How well do you know your mother at age 25? At age 16? How about age 12? I already knew about my mother’s other boyfriend, the one whose attentions ran a close race with my dad.. The surprises were the trips and camps she did during her college summers. Imagine the surprise of author Jazmin Darznik when a picture of her mother fell into her [...]
Oh, boy, another novel from the days when it was fashionable to say everything in the longest way possible. The characters are “discomfited” and “deprecating” when they could be just plain embarrassed or dissing. The last time I attempted this feat, the author was Nathaniel Hawthorne and I had to give it up or it would turn me off reading forever. But this time, it’s [...]
At the request of a faithful reader, today I unveil my top-10 fiction list. And what does it take to make the list? A) The book has to be memorable. I read enough books that they almost whiz by like highway signs. Not all of them stick with me. Ah, but the ones that do, they’re like great road trips that I wish I could [...]
I stepped outside my usual bailiwick this week and read a middle-grade fantasy novel. In The Warble by Victoria Simcox, (I received a free copy for review purposes) young Kristina comes home from her last day of the school year with a gift from her teacher. It’s a non-descript silver ball, hardly worth the giftwrap. But then it buzzes at night, waking Kristina up. This [...]
Today, we ate the Lazy Woman’s Sunday Dinner. Our dessert, Coconut Blueberry Cake was so easy, I made it late last night after a long bout of staring at a job list I didn’t want to finish. This Smoky Bean Stew was a rapid-assembly wonder that cooked itself during my Sunday nap. This was one of those dishes where I swabbed my finger around [...]
Who among us has not had a big secret that we bottled up for weeks? And what was your secret? A pregnancy? A For Sale sign going up on your lawn next week? A church calling? And there you sat, your lips buttoned up, letting on nothing while you frolicked with your friends, dipping chips into the dip. Piper Kerman had a big secret too. [...]
Sometimes the cow patties in a book are like weeds in the sidewalk cracks. It’s hard to keep a few from springing up. Best not criticize, unless your own sidewalk is weed-free. But when Carl Hiaasen wrote Star Island, I’m pretty sure he hauled along a bag of weed seeds and poured them in the sidewalk cracks on purpose. That said, he wrote a pretty [...]
So what’s in the bottom of your popcorn bag? […]
Jonathan Franzen is wicked funny, and in Freedom, he introduces us to the Berglunds, a politically correct couple who move into a Saint Paul slum. […]
We need to keep this between you and me, OK? […]
