Okay, Litsy, I can‘t keep up with the posting and reading I see around here, but that‘s no reason not to share what I can. This. This book. This meditation on identity, on claiming your own history, of what history is, of whose it is to define and tell, woven through a wrenching memoir...this one got a lot of dogears, underlines, and starred pages. Don‘t miss.

Just heard an interview with the author and this sounds FASCINATING. What our haunted places & ghost stories say about ourselves, our fears, our unresolved issues. At the start of the interview he was asked about ghost stories being the Freudian slips of a community and I was hooked. TBR, top of the stack.

This was just, so, perfect. Elegant, wise, moral, perceptive...and just ballsy. She pulls off a suspenseful mystery, a family drama, a coming-of-age story, and a deep-dive into justice and revenge. And BONUS: this edition includes an author interview worth studying by itself for the insights on writing. This one climbed in my basket while I was looking for something else. That was a lucky day.

Courtesy of the Southern Adirondack Library System. ❤️

How did I not know of this book before now? This may end up as my go-to baby shower gift.

“If people did not love one another, I really don‘t see what use there would be in having any spring.”

Spring. On the due date. What a concept! Happy equinox from Texas. 💐 (Just don‘t settle down with a book too close to that water. 🐊)

Just heard the author on a podcast and am adding this to my TBR. Fascinating discussion about the forces that can manipulate one‘s own sense of reality, and then what it takes to know yourself. From the blurb “gets to the heart of what an education is and what it offers: the perspective to see one‘s life through new eyes, and the will to change it.” Singin‘ my song, here. Very excited for this one.

This book was on the piano all thru my childhood. Then my mom bought one for me when I had my first baby. Then it was OUT OF PRINT when my baby had her first. 😭😩😭 Still out of print, never less than $50 used. Then I spotted this one for $13! Mysterious, magical Maurice Sendak illustrations & exquisite arrangements. (Reissue please!) Ima spend some time playing my adult inner critic to sleep today.
#childrensbooks #music

#bookriot #riotgrams #oversizedbook #day24
Oversized enough? I keep this mostly for historical value, because yes, that‘s a map of the Soviet Union it‘s open to.

I‘m at my mom‘s house, rediscovering the shelves where I used to sink into the books that were hers as a child, and found these. The New Wonder World, 1939, volumes to educate and entertain. They‘re embossed and illustrated and gorgeous. And with sections like “Brownies of the Pacific Islands” I see simultaneously how far we‘ve come and why it‘s not surprising we still have so far to go.
#riotgrams #day23 #selfimprovement

#riotgrams #day22 #bookthatshouldbeadapted
Seriously. Don‘t we all want to think that in a bleak and grieving post-apocalyptic world that maybe hope not only lives but keeps us alive? Maybe something‘s right with the world and it‘s already in development. 🤞

Scholastic book orders, anyone? Taking home that flyer full of descriptions for books I could OWN, wrestling to get my list down to size, taking my envelope of coins and bills back to school, and then the thrill of the rubber-banded stack of books on delivery day. So many I still have. You too?
#riotgrams #day19 #favoriteschoolread #scholasticbooks

I was a forced piano student. Practice, 🤮. Lessons, 🤮. I quit as soon as I was allowed. But when I was teenaged and emotional, I played and sang and wrote angsty songs. And I can‘t imagine raising my children without music. (My mom gave me this book when my first was born.) I think no one ever ends up sorry about being literate...but...I definitely would have stuck with it longer if I‘d had pieces I wanted to play.
#riotgrams #music #day18

That moment when somebody‘s Twitter thread makes you add his book to your TBR: a collection of pets immortalized by screwing up somebody‘s work. Screenshots of a few, clockwise, from top left:
1. Manuscript and cat prints from 15th c Dubrovnik
2. 17th c Japanese map of Nagasaki with paw prints
3. Royal stamp and dog print on a clay brick from the Ziggurat of Ur, 21st c BCE
4. Medieval Japanese manuscript and cat wanting attention.

I live on land that was once a prison farm. I think of it as holy ground, and hope that by walking forward in the service of wholeness and love that I can redeem a grain or two of its soil. But often it just haunts me.
#riotgrams #blackhistory #day16

What‘s pink and white? This handful of Cadbury eggs. And read all over? This book, as soon as I get those eggs out of the way.
(Fine. It‘s a reach, and I‘ve cross-contaminated my holidays. But #pinkredandwhite ✅)
#riotgrams #bookriot #challenge #day13

#riotgrams #day12 #favoriteleadingladies
Well, how high am I supposed to build that stack? I‘ll go for favorite recent, Emma Rose Finnis, a ghost who‘s wise and fierce and knows what it means to be alive.
“If the living don‘t listen to the warnings of the dead, how are we to blame?...For what is a ghost, except a voice in your head you should pay attention to, but don‘t?”

