Books
-
Thursday 13 – What J’s been up to
In an effort to get motivated and back to blogging from my unintentional hiatus, here are 13 things I’ve been up to lately.
-
Miscellaneous Monday
I don’t know what to write about today, so I’m going to just throw a bunch of stuff at you. Here goes. Regarding the meme above, this is how I felt when we were in France last year. The names of the towns we stayed in were pronounced completely differently than they looked to my American eyes. Mougins is pronounced ‘MOO-jan‘ with a soft j, short a, and a soft n. Click the link to hear. Vincennes is a little closer to how it looks, VA-sen, with a short A. One of the stops on our train ride between Paris and Vincennes is Nation, pronounced NA-si-on, with all short vowels.…
-
Catching up on Reading
Reading for me is mostly audiobooks these days, as I can listen to them while Mulder and I go for our morning walk, or while I cook dinner, sometimes when I go grocery shopping. It’s a mixed bag, because sometimes my mind wanders and I find I have gaps. Recently I was listening to a book, and while I thought I had stopped it when I took out my earbuds, it was still going, and when I realized it I had lost a couple of hours. Finding where you were in an audiobook is very different than finding where you were in a physical copy. Also, you don’t have that…
-
Haven
In seventh-century Ireland, a scholar and priest called Artt has a dream telling him to leave the sinful world behind. Taking two monks—young Trian and old Cormac—he rows down the river Shannon in search of an isolated spot on which to found a monastery. Drifting out into the Atlantic, the three men find an impossibly steep, bare island inhabited by tens of thousands of birds, and claim it for God. In such a place, what will survival mean? I just finished ‘Haven’, by Emma Donoghue. Who knew the story of three early medieval monks going off to Luke Skywalker’s island to form a tiny monastery could be so compelling? But…
-
A Million Things
Beckett at The Birchwood Pie Project posted that the best book she has read this year is A Million Things, by Emily Spurr. Coincidentally, I was looking for a new book to listen to via Audible. I usually have 2 books going at once, a physical book that I read before bed (generally getting a page or two in before falling asleep), and an audio book that I listen to while I walk Mulder, while I cook, and sometimes during my work day if I have down time. A Million Things is told from Rae’s point of view. Rae is a 10 1/2 year old girl who lives with her…
-
Friday Randomness
Cutting straight to the chase, we are all fine. Maya felt pretty crummy last week, improved over the weekend, and is now back to her old self. Her symptoms were mostly her throat, and feeling tired, it never went into her lungs. Unfortunately, COVID hit another family member and his household. They live a couple of hours away and are not vaccinated. It hit them pretty hard, and they are slowly on the mend now. There is no convincing people about the vaccine, so we just sigh and hope for the best. Ted and I never tested positive. Perhaps we had it before Maya did (Ted had some symptoms that…
-
L is for Lincoln Highway
In June, 1954, eighteen-year-old Emmett Watson is driven home to Nebraska by the warden of the juvenile work farm where he has just served fifteen months for involuntary manslaughter. His mother long gone, his father recently deceased, and the family farm foreclosed upon by the bank, Emmett’s intention is to pick up his eight-year-old brother, Billy, and head to California where they can start their lives anew. But when the warden drives away, Emmett discovers that two friends from the work farm—the wily, charismatic Duchess and earnest, offbeat Woolly—have stowed away in the trunk of the warden’s car. Together, they have hatched an altogether different plan for Emmett’s future, one…
-
K is for Kindred
(Octavia) Butler’s most celebrated, critically acclaimed work tells the story of Dana, a young black woman who is suddenly and inexplicably transported from her home in 1970s California to the pre–Civil War South. As she time-travels between worlds, one in which she is a free woman and one where she is part of her own complicated familial history on a southern plantation, she becomes frighteningly entangled in the lives of Rufus, a conflicted white slaveholder and one of Dana’s own ancestors, and the many people who are enslaved by him. During numerous such time-defying episodes with the same young man, she realizes the challenge she’s been given: to protect this…
-
Friday Randomness
Today’s post is one of those potpourri type posts, where I have some ideas, but haven’t gotten around to putting them in their own blog posts, so I am going to lump them all together. Ted and Maya were away last week. Ted’s aunt, who lives in Salt Lake City, had a stroke last year. His mom wanted to go visit her, but of course she could not, due to COVID restrictions. Earlier this year, his mom fell and fractured her foot. It is mostly healed now, but Ted and his brother weren’t thrilled with the idea of her traveling alone. She is nearing her mid-80s, and is extremely active,…
-
Meme Monday – Books!
YOU GUYS, guess what we did yesterday? We went to a bookstore! An actual locally owned and operated bookstore! And we browsed around, and bought a couple of books. It was glorious. After that, we went to the hardware store to buy some hardware store type things, which was a little more crowded and not so much to our liking, but we got our things and left. But the bookstore! SO GREAT! Speaking of which, I have more books in my TBR pile than I know what to do with. I have books that I received as Christmas and birthday gifts. I have books that I got through the local…
-
How I read now
Where do you find out about books? Recommendations from friends and family? New York Times Review of Books? Browsing the bookstore or library? Do you insist on a physical copy, or do you use a kindle app or some such? What about audio books? Personally, I love a physical book, and I have become quite enamored with audio books. I’m not really fond of the e-reader, though I think it’s great if you travel, or commute via public transportation, or if you have arthritis or something that makes holding a book uncomfortable. Anyway, here are some books I have read recently, or will read soonish, and how I came to…
-
Pandemic Potpourri
These are the beautiful hand made masks, sent to us by some good friends, for when we go to the grocery store and so on. I cannot sew, and have no idea how to follow a pattern, and don’t have (and have never used) a sewing machine. And I’m the one Ted and Maya come to when they need a button sewn on or something, so of course this task was a lot more than I could handle. Aren’t they lovely? I like how the patterns are all different so we can tell which belongs to who, and that they are hand made by friends. How are you all doing?…
-
Thursday Thirteen, Los Angeles version
(Photo courtesy of Wikipedia – there was a TINY bit of snow on the tip of the mountains, nothing like this. I don’t think I realized before that there are mountains RIGHT THERE, but I’ve not really paid much attention to LA in the past.) My BFF Rosemary lives in Pennsylvania. She and I met in High School in 1982, and after HS she moved around a bit for a few years, ending up in PA a few months before we moved back to California. She has two boys in college, one is graduating from Clemson in May, the other is a Freshman at Lewis and Clark in Portland, OR.…
-
Books on Tape*
Or, more accurately, audio books. I’ve never really liked the idea of listening to audio books, but many people that I know love them. Most of the people I know that love them listen on long car rides. I work from home, so don’t really have long car rides in my life. A few months ago, Maya and I were at our local Amazon bookstore, and as a Prime member, they said I was entitled to a free month with two audio books. OK, I thought, maybe I’ll use it. A few days later, I was talking to my stepmom, Julie, and she was telling me about an audiobook she…
-
Solo
Anxiety The van flies, rattles across heavily potholed roads bringing me closer to my mother, but it can’t catch up to my brain, which is speeding past me. Running running fast running past shadows and blurred trees and before and now and if I could catch up to my thoughts, wrestle them to the ground, tame them inside the cage of my head, I could breathe. I could breathe I COULD Breathe, Blade. Breathe, Rutherford says, rubbing my head, and looking at me with eyes that care. It’s gonna be okay. Just breathe. Solo is the story of Blade, a young man, just graduating from high school. His mother died…