What I read Every so often a book comes along that meets you right where you are, one that stares straight into your heart as you sit nose-to-page. This week, that book was All the Children Are Home by Patry Francis. Dahlia and Louie Moscatelli have a houseful of foster children. Their rag tag family …
What I read If you–like me–need a novel that draws you in and keeps you on the edge of your seat, Laura Dave’s The Last Thing He Told Me fits the bill. I’ve had a bit of trouble staying focused enough to read over the past several months (more on that below) but this story …
What I read I put off reading Lisa Genova’s Still Alice (or seeing the movie) because Alzheimer’s disease is everyone’s worst nightmare, am I right? And I just didn’t know if my heart could take the Big Feelings I knew the story would stir up. But I’ve got to say, Genova handled a sensitive topic …
What I read For the past several years, the best sellers lists have been heavy with World War II fiction. Think The Tatooist of Auschwitz, The Nightingale, The Book Thief, All the Light We Cannot See. I’ve read and reviewed plenty on this blog. But when you read a lot there’s a kind of weariness …
I love my nest. The sunlight. The rocker I refinished nearly forty years ago. Amish rugs. Green kitchen chairs. My dad’s watercolors. Books. The antique trunk. Polished wood floors. Don’t get me wrong–if I had a million bucks, I’d make big time changes. But at the end of the day, my nest is my refuge. …
About six months pre-pandemic (for how long, I wonder, will we orient ourselves with that descriptor?) I picked up my needle and thread and started stitching. I hadn’t done any stitching for years–decades, even–and suddenly, here I was again, surrounded by fabric and embroidery thread and wool felt and bamboo hoops. Maybe it was a …
What I read This month’s book club read is Fredrik Backman’s Anxious People and it will stay with me for quite some time. Imagine a bank robber at the end of their rope–no job, no apartment, worried about losing custody of their kids. Imagine a motley assortment of lonely hearts and misfits, held hostage after …
What I read I’ve had some pretty good luck lately waiting out Amazon emails for Kindle deals. Day after day they show up in my inbox. And day after day I drag them to the trash. But those algorithms must snoop around in my Wishlist because every now and then they throw out an amazing …
What I read … and lived I just finished Hazel Prior’s novel How the Penguins Saved Veronica–a sweet (but fairly predictable) tale of how Veronica McCreedy finds purpose and healing after a lifetime of sorrow and rejection. After watching a documentary titled Earth Matters, Veronica travels to Antarctica to observe the scientists studying Adelie penguins–with …
On my return trip, I was able to see the landscape of Oklahoma and Missouri which, on the way down, was shrouded in freezing rain and freezing fog. What did I miss in Oklahoma? Cattle. And range land. And more cattle. Along with dirt a shade of red I’ve never seen before. Reservation land always …
This is my symphony 