May reading roundup #1

May has been a rush, so far, of blossom and rain, music and meetings. Meanwhile, here’s what I have been reading:

Magnolia Wu Unfolds It All, Chanel Miller
I loved this middle-grade novel about two Asian-American girls who travel all over Manhattan trying to return lost socks to their owners. Sweet and funny; Magnolia and her friend Iris learn some important lessons about friendship.

This Here Flesh: Liberation, Spirituality, and the Stories That Make Us, Cole Arthur Riley
I’ve been savoring this memoir-in-essays from Riley, who writes Black Liturgies on Instagram. She blends her family’s stories with insights about topics such as grief, joy, repair and liberation. Hard to categorize, but insightful and powerful.

Happy Place, Emily Henry
Months after breaking up, Harriet and Wyn go on their annual vacation with college friends and try to pretend they’re still together – but they’re not faking their mutual desire. During the week, they face hard truths about their relationship and also work some things out with their friends. Smart, funny and so real, though I got frustrated with all the characters by turns. (Perhaps that’s realistic too?)

Wild and Distant Seas, Tara Karr Roberts
This luminous novel takes Moby-Dick as a starting point, but it’s narrated by the women: starting with widowed innkeeper Evangeline Hussey and continuing through four generations. Each woman – Evangeline, her daughter Rachel, granddaughter Mara, and great-granddaughter Antonia – has a gift, and all use their gifts in ways that wind around each other and the story of Ishmael. Beautiful and haunting.

The Dragon From Chicago, Pamela D. Toler
Toler (a former colleague of mine from Shelf Awareness) brilliantly unfolds the story of Sigrid Schultz, who ran the Chicago Tribune’s Berlin bureau for years and repeatedly warned American readers about the rise of Nazism. Compelling, meticulously researched and so fascinating – now I want a movie about Sigrid’s life! To review for Shelf Awareness (out Aug. 6).

A Pair of Wings, Carole Hopson
Bessie Coleman went from picking cotton in the Texas fields to being the first Black female pilot to earn a license (and an international one!). Hopson narrates Coleman’s story: her migration to Chicago, her pilot training in France, her struggle to build a career and be taken seriously. Vivid and compelling. To review for Shelf Awareness (out Aug. 20).

Isabel in Bloom, Mae Respicio
I snagged a copy of this gorgeous middle-grade novel at the Book Shop of Beverly Farms. Isabel has been living with her grandparents in the Philippines while her mother works in the States to give them all a better life. When Isabel moves to join her mother in San Francisco, she struggles to adjust – until a neglected garden gives her an idea. I loved this sweet narrative in verse; a lovely story of change, growth, plants and community.

Most links (not affiliate links) are to my local faves Trident and Brookline Booksmith. Shop indie!

What are you reading?

April reading roundup #3

And just like that, it’s May. As the neighborhood continues to burst into bloom, here’s what I have been reading:

Jackie, Dawn Tripp
This spare, luminous novel takes us inside the mind of Jacqueline Kennedy – tracing her life from the time she met Jack, through their courtship and marriage, his political career, his assassination and its aftermath. Tripp is a masterful storyteller, and the narrative voice sings. Absolutely stunning. (I also loved Georgia, Tripp’s novel of Georgia O’Keeffe.) To review for Shelf Awareness (out June 18).

Blessed are the Rest of Us: How Limits and Longing Make Us Whole, Micha Boyett
Full disclosure: Micha is a friend. But even if she wasn’t, I’d have loved this gorgeous, wise, powerful book about how the Beatitudes have informed her experience of raising a child with Down syndrome (and vice versa). A truly lovely, remarkable look at the upside-down way Jesus conceives of blessing, and an honest account of parenting through difficulties. (30% off at the publisher’s website above – not an affiliate link.)

Olivetti, Allie Millington
Olivetti – a green typewriter with lots of opinions – loves living with the Brindle family, especially Beatrice, mother of four, who used to pour her memories into him. But one day, Beatrice takes Olivetti to a pawn shop and then disappears. Breaking the cardinal rule of typewriters – typing back to humans – Olivetti helps 12-year-old Ernest embark on a search for Beatrice. I loved this quirky, sweet middle-grade novel (and so did Tom Hanks!).

Table for Two, Amor Towles
I enjoy Towles’ elegantly written novels, though Rules of Civility is my favorite. This new collection includes six short stories and a novella starring Evelyn Ross from RoC. I’m not a huge short story reader, but I liked these (especially “The Bootlegger”) and the novella was great – film noir meets clever leading lady. A lot of fun for Towles fans.

The Last Note of Warning, Katharine Schellman
Schellman’s third Vivian Kelly mystery finds Viv accused of murdering a wealthy man, and scrambling to clear her name before she lands in jail. The jazzy 1920s setting is fun, but I also liked seeing the complicated layers of Vivian’s relationships with her sister and other returning characters. Well plotted and satisfying. To review for Shelf Awareness (out June 4).

The New Tourist: Waking Up to the Power and Perils of Travel, Paige McClanahan
As an avid traveler, I appreciated this thoughtful look at the impacts of tourism (cultural and environmental). Full of vivid anecdotes and good questions for travelers to consider, especially as travel explodes post-pandemic. Clear, interesting and insightful. To review for Shelf Awareness (out June 18).

My Roman History, Alizah Holstein
Since she was a high school student reading Dante, Holstein has felt drawn to Rome. This memoir explores her long relationship with the city, including her time researching her dissertation; Holstein also examines her complicated (and short) academic career. I wasn’t all that interested in medieval Rome, but loved Holstein’s account of returning to Rome again and again, finding community there, trying to define what it means to her. (So similar to how I feel about Oxford.) To review for Shelf Awareness (out June 25).

