This is my symphony

What I read & what I lived …

He created them male and female, and he blessed them and called them “human.”Genesis 5:2 New Living Translation It was one of those late night conversations, just friend-to-friend over two (or it was three?) glasses of wine. My good friend turned to me and tossed out this zinger: “You approach life like a man.” I …

Continue reading

Hillbilly Elegy J.D. Vance Harper Collins I first heard J.D. Vance talk about his memoir on Fresh Air last August–a month later, my The New Yorker  featured Vance and the book. Through the summer and into fall, I could hardly listen to a newscast or talk show without hearing his name. This thirty-something Appalachian native was …

Continue reading

Girl Waits With Gun Amy Stewart Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Constance Kopp and her sisters Norma and Fleurette manage the farm just fine, thank you very much. They garden, raise chickens (and pigeons!), and, since their mother died, have successfully rebuffed brother Francis’s pleas to come live with him and his family in town: “You can’t …

Continue reading

Girl From Venice Martin Cruz Smith Simon & Schuster I’ve said it before–I’m a reading snob. No chick lit. No crime. No mysteries. Except when I read Lawyer For the Dog, Girl on the Train, or a Flavia De Luce mystery. And it goes without saying I’m not enticed by bestsellers–but then a title will …

Continue reading

Where’d you go, Bernadette Maria Semple Little Brown Chick lit plots and characters are like so many cut-out cookies, after a while. You’ve got the caterpillar career girl, the stuck-up (but oh-so-handsome) object of her affections. The mishaps. Enter heart-of-gold True Love to sweep her off her feet. The same can be said of YA …

Continue reading