A lot of my editorial life was spent explaining to non-native English speakers what a comma HERE rather than HERE actually meant. Thank you, old friends, for helping me sound smarter than I am when I did it.
#bookriot #riotgrams #punctuation

“I wanted something better than love, something bigger and more valuable. I wanted truth.”
Do not judge my beverage. It goes well with the cover and it‘s delicious.
Do put the book on your TBR. This one is stunning.
#riotgrams #day10 #bookandabeverage #arc

As an LA native, a white girl from the 1970s suburbs, I was astonished by the Rodney King verdict. How did you find 12 people that blind and biased to put on one jury? Then I read this book and got it. There were way more than 12. I‘d just been blind, maybe no less than some of them. We have a long way to go, and books like this help us along the way.
#riotgrams #blackwriters #blackhistorymonth

“The modern furniture they‘d bought in New York was all wrong here. Tall, decorative vases that had once flanked their doorway now huddled like conspirators in the hall.” (Foreign Returned, by Sadia Shepard, Jan 8 2018 issue.)
My pile of New Yorker magazines, mostly folded over on something I meant to read or was partway through when the next one came. New short fiction comes at you fast.
#riotgrams #shortstories #sadiashepard

“Luna was alone, curled in an armchair and reading furtively—the only way a farmer‘s wife may read, it turns out.”
This is my shelf of writing royalty that I keep by my chair because I know I can grab any one of these books, flip it open, and be inspired. I have studied this opening scene a dozen times: the character is SITTING IN A DAMN CHAIR for 16pp and I‘m transported.
#madskillz #royalty #riotgrams #day5

Expat life turned my relationship with Kindle into an arranged marriage: not passionate but necessary. But I felt my first little flutter when I discovered that my Little Paris Kitchen cookbook was still beautiful on the iPad. You want to spend the afternoon in Paris? This is the ticket. This is one of those dreamy cookbooks to sit and read, not just work from. Me and Kindle, we‘ve got a thing that works now.
#purple #riotgrams #day4

“If you give a mouse a cookie, he‘s going to ask for a glass of milk...”
New city, new life. “Should I set up my office here? Or move all my books there? Where‘s the insurance info I need to choose a new doctor? How do I find somebody to do my hair?” Every ordinary task leads to five more. Reading to the grands tonight I realized I‘m living the if-you-give-a-mouse-a-cookie life.
#nakedhardcovers #childrensbooks #fictionislife #riotgrams

I just had a conversation with somebody saying he didn‘t read fiction much anymore, found himself saying, “Well, that didn‘t really happen.” That kind of thinking grieves me. This is what fiction is for: capturing truth and meaning that transcends mere events.
#whyfiction #whyfictionmatters #read

“Assume you‘ll be back.”
It‘s always a good day when new travel books come! Yes, they‘re cliche, but I haven‘t found a better tool to help you wrap your arms around a place (in Europe) you haven‘t seen before than a Rick Steves guide. That nugget of advice on not trying to do everything is in every book, but I think it‘s a good one for life. Leave a good impression everywhere you go. Assume you‘ll be back.

I met LS Hawker at a conference and discovered we shared the same editor. Unsurprisingly, we also instantly liked each other. This book is like her—sassy, irreverent, tough, honest. Or, like what I think she might be if she were trained as a killer and thrown into a mystery. My currently-reading pile is one book shorter, but another of hers will be in it soon enough!

“Daughters of the Baroque. Dough
Thickens in troughs, baths steam, wines blush,
Cloudy piglets careen across the sky,
Triumphant trumpets neigh the carnal alarm.
O pumpkin plump! O pumped-up corpulence
Inflated double by disrobing
And tripled by your tumultuous poses
O fatty dishes of love!”
(p21, “Rubens‘ Women”)
A picture may be worth a thousand words, but sometimes the right words complete the picture.

“The house felt too tight, as if there weren‘t enough air for all these people.”
All those red dots are closures because it makes more sense to shut Houston down a day or two every year than buy and warehouse a crapton of winter weather equipment. My house does NOT feel too tight. Book, blankie, coffee...I‘m set for the day.
#mystery #snowday