Thirteen Years

Thirteen years ago, I started this blog. It was a wonderful reading world to enter and I was welcomed warmly by so many of you. The friends I’ve made through this blog are cherished.

Book blogs have changed a lot in thirteen years, but the love of reading and sharing with fellow readers hasn’t changed. You have all expanded my world exponentially!

I am grateful for all of you, my blogging/reading friends.

Wanderlust: Reading the 50 States


I am enjoying my “Wanderlust: Reading the World” ongoing personal reading project so much that I’ve decided to expand it by also reading a book from each of the 50 states. (That inspiration came from my blogging friend, Cath, at Read_Warbler.)  I’ll call it “Wanderlust: Reading the States”.  I’m not a glutton for punishment, I assure you. I’m just interested in and curious about the world around me, and these personal projects are stress-free, motivating, enjoyable, and a way of expanding my horizons. All from my favorite reading chair (on the porch again before too long, I hope!).

I decided that I wanted the two projects to run side-by-side, so I went back through my list of books read in 2019 to find the books that were set in one of the States, or the author was from a particular State, or that State claimed the author as their own. It’s a fancy way of sorting my books!  I added them to this list so that both projects were started in 2019. They are “ongoing” with no time limit and are just meant to be fun reading journeys. I’ll review most of the books I read, but not necessarily every one.  Please do check back here occasionally to see where I’ve been “traveling.”

  1. Alabama:  Barracoon, by Zora Neale Hurston
  2. Alaska:
  3. Arizona:
  4. Arkansas:
  5. California:  The Red Pony, by John Steinbeck
  6. Colorado:
  7. Connecticut:
  8. Delaware:  The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, by Howard Pyle
  9. Florida:
  10. Georgia:
  11. Hawaii
  12. Idaho
  13. Illinois
  14. Indiana
  15. Iowa
  16. Kansas
  17. Kentucky
  18. Louisiana
  19. Maine:  The Country of the Pointed Firs, by Sarah Orne Jewett
  20. Maryland
  21. Massachusetts
  22. Michigan
  23. Minnesota
  24. Mississippi
  25. Missouri
  26. Montana
  27. Nebraska
  28. Nevada
  29. New Hampshire
  30. New Jersey
  31. New Mexico:  Kokopelli’s Flute, by Will Hobbs
  32. New York:  Here is New York, by E.B. White
  33. North Carolina
  34. North Dakota
  35. Ohio
  36. Oklahoma
  37. Oregon
  38. Pennsylvania
  39. Rhode Island
  40. South Carolina
  41. South Dakota
  42. Tennessee
  43. Texas
  44. Utah
  45. Vermont:  Pollyanna, by Eleanor H. Porter
  46. Virginia
  47. Washington
  48. West Virginia
  49. Wisconsin
  50. Wyoming

 

Ballet Shoes

photos above are from the ballet book I adored as a child…

It’s never too late to catch up with books you missed reading as a child!  Ballet Shoes, by Noel Streatfeild, is the first book in another series I missed reading when I was growing up. I don’t know how that happened, as I loved ballet and would have loved this book! But I’m glad I filled in that gap by reading it while I was sick in bed this month. It was fun and interesting, and a great way to take one’s mind off a cough and a cold.

from the publisher:

Pauline, Petrova, and Posy love their quiet life together. They are orphans who have been raised as sisters, and when their new family needs money, the girls want to help. They decide to join the Children’s Academy of Dancing and Stage Training to earn their keep. Each girl works hard following her dream. Pauline is destined for the movies. Posy is a born dancer. And Petrova? She finds she’d rather be a pilot than perform a pirouette.

Manuscript Found in Accra

Manuscript Found in Accra, by Paulo Coehlo, reminded me a lot of The Prophet, by Khalil Gibran, but I liked The Prophet much better. There were some nuggets of wisdom in this one, but it bothered me that it was styled so much after Gibran.

I liked this passage from the book:

“Love appears and says: “You think you’re heading towards a specific point, but the whole justification for the goal’s existence lies in your love for it. Rest a little, but as soon as you can, get up and carry on. Because ever since your goal found out that you were traveling toward it, it has been running to meet you.”

I chose this book to read for my personal challenge, “Wanderlust,” an effort to read books that are from or take place in each country of the world. This book was written by a very popular author from BRAZIL.

January in the Garden

It’s been a strange January, weather-wise.  We had one very short sprinkling of snow that I would have missed entirely if I had slept-in another hour that morning! The temperatures have been unseasonably warm, and everything seems to be getting ahead of itself — one bulb blooming in early January, other bulbs coming up all over the place now. I’m not complaining, but it does seem unusual.

Here are some January photos from around the yard.

Reading Cures


My family has long claimed that watching the 1995 version of Pride and Prejudice (with Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle) is a great cure for whatever illness puts you on the sofa for a week or more. It used to be sold in VHS format on six cassettes, so one episode a day was the prescription, and it made being sick a bit less miserable.


Nowadays, we can just stream the whole series at once, and can also watch our other favorite version — the one with Kiera Knightly as Elizabeth Bennett — and although not in the one-a-day format, they also help one feel slightly less miserable while fighting a miserable cold.

And audio books also are a great prescription for one who is fighting a nasty cold. It’s particularly soothing to listen to something out of the ordinary and quite humorous such as Paul Gallico’s view of our human species as seen through the eyes of the cat world, in The Silent Miaow. And there’s nothing better than listening to another book in a captivating mystery series by Deborah Crombie.

But the best medicine of all, for someone who hasn’t been sick in years and years, is all the well-wishes from friends and family. I want to thank you all for your kind wishes and sympathy as I fought this really mean modern viral form of a nasty cold!

Stay healthy, my friends!

Sick Days


I’m sick this week and spending a lot of time napping (no energy) and reading when I’m up to it. No fun being sick—I haven’t had a cough and cold for a long time so I’d almost forgotten the misery of it.

So for comfort, I’ve started listening to a sweet book, another by Paul Gallico, called The Silent Miaow: A Manuel for Kittens, Strays, and Homeless Cats. It is doing the job, a comfort read with humor always helps.

They Called Us Enemy

 

They Called Us Enemy, by George Takei, is a beautifully written and illustrated autobiography of his childhood years when he and his family were relocated to the American concentration camps during World War II.  This is a book that I think should be a must read for everyone. It is so alarmingly relevant today, and I mean this very day, with Iranians now being detained at our borders and children that continue to be separated from their families and incarcerated at our southern border!

from the publisher:

In a stunning graphic memoir, Takei revisits his haunting childhood in American concentration camps, as one of over 100,000 Japanese Americans imprisoned by the U.S. government during World War II. Experience the forces that shaped an American icon—and America itself—in this gripping tale of courage, country, loyalty, and love.

I was very moved by this book and learned a lot that I didn’t know about that shameful period of time in our nation’s history. It was both moving and uplifting. An excellent book, in my opinion, and one of the most important books I’ve read in a long time!
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