Category Archives: Books

friday files – weather and likes / dislikes this week

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We’re getting long stretches of mild and uninspiring weather here in SE Michigan – no snow, no sun, not much except a cool grey damp. Is this climate change in action? Winters of my childhood seemed much different, with snow so deep we could dig igloos and tunnels in it, elementary school lockers crowded with wet-smelling coats and mittens, clumping home in moon boots that leaked and had to be lined with bread bags. Regardless, it makes running outside feasible so I’m hoping my January running will be much better than the last 2 years (I don’t think I did more than 10 total miles in January in 2021 and 2022).

A few good things this week: The Elvis birthday movie on Saturday night was everything we hoped it would be – a true Elvis / Colonel Tom Parker stinker called ‘Spinout’. No real plot to speak of, disjointed and ill-timed music numbers (one of which was called ‘Smorgasbord’, which referred to all of the women that Elvis’s character liked to enjoy being a single swinger). We chatted with the theater owner for awhile after the show and recommended ‘Clambake’ for next year’s offering.

My boss and I were finally in the office at the same time this week and she gave me a Christmas present – the Five Minute Journal. My boss is pretty amazing and always thinks of me around the holidays, usually with a nice bottle of champagne. But for a journal geek like me, this gift was perfect. I’m really looking forward to spending some time with it. This will be the 3rd journal / planner I keep – I have a Hobonichi Techo for my personal / family life, a five year journal that I’m 3 years into, and now this.

Other likes: ‘Pale Blue Eye’ on Netflix, which we’re about halfway through – massive shout out that Edgar Allan Poe is played by Dudley of Harry Potter film fame which is an almost unbelievable transformation. My work pants still fit (barely). I’ve been watching a lot of homesteading channels on YouTube (recently just found Little Spanish Farmstead and Hannah Lee Duggan).

two weeks in a row of painting my nails!
I don’t even know who I am anymore!

Dislikes this week: I picked up “Livid”, the new Patricia Cornwell, off my library reserve list and so far it is a dud. I’m going to keep going with it but this is a disappointment, since I really enjoyed the last one. MTC on this but so far this is just an ‘everyone is part of a massive conspiracy out to get Scarpetta’ and those are so tiring. I have to go for an ortho consult on Monday because my bite is so bad that my teeth are loose and some are chipping and my dentist can’t do Invisalign out of his office, he has to outsource me due to the complications.

The weekend will be quiet with the kiddo preparing for final exams and Brandon still on a six day work schedule. I hope everyone is able to recharge and enjoy!

there’s a world outside of yonkers…

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The first full week of 2023 was one of those strange ones that feel almost like a failure to launch. Although I was back to working in my home office after Monday, Brandon had some light workdays and the kiddo is still off from school. So there was some banging around in the kitchen as they made lunches and snacks and I think there may have been some shared episodes of “Rick and Morty” between the two of them. Otherwise the kiddo is at the age where she can sleep til 11:30 and keep herself occupied – smoothies with friends, working out, art projects and movie rentals on Prime. She’s also been prepping her audition for spring theater’s “Hello Dolly” production so we are all singing “BARNABYYYY” a lot lately.

We also met up with some of her friends and their moms on Wednesday night for pizza and – indoor skydiving (?!) I did not skydive (although one of the mom tribe did and said it was fun but short) instead choosing to knit on my Clinton Hill Cashmere Bandit Cowl and kibbitz with other moms.

iFly Detroit

It was pretty much chaos at work for reasons that I of course can’t share here.

I started a new book – the third in Tamsyn Muir’s Locked Tomb series, which I forgot to mention as one of my favorites of 2022. I’m not sure I understand any of it but it’s phenomenal – the tagline on the first of the series (which was also my favorite) promises “lesbian necromancers explore a haunted gothic palace in space! Decadent nobles vie to serve the deathless emperor! Skeletons!” There’s way more to it but yeah, it’s epic.

Likes this week: black leggings, Wishful enzyme scrub, Essie gel “Behind the Glass” on my nails, Damar Hamlin, Chapstick Total Hydration tinted lip oil, using my Verilux Happy Light at my desk during these dark days, listening to A Little Bit Culty podcast with a player from the Nexivm insanity, taking all my vitamins every day this week and being riveted to the chaos over the Speaker.

