I don‘t do this very often - just sit in a coffee shop taking up space and reading - but this Vermont gray weather requires that I do this today.

Gordon returns to his hometown after spending 25 years in prison. He returns to a neighborhood that is riddled with crime, an elderly neighbor who is afraid of him, a teenager in desperate straits, a brother who has resented him for years, and a lonely woman who has visited him while he was in prison and hopes to have a relationship with Gordon. It‘s a lot for a guy who just wants to lay low and stay out of trouble. I couldn‘t stop reading it.

Thank you to Jennifer for sending this story my way. This novel offers a short history lesson of the coup that took place in Chile through the eyes of teenagers, one of them being the son of a CIA informer. The son leaves friends and a girlfriend behind as he is taken back to the U.S. The story then moves to years later as the son and others associated with him live with the memory and guilt of what took place in the country he left behind. 🔽

The question is: how many depressing books do I need to read before I give up on reading depressing books? This may have been the one to tip me over the edge. Or I need to up my dosage of Sam-e. 🥴😂 it‘s a terrific character study of a cranky alcoholic woman with no hope. Yes, there are reasons for this and yet even I had trouble rooting for her. Very readable though. Unfortunately. It would have been easier for me to stop reading it otherwise.

Truth.

If you want to learn about the famine in Ireland in the 1800‘s, if you want to learn about life on a ship leaving Ireland heading to New York and if you like a story that involves a murderer on board the ship, this book is for you. There‘s even an affair going on! This book is brutal and yet I‘m glad I read it. It‘s a history lesson that needs to be told and remembered. What happened in Ireland was a terrible thing.

Just in case you want to listen, Rhett Miller interviews Nunez on his podcast.

I was looking forward to reading a light and enjoyable novel. I saw the movie ages ago but hardly remembered the plot line. This wonderful story filled with magic and recipes was a delight. Passionate love sustained over the years and a woman whose cooking will create lust and chaos within those who enjoy her meals is always fun to read about.

I had trouble with this graphic but here it is.

1. The USPS is selling sheets of Forever stamps that are so groovy!
2. The Flower Show that my daughter-in-law & I went to lifted my spirits.
3. Went to see a Boston Celtics game and all my favorite players played. Very competitive and exciting game.
4. Sending postcards to the White House tomorrow expressing my outrage.
5. My friend and I outside of TD Garden with the Boston Bruins bear.

Was able to stop in Wilmington (southern Vermont) yesterday to get a stamp on my Vermont Independent Bookstore Passport. What a sweet little town with a fabulous bookstore! Excited about these books. Miller, a Vermont author, wrote the tagged book which was sooo good and I encourage folks to check it out. Can‘t wait to check his newest one out. Hmmmm…can‘t remember how to tag. #TheMemoirsofStockholmSven

Definitely not my genre but it was available through Libby and I needed a book to listen to on a drive and it was a Grady Hendrix story. It involves vampires and a lot of attempts to identify and kill one.

#5JoysFriday @DebinHawaii

1. Tank and the Bangos was the opening act for
2. Trombone Shorty - between the 2 acts it was 3 hours of me standing, singing and dancing. Just what I needed.
3. Babysitting my granddaughter, Charley, overnight.
4. Being introduced to a fabulous book/buddy read.
5. Finally, it‘s scientifically accurate to say that the Irish have large heads! My kids and I have a very hard time finding hats that fit.

While Brooks is writing her book Horse at home on the Vineyard she gets a call that her husband Tony Horwitz has died suddenly in DC. This book walks you through that time frame/experience and then intermingles her process of finally fully grieving three years later while staying in a remote location in Tasmania. In telling her story you meet a unique couple. A four star read.

Jennifer, you‘re spoiling me with this embarrassment of riches. Thank you for this fun package that I received today. I feel so fortunate. 💕💕💕

I listened to this twice before returning it to the library. This is a book that outlines ancient practices that we‘ll surely be required to practice in the future. Not consuming more than you need or that the planet can sustain, of sharing within a community. I lived on a commune for years just for this reason. Eventually upon moving to Vermont my husband ran a business that was paid through bartering more often than cash. It‘s the way to go.

I had to look up the word ‘bridewell‘. It was the opposite of what I thought it meant.

A young woman working as an art therapist in a mental institution, in love with a married psychiatrist working there, helps a patient who has been discovered in a house that he hasn‘t left for years. He‘d lived with his aunts who had kept him from leaving in case others saw him. It could have been me and my mood but this was too long for the story it told. I wish it had resonated more with me because the outline of the story is interesting.

What a delightful surprise in my mail this morning. Thank you @AmyG for your kindness. I can't wait to read these.

