We are nothing but a constant becoming that results from the ceaseless interplay of particles and forces. from Ply by Hernan Diaz This is a stunner of a novel, a high concept work of speculative fi…

I am not a big mystery reader, but I read the first Matthew Venn Novel and enjoyed Venn’s character and backstory and continued to read the series as they have come out. I enjoy the setting o…

“What’s wrong with cynicism?” “It’s a dullard’s shortcut.” from Dodge City by Patrick deWitt I sped through this short, entertaining novel, propelled by th…

Lillian Smith, was at her core, a great humanitarian. from An Inconvenient Woman by Keri Leigh Merritt I first read about Lillian Smith when I was designing my quilt for women leaders in abolition …

Young Karen Nyberg gazed at the night sky, a silky black quilt with shiny sequins sewn across it. Her mind stitched together a dream: Someday, she told herself, I’ll travel to the stars. from…

With tears in my eyes, I closed the book. I had found a new hero: Ray Love Trautman, a man who loved books, became a librarian, and dedicated his life to getting books into the hands of everyone, i…

Note: I wrote this review just days before Steinem’s death. There is no such thing as freedom and equality for any woman as long as there is racism and sexism… from An Unexpected Life She wan…

We are nothing but a constant becoming that results from the ceaseless interplay of particles and forces. from Ply by Hernan Diaz This is a stunner of a novel, a high concept work of speculative fi…

Are you a tourist?No. I’m a writer.What do you write?As the French say, choses vues. Things seen.from True North by Paul Theroux I have not had the privilege of traveling very far, even in my…

My surgery is under three weeks away! I just want it done and over so I can start getting my life back. I can’t go downstairs to the sewing room. But knee pain hasn’t interfered with my…

On my book tour, I crossed paths…with my friend Ann Patchett…One evening, before a large crowd in Cambridge, we discussed how much more difficult it’s become these days to convinc…

No, Boomba was no monster. All Boomba was, was a man whose moral compass pointed toward the north of his own famliy. Wasn’t that the most ordinary thing in the world? From A Guardian and a Th…

Was redemption possible? That was the question, wasn’t it? For any of them. from Our Noble Selves by Kate Atkinson Wit and humor, dread and suspense, and a nation recovering from a devastatin…

These stories are amazing. Disturbing. Brilliant. Devestating. I mean, Shepard takes us into the mind of Mr. Hyde and a Nazi escaped to Argentina justifying his actions in the destruction of the Je…

I was drawing the creature that inspired our gang, the wounded wolf that wandered onto Longfellow Avenue in the middle of the night with blood on its paws, its coat covered in filth, its yellow eye…

Being an activist for social justice means working hard but not expecting the goals to be achieved anytime soon. It requires accepting that they may not be achieved in our lifetime but that seeking…

Last year I read Paul French’s Her Lotus Year: China, the Roaring Twenties, and the Making of Wallis Simpson and was impressed by his research that dredged up new information which altered my…

How was I to know beauty/was a something I could ruin/for others by trying it on? from The Dress by Hieu Minh Nguyen In 1980 I worked with a multiply talented, brilliant young man with a biting wit…

Maybe time does move in two directions, but the human mind can only perceive one of them. from Under Story by Chloe Benjamin This epic novel takes us to Antarctica, the past and the future, into th…

Dogs are running in a far slicker and more sophisticated operation than we usually give them credit for. from Think Like a Dog Last year we brought home our seventh dog, fifth Shiba Inu, and fourth…

When I was seventeen, my world turned upside down, and I had abandoned this house and the legacy she’d left me, naively thinking that the past would remain in the past. but no one tells you t…

Book mail catch up! Several of these books I have already read and reviewed. Life and Art: Essays by Richard Russo Coming Up Short: A Memoir of My America by Robert B. Reich Venus, Vanishing by Reb…

Whoever saves a life, it is as if he has saved all mankind. quoted in Fallen for France by Elizabeth Letts Here I was, I thought, at my age—still reading horse stories. In her Note From the A…

Rescue after rescue, she put parts of herself back together. The loneliness of her childhood. The disappointments of her marriage. from A Dog in Georgia by Lauren Grodstein Amy is married to the lo…