Dislikes: rehabbing a pulled muscle in my back and not running all week, Harry and Meghan, menopausal issues on high all week, post-holiday letdown, this time of year until essentially the end of March, people who don’t do what they say they’re going to do / being blindsided by that, George Santos, and bring riveted to the chaos over the Speaker.

This weekend is Elvis’s birthday which we may celebrate by going to see an Elvis movie at the local cinema (if I can stay awake). It’s also the big audition – so tonight it’s thawed leftovers from the Annual Freezer Cleanout, a fire in the woodstove, and a “Hello Dolly” rental for additional inspiration and research. TGIF!

the post that wasn’t

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It’s entirely emblematic of recent days around here that I laboriously typed out a long post about our very busy weekend and WordPress ate it.

I was GOING to tell you all about band camp pickup on Friday night, the kiddo’s birthday celebrations over the weekend, and a houseworky Sunday, all of which made me feel like I didn’t actually get a weekend at all.

There was going to be some gripping content about the horrors of band camp laundry when band camp was subjected to downpours and leaky teepees (yep) as sleeping quarters. You were going to be thrilled by rumors of bed bugs in the boys teepee! And the story of the kid who rolled down the hill with a bass drum! Not to mention the star of our tale, an exhausted teenager who ate next to nothing all week because the food was terrible and not vegetarian, slept the whole way home but rose again the next day to celebrate her birthday properly!

hey sarge

I was also going to tell you that I picked up two books at the library and have been plowing through them but I wasn’t going to tell you much about them because I’m saving that for a dedicated book post.

There was also going to be a teaser about the week ahead which is another corker, full of work stuff and kiddo stuff. Including two band performances (one at the first home football game!) and FRESHMAN ORIENTATION (how is this even possible?!) And a teenager and a mom who are completely tired out and cranky and not ready at all for the challenges of what’s ahead! It’s like Frodo and Sam with the ring! Except not!

There was also some stuff about us making candles, but I am also going to have to save that for a dedicated post because it’s now late, I have to finish this, I have to schedule it to publish sometime tomorrow, and I have to go to bed because as you may have already guessed, I am emotionally unprepared for another week to roll around.

I hope you are all well and that your week starts out with a bang and not a whimper like mine. xoxo

recent reads – summer 2022

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Dipping my toe back into blogging (I’ve been absent from this space FOREVER) with a recap of some recent reads. It’s been a real mixed bag this summer of 2022, with some excellent and some meh – but fortunately no DNF (‘did not finish’) in the bunch (my Do Not Recommend selection came close, but provided too many belly laughs to entirely abandon). I’ve pulled out a few notables (for better or worse) for your perusal.

Recommend:

  • The Silence of the Girls and The Women of Troy, Pat Barker. If you like mythology and / or Greek ancient history, I cannot speak highly enough of these novels. The Silence of the Girls picks up the Trojan war when the Troy is under siege by the encamped Greek forces, and tells the story mostly from the perspective of Briseis, a young noblewoman. Achilles has sacked and burned her neighboring city, and taken her as his prize of battle. Ultimately, she plays a large role in the dispute between Agamemnon and Achilles, and the trajectory of the war. At any rate, while you do see the bones of the Iliad and recognize the so-called ‘heroes’ of the Trojan war – Odysseus, Achilles, Ajax – this story is told from the perspective of the women, who saw their brothers and husbands and male children murdered, were raped and abused and taken as property of war, and turned into slaves. They’re dark yet fascinating historical stories of women and I highly recommend both (Women of Troy picks up immediately after the fall of Troy and introduces characters such as Cassandra, Andromache, and Pyrrhus).
  • The Quarter Storm, Veronica Henry (not pictured above). First in a proposed series about a modern young Vodou practitioner solving a ritual murder in the French Quarter of New Orleans. We took a quick family trip to NOLA in June and reading this shortly afterwards was a great look back at the Quarter. It’s fast-paced and mixes a modern detective feel with highly atmospheric Vodou / Haitian American culture, history, and a healthy dose of supernatural vibes.
  • Becoming Odyssa: Adventures on the Appalachian Trail, Jennifer Pharr Davis. I don’t know that this was especially exciting or well-written but I absolutely love reading books about hiking the Appalachian Trail and if you do too, you’ll like it.

