The Burrow

It's really starting, denizens.  The machatunim are on the plane, en route to Tucson as I type.  My usual afternoon blogging time will be filled with familial joy; I'm trying to focus my brain on the words I want to share this morning, and I'm scattered. Brene Brown would be impressed with me .  The author of Daring Greatly , she's big on being kind to yourself, on knowing which of the little voices shouting in your ear deserve attention - or don't - and she's full of suggestions on how to open your heart and protect it at the same time.  I couldn't be reading a more timely book. Weddings provide many opportunities for hurt feelings.  Brown's research on bullying and vulnerability and the should's which surround us would have been helpful as decisions were being made.  Little Cuter and I are fairly confident in our ability to be true to ourselves without damaging others, but the definition of other was different in this case.  Everyone had a st...

Sea Change was sent to me by Penguin.  BlogHer is paying me for this review.  My thoughts are my own. Sea Change is an odd book.  A novel within a novel, printed in a different font and an almost-but-not-quite-dissimilar-enough authorial voice, Jeremy Page's tirbute to the loving memory of Kate Jones never quite caught my attention.  I finished it and I never thought of it again until I sat to write this review.  That rarely happens to me.  I'm still carrying Theodora   with me, nestled up next to Dr. Faust and Cicero.  If I'm more attached to school work than I am to a novel.... well, denizens, I think it's a sign that I didn't care about the book. Granted, coping with the death of a little girl is probably not the best theme for me right now .   Jeremy Page's best writing is the telling of the story of that afternoon, with the shining drop of dew and the frightened and then running for safety little girl, a...

Once again, Penguin sent me the book and BlogHer is paying me to review it but the opinions are my own. Stella Duffy's subtitle for her fictionalized biography of Theodora  of Constantinope says it all, and in just the right order.  Slowly, somewhat coldly, Ms. Duffy brings the reader into Theodora's mindset and time frame but most of all into the widening rift between Christianity's many sects as the first few hundred years after the birth of "the Christ" unfold. It's not a piece of history with which I am very familiar, and that was a problem for me.   Chalcedon  does not resonante; reading in paperback precluded clicking my e-reader for a little bit of web-surfing for background.  I've never been jealous of digital books before; now I see a useful purpose for an internet connection while I'm reading.  Duffy's assumption that her reader could keep the factions straight posited someone with more knowledge than I.  It was annoying to feel that...

Once again, BlogHer is paying me to review a novel.  Though I received the book for free, my opinions are my own and untainted by any untoward interference from anyone..... just in case you were wondering.  TBG got a kick out of seeing the spine of Margaret Dilloway's debut novel.  " Really?  You're reading a how to book at this late date?"   Not exactly, but kinda sorta. Margaret Dilloway drops us into middle America circa 1950.  Like Shoko, Charlie's Japanese war bride, we are up that creek without a paddle, except for our guidebook, How to Be an American Housewife . But, like Shoko, I am strong and resilient and I know what I must do, so I soldier on and plow through the most melancholy first half of a novel that I have ever read. Sigh. The most interesting character was Shoko's father, and I didn't get enough of him to satiate my curiosity.  How did he manage to get over Japan's defeat?  How was he able to support his daughter's choic...

Penguin and BlogHer Book Club sent me a copy of this book.  I am being paid to review it.  As always, the opinions are my own and are influenced by nothing more than the sound of my own thoughts. Lunch Wars  has a Preface and an Introduction before it gets down to the nitty gritty on page 15.  I have 3 post-its marking things I want to remember in those preliminary pages, and each one of them relates to doing something now . There's a list of diet related issues and their disastrous effects on children's health that covers more than 2 pages; I couldn't believe it when I turned the page and there were more bullet points over which I could cringe. Her political agenda is made clear in the beginning, too:  Big Food (like Big Pharma, I guess) has put the burden on kids to move around and learn to eat well while offering to fill their little bellies with sweetened, unhealthy, too big choices. Parents are indicted along with television and un-responsive school d...

Isn't that a sexy title?  Sad to say, Dominique Browning's homage to unemployment is many things, but sexy is definitely not one of them.  Reading this book was like running into a girlfriend I don't see all that often because of her bad choices in men. She's witty and charming  and she makes me nutty. I loved this book right up until that man arrived.  Afterward, I turned each page in dread, fearing his reappearance.  When the acknowledgments told me that he'd critiqued her manuscript I nearly threw the book across the room.   There is much to love about this memoir.  I, too, have felt  much better a little bit ; There is exquisite writing -  become insouciant, one of the desirable states of human evolution.  There's her slacker's connection to cooking. There is the visceral connection to her sons and her books and her garden that felt as real to me as if I'd written the words myself.  She is good with nuance and...

Deborah Harkness just might be your newest guilty pleasure. BlogHer paid me to write a review. They send me funny emails about my work and I get to keep the brand new books, too. I'm having a great time writing them; hope you're enjoying reading them.