Not a bad one in the bunch- can‘t wait to see which one I‘ll read in March. #bookspin

After finishing this book I went on to The New Yorker website to see how many of Janet Malcolm‘s articles I had read in the past and to my surprise there was a brief article in this recent issue about Malcolm and Eissler! Janet Malcolm‘s nonfiction writing about three men involved in the Freud archives - two of whom have massive egos and one wanting to believe in the brilliance of a protege - is so engaging. 🔽
#offtheshelf #bookspin

My mind has been all over the place over the last two days. Really hard for me to settle on anything. I find that I‘m rotating between these three reading options. Being retired, lack of exercise due to snow drifts up to my waist, and our current state of democracy, it‘s enough to scramble my mind. I‘m usually a monogamous reader, so you know things are going downhill fast when I flip between three quite different selections of reading material.

Yes!! I‘m finally starting to read my December #bookspin!

I‘m all over the map on this book. Here are my random thoughts:
1. Don‘t listen to the audiobook. Apparently you can‘t tell that there is a section of the narrative that is in italics which is an important feature of the story. (At least that‘s what Reddit readers said.)
2. It took me forever to get into it and I really had to push to finish it.
3. You have to finish it. But it will give you a headache.
4. The ocean is magical. AI sucks.

Not sure why I feel compelled to follow up on my last post about shoveling with this information, but please humor me. 🥴🤪. A big old 12-18” of snow and high winds for two days.

A story of a convent and the community surrounding them told through letters from Sister B. It was delightful to see how much prayer actually worked for all the travails experienced by the nuns. If only that worked for all of us! It was sweet to watch how they relied on each other and continually learned new things in order to navigate fundraising for their convent. #NunLit

#offtheshelf

Over 5,000 lbs. of snow had to be pulled off the upper roof to the porch roof and then 3 of us shoveled the porch roof to the ground. That pile on the ground is up to my nose. And a nor‘easter will start tomorrow. I feel like I‘ve been shoveling for weeks. This weekend it will be just me, the books and watching the snow fall.

I‘m mad at myself for grabbing this book from the library when I have so many wonderful books in my house to read. It‘s a story of a woman who has lived alone for years, lives with childhood trauma, & her niece who has issues. The woman ends up taking the niece without permission to find her mother who disappeared years ago. I think there may have been layers to this story that I wasn‘t in the mood to explore. I was happy to be done with it.

I got my first flu shot in years as well as a Covid shot and to reward myself I stopped and picked up this book at the bookstore. Bishop Budde and Nadia Bolz-Weber are my favorite ministers to listen to when I‘m feeling a bit wobbly.

Not that it will happen, but every soon-to-be father should be required to read sections of this book. A woman explains what her life has become once she has become a mother. Her husband is busy at work and he abdicates all responsibility for the child. The exhaustion, anger, disappointment, loneliness, desperate love and raging anger toward a young child, all of it was perfectly described.

#offtheshelf

This is a beautifully written book based on a true story. A husband and wife decide to separate and seemingly have an amicable visitation schedule with their 6 year old twins. However, after one particular visit, the husband commits suicide and the children are never seen ago. The book creatively describes the ways in which the wife struggles to find her children and how she manages (or doesn‘t) to live with the grief.

#offtheshelf

Halfway through this very slim book I had to call it. It‘s such a short book I kept pushing myself to make it to the end but I have absolutely no connection to anything in it. Post apocalyptic, dead but undead, a crow stuffed into her body, hungry….What? So confused. I‘m usually good with fiction that‘s hard to stay with, but I quit. I‘m annoyed about quitting and I‘m annoyed with this book.

The book focuses on the amount of spying done by the British during The Troubles and how Britain ultimately steered the IRA to become a political party. It‘s about a British agent hidden within the highest ranks of the IRA who ultimately was placed on the Nutting Squad, responsible for killing informers, who killed an Irishman working as a spy for Britain. It‘s fascinating and sobering and so much more than my description covers. Five star read.

Don‘t know if folks know Jesse Welles but I‘ve appreciated every song he‘s written. He‘s my kind of guy. He just wrote this one about books. Check out some of his other songs!

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DFdCucKuOwZ/?igsh=MTA3MGp5OWpidHhqag==

I liked her book All the Ugly & Wonderful Things so I thought I‘d try another of hers. An interesting set up. Zee, a plucky but down on her luck young woman attempts to find her sister who has been taken hostage while volunteering at a prison. Alongside Zee is Gentry, an autistic young man who hears voices, believes he is a knight, speaks Olde English, & is very good with swords. He swears allegiance to Zee to be her protector. Quirky but good.