Meh:

  • The World Cannot Give, Tara Isabella Burton. I had high hopes for this one – a Sapphic dark academia thriller that was compared to Donna Tartt’s The Secret History. Unfortunately it just fell flat for me. I didn’t really like any of the characters and as a result, didn’t care what happened to them; nothing really propelled me through the story.
  • Thousand Steps, T. Jefferson Parker. Again, this had a ton of promise – a teenage boy living in Laguna Beach during the psychedelic summer of 1968 searches for his missing sister. I loved the vibe of the place and the time, and I liked the main character, a scrappy kid trying to keep things together, his brother in Vietnam, an absent dad and a spaced-out mom, but this one took a strange cult turn that I didn’t quite follow.
  • Anatomy: A Love Story, Dana Schwartz. It breaks my heart to put this in ‘Meh’ but it just didn’t do it for me. Again, on paper, it checked all the boxes – a strong female lead, a fascinating time and place (Edinburgh 1817) and a goth plot featuring archaic surgeries, resurrection men and corpses – but it just didn’t deliver all the goods. Don’t get me wrong, it was okay, and I absolutely love Dana Schwartz’s ‘Noble Blood’ podcast, but something was missing for me.

Do Not Recommend

  • The Last Goodnight, Kat Martin. I thought this was a straight mystery when I picked it up at the library (I was desperate) but it had a romantic subplot that was unintentionally hilarious. Lots of gross descriptions of the male lead (of course a millionaire rancher with a gorgeous horse farm, an extensive staff, and a rock-hard body that is constantly described in his cowboy boots, tight jeans, chaps and cowboy hats) checking out the female investigator’s hot curves and cascading hair whilst trying to ignore his throbbing manhood. I laughed my way through it and read several of the paragraphs to my family out loud until my adolescent daughter left the room gagging. If you like bodice rippers, heaving bosoms, almost-offensive sexual advances and descriptions of clothes confining turgid genitals, you may like this as well.

I hope everyone is having a good summer. I also hope this foray back into blogging will wake up my mojo and I’ll be back soon, either with more books or a general life update, but we shall see. Until then!

soggy tissues and sneezing on the cat

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Well friends, the last two weeks of April definitely challenged me. It was the most important time of year for my work goals & performance indicators, and it was (and continues to be) intense for the kiddo. Her schedule is full of daily track practice, weekly track meets, and theater rehearsals. All of which requires planning for transit, the appropriate nutrition, and very different sets of attire. This in addition to the usual schedule of work, remote and office days, school, regular appointments and meal planning. How do people have more than one active child and stay on top of it all?

After several hours last week at a particularly windy and frigid track meet – ankle deep in mud – I succumbed to the head cold that had been lingering in the wings waiting for a stage cue. The meet itself was well worth the discomfort- the kiddo’s stepmom and I were the only family members in attendance due to schedule conflicts. K and I get along well and I really enjoy her company and commitment to the kiddo. We watched the kid compete in shotput (where she placed first) and the 200-meter (where she took 4 seconds off her practice time). A successful outcome considering it was her first ever track meet!

And I always love that my goth kid is instantly recognizable in a sea of lookalike kids in hoodies and sweats. My kid will be the one warming up between events in a John Bender flannel, skeleton pajamas and a skull blanket.

My subsequent illness turned into a painful sinus infection and really kiboshed the weekend plans. I ran the kid to theater rehearsal and then went straight to Urgent Care. My Urgent Care is the best – I don’t even think they really care if I’m sick. I tell them “I have xx”, they take my blood pressure and look in my throat, prescribe horse pill antibiotics to my pharmacy of choice and I am merrily on my way. I spent the rest of the weekend in bed with Pot Roast. She is a constant nursemaid despite generally preferring Brandon and despising the explosive sneezing that has accompanied my illness. Maybe she just knew that in my weakened state, I could be easily dispatched with a soft paw on my jugular.

Other than sleeping, I plodded along with “Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone”, the most recent Diana Gabaldon Outlander contribution. 39% in and my quick review: so far it’s not as interesting as her earlier efforts. (Spoiler: someone HAS already been eaten by a bear and that was kind of a high point. And there are a lot of the usual interjections of “Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ” from sassy Claire and sexy Jamie grinding out “Och Sassenach ye drive me mad” which make it a fine book for a sick day.)

