tradwives in America

 Yay, a new novel and this one knocked The Correspondent off the #1 NYTimes best seller list. Already a page turner, I started Yesteryear yesterday. I can only say that once. Drat. Our heroine is an Instagram influencer with a bunch of kids and a very funny inner life and yes, I like it. A lot.

thank you and RIP

  I was sorry to see that Mark Bittner died on March 1. He cared for and wrote about the wild parrots here in San Francisco and his book (2005) and documentary were best sellers. The beautiful (and noisy and messy) wild parrots have proliferated in the City and we love them because they are another colorful part of the craziness that we celebrate here. Thank you, Mark.

back to my museum life

 

Several friends have recommended this book. All the Beauty in the World is the memoir of a man who was a guard for ten years at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I tried a sample on my LindaKindle 4 and then downloaded the entire book a few minutes later. Patrick Bringley is the author.

back to 1987

 I rented 84 Charing Cross Road on Prime TV the other night because the story is a favorite of Virginia Evans, the author of The Correspondent, which I recently finished. I have a couple of friends who prefer old movies, but I like the new stuff so I don't do this very often. It is a sweet movie, tender. Anne Bancroft and Anthony Hopkins were excellent choices here, in my opinion.

grey day in warm house

 I hope the rains are gone for our visitors next week, but in the meantime I had a lovely at-home Monday and I do recommend Table for Two by Amor Towles. A series of clever, fun, sophisticated stories set in NYC and Los Angeles. 

yay ~ a new mystery!

 By now we all know that Robert Galbraith is JK Rowling and I love her grown-up books starring the one-legged Comoran Strike, private detective. The Hallmarked Man came out on Tuesday, and is already on my LindaKindle4 and I am back in London and happily so.

very Mark Twainish

 This was Karen's choice for our next book club and I didn't know what to expect but I plopped it into my LindaKindle4 and I can now report that I am really liking This Tender Land by William Kent Krueger. The story is set in 1932 (Great Depression) and we travel down the Mississippi River with four orphans who are escaping the horrible Lincoln Indian Training School in Minnesota. The strength and beauty of this Chosen Family and all the characters they meet on their journey with good writing and lots of action ~ so I'm happy to be reading this now and to be escaping the real world. 

smiling out loud

 I ordered a used book for Heidi from Abe Books. $4.00. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius is now 20 years old. Imagine. Dave Eggers is a local hero and big time famous author now.This hard cover book arrived yesterday, still with the 30% off Borders sticker. It is in perfect condition and I hope Heidi loves it as much as I did. 

a read in the park

We are having gorgeous weather here and I took my LindaKindle4 for a walk and then a sit down in Precita Park and I just might do the same today. We shall see. Before She Was Helen is a lightweight mystery and that is fine with me currently. 

 

excellence is honored

 The Pulitzer Prize for fiction was announced yesterday and James won. And, hooray, because it was our book club selection for May, I have read this and I agree with the judges. Huckleberry Finn's adventures from the perspective of Jim, the enslaved Black man who accompanies Huck. Percival Everett is the author of this impressive novel.

book club meets here

 Well, none of us LOVED "Orbital" but that book resulted in one of the best discussions ever last night. I served Spring pasta GF soup and the guests brought everything else. Easy. Clean-up continues this morning but now I need to hop downtown again to meet friends from out of town for breakfast. Busy...

a rainy day side trip

 Yesterday I started reading Orbital on my LIndaKindle4 and also using the Apple ear buds. This is such a lovely, slow way to read. Six people floating around in space. One of the Russian astronauts has a post card of this large painting by Diego Velazquez, Las Meninas (1656) and so I took a delightful detour on YouTube where I learned so much about the artist and those times. He and Philip IV of Spain became good friends even though artists were considered laborers in those days in Madrid. With all the world problems we are so fortunate to live in a world where this kind of knowledge is just a few clicks away.

our next book club

 Orbital is a Booker Prize winning novel by Samantha Harvey and my friend Susan highly recommends it, so this was my choice for the March gathering which will be at my home. I will be "doing" dinner and I hope Door Dash is up to this challenge.

lost in Maine

 This author, Elizabeth Strout, just has an amazing gift for writing and story telling. The way she weaves her plots and somehow makes the most average person seem unusual and interesting is something to admire and applaud. Tell Me Everything is her latest book and I have been waiting for a quiet time when I needed to escape. This is that time. Thank you, Ms. Strout.

holiday reading

 Neighbor Heidi gifted me with a small treasure of three Truman Capote stories. You will remember that we saw A Christmas Memory and this also includes One Christmas and The Thanksgiving Visitor. I might have read these once but they definitely deserve some of my fireplace time this season. And sorry for the poor photo, stuff happens...

sanity through books

 A little news (bad) reached me yesterday in the form of Matt Gaetz and Tulsi Gabbard so I wisely decided to invest in a bit of light reading on my LindaKindle4. And for the first time in months I hopped on the exercise bike now that my garage is organized and almost clean. I like The Lost Bookshop so far and it beats the pervasive orange monster stuff.

and for the November book club

 I am a fan of Colum McCann so when Suze assigned us this read I immediately ordered Apeirogon from Amazon for my Lindakindle4 and also for my ear pods. This novel is based on the true story of two fathers, Israeli and Palestinian, who lost their daughters due to senseless violence. I will start reading today. Eagerly.

a new book on order

 My friend Joe Zitt lives in Israel and I will be excited when Afternoon Prayers arrives on my front porch. He generously provided a free read for me on my LindaKindle, but I like to have the real thing in my hands for the special occasion books. Congratulations to Joe, this is great news!

award winning author

 I just started reading The Vegetarian by Han Kang, the South Korean writer who recently won the Nobel Prize in Literature, the first Asian woman to do so. The novel I'm reading won the Man Booker International in 2016 and somehow I missed that completely. Playing catch-up.

ear bud worthy

 Grandson Luke is a student at Stanford Law and before entering his second year he will go to Birmingham for a two week course with Bryan Stevenson, his hero. So yesterday I downloaded Just Mercy and I am loving this book already.