This month’s Book Club Read is a memoir by Jennette McCurdy titled “I’m Glad My Mom Died”. I was drawn to it by the title when I was perusing the Goodreads Choice awards for 2022. It won the 2022 award for Best Memoir & Autobiography. This is a genre that I do not often read…
Humor, History, and a Heavy Heart
Maus is a graphic novel by American cartoonist Art Spiegelman. I picked it up, used, years ago and read it a couple of times. Once to enjoy and a second time to absorb the fictionalized biography of a very dark time in the world seventy years ago. To me it was a reminder of the importance…
Circuit Makati
It’s been years in the making, but our home away from home is finally finished and we are spending our first time back in the Philippines since 2019 getting reacquainted with the area. There is an entirely new mall with several bookstores and lots of new restaurants. We are set to meet up with family…
Traveling with Books
I’m leaving for the Philippines next weekend and have a lot of catching up to do. It’s been three-plus years since I was there last and I’m excited to see my friends again. It’s also been more than a year since the condo we bought was finished and we have yet to see it, except…
Traveling Locally
As a retirement gift to myself, as well as a celebration of a life of hard work, I decided to take a road trip with my husband and our dog. As we planned the trip it became clear this would be a major endeavor and take over a month to complete. We’re now at day…
Canadian Mystery Writer bookclub choice
I’ve been reading Louise Penny lately. Specifically, her series which is set in the village of Three Pines with chief inspector Armand Gamache. In this latest book (that I read), ‘A Rule Against Murder‘, we learn not only about a new set of characters with wealth, power, and problems, but the author reveals new idiosyncrasies…
Library of the Dead – A bookclub read
Have you ever heard the saying “I’ve forgotten more than you know”? That’s what I thought of when I read this title. Finding the book during a coffee date with my sister and niece at Barnes and Noble was exciting, as the cover and title grabbed my attention instantly. As it turned out there was…
The Durrells
I recently finished watching The Durrells in Corfu on PBS. It was one of those stories that inspires me to lead a more interesting life (in the 1st quarter of 2021, after living through 2020, that would not be much of a challenge). After being recently widowed, a woman decides to move from England to…
This is why our teachers asked us to “show our work”.
In mathematics there is (generally) only one right answer. If life worked like mathematics there would be a lot of unhappy people. The world is complicated because people are different, dogs are different, cats are different, horses are different, birds are different, heck even no two snowflakes are the same. When each one of us…
Book Club News – November 2020
Seeing the breath of education and feeling the soul of an institution called a school I have always been partial to international literature because reading it opens my mind and my eyes to things different from what I see in my everyday world. A friend of mine on Facebook recommended this book by an Indonesian…