I don’t have a finished object to show (I’m close!) so I’ll update you on my crafting with progress on my current cross-stitch.

Hope everyone is well and happy. I’m girding my loins for another intense week and hopefully less sneezing.

merry christmas

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The kiddo had a minor ear surgery this week and although everything went well, she has still been my focus. Hence my lack of posting.

I took a long walk on the solstice and admired the low, hazy sun. I thought about the year that has passed and the year to come. I missed my dad and saw wild turkeys and several Eastern Bluebirds.

We finished a Harry Potter movie marathon (Brandon had never seen them) and I’m also very, very into the Witcher and Travel Man with Richard Ayoade. Before the kiddo’s surgery, we saw Kings Man in the theater (it was pretty empty because everyone was next door watching Spider Man) and tried a new-to-us local seafood restaurant. There have also been LOTS of Vlogmasses and although I am really enjoying them I’m heartily sick of the YouTube Christmas songs they all use.

I’ve been running just about every other day, and I finished two books (I started the Josie Quinn series at Steph’s recommendation via her blog) and hope to finish two more before the New Year to pad out my Goodreads total.

Also been knitting. Mostly small fiddly ornaments and although that always starts out fun, I’m about ready to call that quits for another year.

Although I’m feeling a bit disconnected and not very Christmassy, today is Christmas Eve and I’ll spend it with my little family in our cozy home. We’ll make something yummy and fun for dinner and play a board game and then eat cake. And I’ll wake up tomorrow to a bounty of gifts and food and Brandon’s birthday. I am so truly and thoroughly blessed. My love and best wishes for a peaceful and contented holiday go out to each of you and your families. xo

blanket weather

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TGIF friends! I am pleased to report, in this end of week check-in, that Southeast Michigan has returned to a more normal and temperate weather system. Actually it’s been quite cool and very rainy for the past two days and I feel fortunate that we never have basement flooding issues. (Knock wood.) Emmett has decided it is blanket weather!

I have been suffering through a bit of “stranger in a strange land” feeling and am just now starting to recover. I don’t call these episodes actual “depression” because I’ve been through those and they’re not. I just feel – adrift, and as though everything that I trust and rely on suddenly feels a bit off-kilter. Being rigorous about my healthy routine, taking care of myself and others, and getting good sleep and exercise and hydration and good food, these things always help. As well as being surrounded by an amazing partner and a daughter that I could not love and adore more or be more proud of.

We have been enjoying our community’s seasonal activities. Last weekend was the Harvest Moon festival with live music and food in the pavilion, and a big harvest Farmers Market on Saturday morning. It was 80 degrees but I still drank a hot cider and we all had cinnamon donuts sitting on hay bales listening to the morning fiddle band. On Sunday, we braved the blazing sun and watched the Fall Classic at the local skateboard park. Brandon loves skateboarding and is a proud member of the local Old Bro contingent and Miss L is also a developing young shredder. The Fall Classic is sponsored by our downtown Plus Skateboard shop and it was amazing and terrifying to watch these young people risk their skulls and other bones on the concrete and coping.

I recently finished “Hour of the Witch” by Chris Bohjalian. I enjoyed the first half and then skim-read the second. I give it a solid “meh”. I also finished a graphic novel “Illuminati Ball” which had a bizarre and gappy plot but great illustrations. This week’s library trip includes the new volume of Haruki Murakami short stories – I typically do not read short stories as I find them somewhat unsatisfactory and I dislike switching gears so fast but I will make every exception for Murakami. Also a few graphic novels selected for me by Miss L including a graphic Great Gatsby.

I hope everyone has had a great week of celebrating the equinox and the full moon in Pisces (which I also sort of blame for my stranger in a strange land blip). Be well and enjoy the turning of the Wheel of the Year wherever you are.

happy monday

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I hate to start out a blog post with bitching, but the weather right now is too damn hot. I am ready for the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness and the forecast for Tuesday is 87 degrees. Completely unacceptable. But I also know that in the depths of bleak February I will miss these days.

