book sent her way, though they are a challenge to review because the poetry is subjective. She also enjoys a good detective novel, and at times, magical fanaticism. Her review favorites include offerings from the Library of America, a nonprofit that collects and preserves writings from America’s key authors. If she had a genre she doesn’t prefer, it would likely be most Western novels. Her pet peeves are preachy religious or moralizing books, those that demean women or have disregard for the environment.
Lost Hills, Lee Goldberg, Thomas & Mercer - At the end of one’s complex and perhaps trying day, a Lee Goldberg detective story is just the ticket. The prolific author has produced more than 30 novels, mystery series and scores of TV shows, all with the same theme: a hero who saves the day.
Legacy and the Queen by Kobe Bryant, Annie Mathew - If there are any doubts Olympic gold medalist and NBA champion Kobe Bryant can tell a good story, his young reader book, “Legacy and the Queen,” written by Annie Matthew, dispels them.
Recipe for a Perfect Wife, Karma Brown, Penguin Random House - Karma Brown’s novel, “Recipe for a Perfect Wife,” weaves together the unhappy lives of two women, Nellie Murdoch, a 1950s housewife, and Alice, in 2018, who share a powerful bond. The book puts a new spin on the expression that a “women’s place is in the kitchen.”
One for the Black Bird, One for the Crow, Olivia Hawker, Lake Union Publishing - Olivia Hawker’s enchanting historical novel, One for the Black Bird, One for the Crow, takes place in rugged and isolated Wyoming in 1870 where the nearest town, Paintrock, lies miles away, unapproachable in winter except by sleigh.
March Sisters: On life, death, and Little Women, Library of America - Louisa May Alcott’s semi-autobiographical classic novel, Little Women, written a century-and-half ago, continues to resonate, most recently prompting The Library of America’s new book, “March Sisters.” Four women writers comment on how the characters, loosely based on Alcott’s own family, shaped their own lives.
Booth Tarkington, Novels & Stories, edited by Thomas Mallon, Library of America - Few have won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction twice, but Booth Tarkington did, first with his 1919 novel, “The Magnificent Ambersons,” and then, three years later, for “Alice Adams.”
The Braid, Laetitia Colombani, Atria - Laetitia Colombani’s most inspiring novel, “The Braid,” takes us on a breathtaking journey, laced with valuable historical perspectives of three women facing different obstacles, mostly obscure, and almost beyond our comprehension
Ghost Stories, Edited by Morton & Klinger, Pegasus Books - It was in the 18th century, after the Civll War and World War I, when a growing interest in communicating with the war dead spawned a new religion: “Spiritualism.” That in turn prompted emergence of ghost stories.
From Scratch, Tembi Locke, Simon & Schuster - Actor and TEDx speaker Tembi Locke’s memoir, “From Scratch,” is a documentation of a complicated journey of a Black American whose Sicilian husband is disowned by his family who objected to their biracial marriage.
Walt Whitman Speaks, Brenda Wineapple Editor, Library of America, - The Library of America marked Walt Whitman’s bicentennial by releasing a condensed version of his final thoughts on “life, writing, spirituality and the promise of America” in a pocketbook entitled, “Walt Whitman Speaks.”