Tales from the Nexus
I’ve been crashing through Gerald Durrell’s My Family and Other Animals. Crashing because it is good, and I'm loving it, and because I’m thrilled to have finally discovered Durrell’s voice as an adult, but also--possibly--because it is nine days overdue and I'm feeling like a felon. I wonder if I’m the only president of a... Continue Reading →
OK, OK... I've given in to the word of 2020. It’s not like it’s been honking horns and gonging gongs all around me and I’ve been resistant. It’s not like there aren’t other good candidates. I’m not even sure this is the best one. But it is the one that has been quietly persistent through... Continue Reading →
This is it for the cutout cookies. I have brought them with me to the keyboard in order to end the madness. I have eaten so many Christmas cookies in the past week that I, as is customary for late December, feel like I, too, may be made of nothing but dough and heat. What's... Continue Reading →
I vacuumed under my couch cushions this morning. Da clean couch You see, last weekend one of the adult kiddos was here with a visiting friend. Said friend spent most of the weekend on my couch, relaxing from her hellish semester at college, staring blankly at her phone, and digging her stockinged feet in between... Continue Reading →
What is it about time with certain authors that makes me want to write? Anne Lamott. Geneen Roth (kinda). Mike Perry. Looking at the list du jour, it seems that those who make me want to write are those who write like me, or those whom I want to write like, and on my better... Continue Reading →
Some Assembly Required by Anne Lamott Just as she chronicled the first year with her son, Sam, Anne Lamott this time lays bare her first year with Sam's son, Jax. And of course she does it beautifully. Lamott is Lamott, and the artistry with which she washes her familial story will keep me coming back... Continue Reading →
All these years--there have been so many--I've been writing book reviews in Goodreads, and then copying and pasting things over here to m'blog, and maybe adding in a little bit more flavor as a sort of prelude. Apparently I think the followers of the blog are in it for something different than the Good People... Continue Reading →
"Is it possible to practice noticing? I think so. But I also think it requires a suspension of yearning And a pause in the desire to be pouring something out of yourself. Noticing is about letting yourself out into the world, Rather than siphoning the world into yourself in order to transmute it into words.... Continue Reading →
The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse by Louise Erdrich My rating: 5 of 5 stars I think that The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse has been on my to-read shelf for almost a decade. Back in the days when my super-reader-friends were just introducing me to good... Continue Reading →
From my Goodreads review: Almost Everything: Notes on Hope by Anne LamottMy rating: 5 of 5 starsAh, Anne Lamott. I love her so. Almost Everything is classic Lamott, witty, comical, heart-wrenching, and honest to the point of breaking. Her very first words tell the whole story: "I am stockpiling antibiotics for the apocalypse, even as... Continue Reading →
Man, do I love a good book. I haven't been hitting the fiction very hard lately--I always wonder at the ebb and flow and general chaos of my reading tendencies--but I feel myself headed back down some excellent fiction roads. Thank God. Every now and again, fiction is the quickest way to my heart. I... Continue Reading →
And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie My rating: 5 of 5 starsAccording to Goodreads, Agatha Christie is the best-selling author of all time. Yeah. I can believe that.This was my first exposure to The AC, and well, I wasn't disappointed. Riveting. Funnily enough, it reminds me of Ellen Raskin's The Westing Game, that... Continue Reading →
I love Annie Dillard. Non-Fiction, anyway. I can't speak to her fiction. But her NF is brilliant.It's interesting to me how I can forget things so easily. I was in the middle of An American Childhood when it had to go back to the library many months ago, and I never did get it back. Plum... Continue Reading →
Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Sáenz My goodreads rating: 5 of 5 stars I've been on a serious non-fiction jag. Kind of a non-reading jag, really. Summer and all that, I suppose. Not sure how it throws me so far off kilter, but it does. Regardless, when fall... Continue Reading →
Accidental Saints found its way into my library hold shelf a while back. I didn't review it. Not because it wasn't good. Just because I didn't. I can do that sometimes... read a book and not even have the decency to write about it. Apologies. I loved it. Nadia Bolz-Weber is a foul-mouth overly-tatted rough-and-tumble... Continue Reading →
Anyone noticed that big burning ball of gas in the sky lately? I forgot what it's called. Vocabulary failures aside, it is welcome here. The endless gloom was starting to wear. It's just straight up cruel to go through peak colors in Wisconsin in the rain. In other news... I just started Brene Brown's Braving the Wilderness. It was... Continue Reading →
All the Crooked Saints by Maggie Stiefvater My rating: 5 of 5 stars Can I give it six stars? Eight? I need more stars. A few weeks ago I was driving across the Colorado desert with my 18yo and she suddenly drops into a reminiscent haze in the midst of the red rocks and tumbleweed.... Continue Reading →
I didn't read much as a kid, beyond a library of Garfield and Shel Silverstien (both quality literature I still stand by as my foundation). Over the years, there were a few school-mandated books (Island of the Blue Dolphins? This is honestly the only one I remember), but I read them begrudgingly at best, and they never... Continue Reading →
Winterdance Gary Paulsen My Goodreads rating: 5/5 Stars Oh, Gary Paulsen is a gem. I laughed so hard. It took me back a handful of years to the several times I read Paulsen's Harris and Me to my kiddos. Rip-snortin' funny. And wonderful. Paulsen regales with stories of his journey to and through the Iditarod, and doesn't... Continue Reading →
The School of Essential Ingredients Erica Bauermeister My Goodreads rating: 3/5 stars Well, I dunno. I was reading along, and I will definitely admit Essential Ingredients made me hungry, but about midway through all I could think of was: Where is the plot? I was growing increasingly suspicious that I was stuck in a book... Continue Reading →
Perfect by Rachel Joyce My rating: 2 of 5 stars I loved Harold Fry. I loved Queenie Hennessey even more. Perfect is not Harold and it is not Queenie. This Fourth of July weekend I was asked why I only write positive book reviews. I've said it before, but I'll say it again; I'm not... Continue Reading →
Small Victories: Spotting Improbable Moments of Grace by Anne Lamott My rating: 5 of 5 stars My first Anne Lamott. I know. But it is. I loved most of it. I love her brokenness shining forth unapologetically, unabashed vulnerability, and snarky humor. Thus, Anne Lamott is a hit. But I do have to say that... Continue Reading →
Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple My rating: 4 of 5 stars I wish I could go four-and-a-half. But until Goodreads brings in a 100-point rating system, I'll never really be able to drop the stars I'm looking for. (Except maybe My Grandmother Told Me to Tell You She's Sorry. That one would still... Continue Reading →
Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer My rating: 5 of 5 stars So I was subjected to Artemis Fowl second hand, through closed bedroom doors and across tents with no doors whatsoever. I caught chunks and snippets here and there without really listening long before I finally decided to dive in for myself. My oldest (18)... Continue Reading →
Britt-Marie Was Here by Fredrik Backman My rating: 5 of 5 stars Another homerun from Fredrik Backman. Wow. Britt-Marie Was Here follows Britt-Marie of My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry fame through the next stage of her life, and it does so with deep compassion and beauty. If you've read about Elsa... Continue Reading →
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