I had a fairly relaxing Saturday but Sunday was rife with preparation for the week ahead. A very humid mid-morning run, a trip to the nursery to buy more plants for my planters (no fun to be planting fall ornamentals in 80+ degree weather with sweat pouring into your eyes). Meal planning and grocery shopping.

On a minor grocery shopping rant – lately I have been choosing to shop mostly at the smaller and slightly more organic, upscale grocery stores in my town, which are more expensive; but they offer greater selection and a more relaxed and enjoyable shopping experience. During lockdown I exclusively patronized them because everyone was masked and considerate. I felt safe. My local Kroger was a melee of angry people ramming carts around and being pissy about masks, getting too close and just general bullshit. So I have been feeling like even in non-lockdown times I should shift my business to the entities where I felt safest when the chips were down. Unfortunately, Kroger is much cheaper and yesterday I had two rewards checks and so I bit the bullet.

It was as unpleasant as I remembered. So many angry people. Dude – I don’t say a freaking word to you about your maskless state. I choose to wear a mask (same as I chose to be vaccinated) and if you don’t, I just go right on past because honestly I don’t give two shits about hassling with you. You do you – just accept the consequences of your choice, which again have nothing to do with me. Yet you want to bleat about personal freedoms and then tell ME that I shouldn’t wear a mask? Where’s the respect for individual free choice in THAT? Ohhh – yeah, I forgot, it’s only free thinking and independent and non-sheeplike if everyone is doing what YOU want them to do. Got it.

How about you worry about your own face and leave mine the hell alone.

ANYWAY my planters turned out nicely – I’ll post some pics when they fill out a bit. Black petunias and ornamental cabbages!

I got a lot of knitting done on my Halloween socks. I guess the upside of the hot weather is that there can be a lot of front porch knitting with vlogs and small chipmunk visitors.

I was a bit worried that my chosen pattern – Hermione’s Everyday Socks by Erica Lueder – wouldn’t be visible due to the colorful yarn, but the more I knit the more the texture is apparent. And I’m really pleased with pattern and yarn.

Since I can’t seem to get my act together for a Show Us Your Books lately, here’s a mini recommendation- “Fire Keeper’s Daughter” by Angeline Boulley. It’s a YA novel that doesn’t read YA. Plus it’s set in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula which is cool for a downstate Michigander and centers around an Ojibwe woman and her community. It took me about 80 pages to really get into it but after that point it caught fire and I couldn’t put it down.

So that’s my weekend and my week ahead will be more heat, home office work (did I mention that we’re back to predominantly remote again? Through early December now), school for Miss L, some charitable donation dropoffs (a stash of Colors of the World crayons & colored pencils for a local school and stuff for some of Miss L’s classrooms) and the usual cooking, laundry, and running. I hopefully will also get to sneak in a few rows on the Halloween socks and continue with some goth cross-stitch.

I hope wherever you are, you are well, safe, and happy. xo

show us your books – february 2021 reads

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As always, joining our hosts Steph and Jana for this monthly reading link-up!

This month I read two thrillers, a YA fantasy, and two graphic novels – a real mixed bag.

Shiver by Allie Reynolds was a sort of reunion-revenge-closed room mystery. A group of former snowboarding hotshots reunite in a remote ski resort in the French Alps. Told partly in flashback to the last time they were all together, they quickly realize they have been lured back together for a reason – which involves the tragic death of one of their former snowboarding compatriots years earlier. This was a quick, fast paced read that kept me coming back. There’s a lot of lithe bodies and talk of “shredding the pipe” which is apparently snowboarding jargon but despite that it was solid.

These Violent Delights by Chloe Gong is a YA fantasy set in 1920’s Shanghai, with themes reminiscent of Romeo and Juliet’s young lovers and warring families. (If Romeo and Juliet had a monster swimming the depths of the Huangpu River.) I enjoyed the creativity and characterizations in this book but it felt like it took me a very long time to get through and I’m not sure I’ll be reading the follow-up.

Frank Herbert’s Dune (the graphic novel) – I first read “Dune” when I was a middle schooler and had a crush on Kyle McLachlan (who played Paul Atreides in the David Lynch film). It was fun to reread this first portion of the book in graphic form and look forward to other installments.