I liked Barry‘s The Heart in Winter so I thought I‘d look at his older books. This was on the Booker longlist in 2019. Barry has a way of writing that is beautiful, sometimes downright stunning, but in this case it was hard for me to grab ahold of the story the way I like to. Two aged gangsters sit waiting in a ferry terminal in order to catch sight of the daughter of one of the men who has been gone for years. They reminisce as they wait. ⭐️⭐️⭐️

I can‘t tell you how excited I am that a) Bookshop.Org is doing so well and b) that they will be offering e-books. This company not only provides an alternative to Amazon, it provides a portion of the profits to independent bookstores.

I‘m going backwards in Thorpe‘s writing and this is the third book I‘ve read of hers. While I‘ve quoted this book several times I have to say this book felt a little too ambitious. A trip to Lithuania in honor of his grandmother who escaped from a concentration camp with a teen who has experienced a psychotic break, the story covers a lot of ground and feels a bit too much. I was captivated while reading it but ultimately disappointed.

The author put this quote both in her novel and in her acknowledgments. It hit me hard each time I read it. A great description of my current understanding of the world.

“No one seemed amazed that in Lithuania, in order to deal with the end of communism, local artists had made a statue of Frank Zappa.… And now Frank Zappa has become sort of a patron saint, if you will, of Uzupis, but also of Vilnius and even Lithuania as a whole.”

Who knew?

Finally read this! A brilliant demonstration of undiagnosed mental illness and the depression and chaos it inflicts. Further, the decision of family members to avoid talking about the family history of depression or to sugarcoat the current situation was all too familiar to me. I‘m not exactly sure where the “bliss” portion of the book was.

When one of my sons is off in New Zealand I love to stay in his house in Vermont where he has a second floor window seat. Especially on the rare days when there is a winter sun. Enjoying this book at the moment although the warmth of the sun keeps lulling me to cat naps.

It was on the library shelf. Of course I‘m going to grab it. Don‘t you slow down and look at car crashes as you pass by? I was never a fan of Elvis but I was curious about Lisa Marie. Then as I was reading I kept getting Lisa Marie & her mother confused as I was reading it, but that‘s my own problem. It‘s clear that audio is the better way to go with this one. Unfortunately, I did not go that route. My suggestion: definitely a borrow, not a buy.

I was drinking coffee with my oldest/longest friend (from 7th grade) on New Year‘s Day & telling her about this book I was reading. I couldn‘t get across to her the delight/sorrow I was experiencing while reading it. Finally I said, “imagine a situation where your children are delightfully emotionally brilliant, your best/longest friend is dying, your ex-hubby is a great cook, and you can share the humor & sadness of it all in a book.” It‘s good.

Read this in December & it still rattles about in my brain. It‘s set in 2040 when Amazon has taken over. 3 narrators - one the owner, one a security guard, & one person, a spy, who picks products off the shelves. It was written in 2019. Those who work in the warehouses also live there & their activities and locations are tracked. The ideas in the book feel very plausible and troubling. The conditions under which people feel safe is worth noting.

I‘m very behind on reviews! Read this in early December. It‘s funny to see where Wait‘s backlist has been coming from. One book of hers had to come to my small town in Vermont from a library in Virginia. This book has come from Kentucky. Emma‘s eldest brother has died and her other brother immediately leaves home. Emma is left behind as part of a devastated family. As usual, Wait does a great job describing this family‘s story.

What a wonderful surprise!!! Thank you so much, Alyisha, for your generosity!!! It made my day. 💕💕

My second day of book shopping was January 2nd & part of the Vermont Independent Bookstore Passport Tour. Went to Brattleboro, VT to a great bookstore, Everyone‘s Books. Based on @Lindy and @shawnmooney recs I grabbed the tagged book. Based on @BarbaraBB rec I picked up The Night Guest. I zoned in on the only Cosby book I haven‘t read and I‘ve been eager to read. And who doesn‘t want to be more spiritually intelligent! 😂

Books purchased on December 31st while visiting Northampton, MA. Mary McGorry Morris, Sigrid Nunez, Niall Williams, Gabriel Byrne, and Blue Sisters (A book I decided I had to purchase because the wait list from the library is so long.) I feel very rich.

I see this only received a 33% rating on Litsy. I completely understand that people may not like it but upon finishing this book I immediately fell into a deep dive into all it had/still has raised within me. A love story, an escape into the deep woods of Montana, the writing, I was hearing the cadence of long lost relatives, the story-quick & to the point-has all the makings of a Western but it's completely Irish. Tom and Polly. The 10,000 (cont)

Jen breaks up with Andy. The majority of the book is spent with Andy as he tries to deal with the loss. I liked Andy and sympathized with his struggle. Heck, I can be an Andy myself. But I can also be a Jen. I appreciated what she had to say.

I often find that if I‘m not really enjoying a book, it‘s worth it to finish it to see if the ending saves it. Honestly, the ending did just that. It made the reading of the book a rewarding experience.