The Neil Gaiman Library (volume 1) is a collection of four Gaiman graphic novels – none of which I’d read before. Includes ‘How to Talk to Girls at Parties’ and ‘Murder Mysteries’ – both of which I read twice to fully absorb both the stories and the art. Highly recommend and will be reading volume 2 this month.

The Nightmare by Lars Kepler – you can just expect a Lars Kepler in my monthly rundowns until I am current. These are absolutely fantastic, gripping nordic noir thrillers featuring Joona Linna, the magnetic Finnish detective. They are gory. They are intense and occasionally brutal. But they are unputdownable.

Life According to Steph

show us your books – january 2021 reads

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Winter – real winter – has finally arrived in Michigan with a vengeance. Lake Michigan is protecting us from the truly arctic temps sweeping down from Canada but it’s still dang cold. To that end, I am eager to see everyone’s reads this month and pad out my TBR list cuz I’m NOT going outside for awhile!

As always, I am joining the link-up hosted by Steph and Jana!

I’ll review my two “Nordic Noir” reads first – both recommended by the excellent Crime by the Book. The Butterfly House by Katrine Engberg is the second book in the Korner and Werner series. Bodies drained of blood are showing up around Copenhagen, and as Korner investigates, it appears that they all have links to caregiving institutions. Werner is on maternity leave after an unexpected pregnancy, chafing at being home with a newborn and struggling to cope with her new normal. When she decides to do some independent sleuthing on the case, it exposes both of them to a murderer bent on vengeance. The strength of this series, to me, is the human element of Korner and Werner’s personal lives as they intermingle with their investigations, and the relationship between these contrary characters. A solid follow-up to The Tenant.

My starred review this month, however, goes to The Hypnotist by Lars Kepler. It knocks every other Scandinavian thriller into the ditch and is not for the faint of heart, but I absolutely could not put it down. The book opens with the grisly murder of a family in Sweden, a sole surviving teenager, and a hypnotist called in to try to see the murderer through the boy’s eyes. The book ties unexpected yet expertly woven threads of the hypnotist’s past and his family as well as the shocking secrets of the murdered family and the surviving boy. Overseen by charismatic lead detective Joona Linna, the action hurtles to its crazy climax with a tight, fast plot, excellent characters, and many twists and turns. Warning – it contains distressing elements of child abuse and murder, as well as incest, so probably not for everyone.

I read one other mystery this month, The Searcher by Tana French. I’ll start by saying that I love Tana French and normally I can’t put her books down. This one, however, was disappointing. The writing was solid and engaging, and I liked the main character, Cal Hooper, a retired American detective who has pulled up stakes in Chicago and moved to a small village in rural Ireland. His life is absorbed in renovating his dilapidated house and brooding about his broken family until a local boy shows up for help in finding his missing brother. Unfortunately, I just could not get engaged with the kid or the plot. I enjoyed French’s Dublin Murder Squad mysteries as well as Witch Elm but sadly this one just didn’t click for me.

My last read is a divergence but very enjoyable if you are a fan of Laura Ingalls Wilder. Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Autobiography, edited by Pamela Smith Hill, is the first manuscript that Wilder set down about her childhood and family. If you thought you knew anything about the Ingalls family from reading the Little House books, you will find that the true story is very different. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that Wilder and her daughter Rose Wilder Lane, a writer herself, collaborated heavily on the juvenile series, changing the history of the family and blending and creating characters that would appeal to children. This book is the real, adult telling of their journeys – it’s an absolute treasure trove of photographs, journal entries from both Laura Ingalls Wilder and Rose Wilder Lane, and includes amazing details about their creative partnership to bring the series to life. It also discusses with clarity the more troubling aspects of the juvenile series, and thoughtfully discusses the racism in the original books (heavily rooted in concepts of Manifest Destiny, their view of Native Americans as less than human, and yet also very evident in other scenes – remember Pa’s participation in the ‘minstrel show’?) An all-around excellent and absorbing read.

That’s it! With my library reopened, I hope to do lots of good reading in February and I look forward to sharing at our next link-up. Until then, as Mr Williams, the school superintendent, said to Laura’s pupils at the Brewster School during his unexpected visit, in Chapter 9 of These Happy Golden Years, “Whatever else you do, keep your feet warm.”

Life According to Steph