The Expectant Detectives, Kat Ailes
I flew through the sequel to this fun British mystery recently, so picked up the first installment. Alice and her partner, Joe, are adjusting to village life when a man is murdered during their prenatal class. Alice and her new (almost) mum friends begin investigating, to the chagrin of Joe and the local police inspector. Wacky, witty and so much fun.

Divine Rivals, Rebecca Ross
This hit YA novel follows Iris and Roman, two young journalists who both end up reporting on the war their country’s caught in. I should have loved this (enchanted typewriters!), but found it…predictable? I did enjoy Iris’ friends Attie and Marisol; I wanted more of their stories. Worthwhile, but not amazing (or just not for me).

Most links (not affiliate links) are to my local faves Trident and Brookline Booksmith. Shop indie!

What are you reading?

Essays Written for a World in Motion: Dispersals at The Common

“These are essays written for a world in motion,” writes Jessica J. Lee in the introduction to her exquisite, haunting third book, Dispersals: On Plants, Borders, and Belonging, a collection of 14 essays examining the movement–voluntary, forced and accidental–of people and plants across landscapes.

Writing in a time of massive global migration, and having experienced several recent upheavals in her own life (including motherhood and the COVID-19 pandemic), Lee considers terms like rooted and migration in light of economic structures, political power, and her own Welsh-Taiwanese-Canadian ancestry. She probes, researches, and even delights in the ways in which plants–seeds, trees, rhizomes–consistently defy human notions of borders and boundaries.

I’ve got a review of Lee’s wonderful book up at The Common today. Please head over there to read the whole piece!

Poetry Friday: Li-Young Lee

From Blossoms

From blossoms comes
this brown paper bag of peaches
we bought from the boy
at the bend in the road where we turned toward   
signs painted Peaches.

From laden boughs, from hands,
from sweet fellowship in the bins,
comes nectar at the roadside, succulent
peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,
comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.

O, to take what we love inside,
to carry within us an orchard, to eat
not only the skin, but the shade,
not only the sugar, but the days, to hold
the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into   
the round jubilance of peach.

There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.

April is National Poetry Month, and I am sharing poetry on Fridays here this month, as I do every year. The other night in Piers Park, walking among the cherry trees, I kept thinking of this last line: “sweet impossible blossom.”

On house sparrows and paying attention

Spring has officially sprung here in East Boston: we’re past both the equinox and the eclipse, and the grass in Piers Park is carpeted with fallen pink cherry blossoms. I’m waking early these days, despite my love of sleeping in: my body seems to sense the morning light (and, yes, the honking carpool line around the corner) before my eyes even have a chance to open. 

As I lie in bed, or even after I get up, I’m listening to the chorus of spring birdsong outside: delighting in its bright tones, but also trying to pick individual notes out of the cacophonous symphony. This is a new endeavor for me. Although I was thrilled to find an Audubon field guide for $6 at a used bookstore during the pandemic, I didn’t really take up birding right then, as so many others did. I read Christian Cooper’s excellent memoir (both evocative and compelling – the man can write), and I’ve long delighted in a glimpse of a scarlet cardinal or a cheeky robin redbreast. 

But these days, I find my eye (and ear) increasingly drawn to a bird both small and ubiquitous here in Massachusetts: the house sparrow.

This is an excerpt from my April newsletter, For the Noticers. Read the rest and subscribe at my Substack site!

tiny spring rituals: a list.

• Opening the windows just a little bit wider.
• Going barefoot in my apartment, especially when the sunlight hits those wood floors.
• Trading out the fleece-lined running tights for lighter ones.
• Checking on that crocus bed in Cambridge.
• Rereading Jane of Lantern Hill (again).
• Dipping into a volume or two of Mary Oliver.
• Taking non-frigid sunset walks in Piers Park.
• Waking up before my alarm – usually to birdsong.
• Pumping up my bike tires.
• Breaking out the higher-SPF sunscreen.
• At least one tulip walk in the Public Garden.
• Eating ice cream without shivering.
• Starting seeds in tiny pots, and pulling weeds in the flowerbeds out back.
• Paying more attention to the birds.
• Mixing in lighter jackets with my iconic green coat.
• Snapping photos of tulips, daffodils, scilla, magnolias, cherry trees, forsythia and every blooming thing.

What are your small spring rituals?

April reading roundup #2

April is flying – helped along by a weekend in New York, an up-and-down mix of spring weather, and several great books. Here’s what I have been reading (alongside a lot of wonderful nonfiction, which is slower going):

Farewell to Manzanar, Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston & James D. Houston
My girl Allison and I were discussing this book in San Diego, and then I found it for $4 at Verbatim. (A sign!) It’s a fascinating account of Jeanne Wakatsuki’s experience at Manzanar, one of 10 internment camps for Japanese-Americans during WWII, and the profound effect it had on Jeanne and her family. Simply told, but vivid and insightful; a slice of history I know too little about.

Dead Tired, Kat Ailes
After solving a murder, Alice and her best friends are hoping for a quiet end to their respective maternity leaves. But when they join a climate protest and a young woman ends up dead, the friends – with babies in tow – start investigating. A fun, witty, very British mystery featuring new mums; second in a series. To review for Shelf Awareness (out June 4).

Summer Romance, Annabel Monaghan
Professional organizer Ali Morris is reeling from her mom’s death when her husband tells her he wants a divorce. Soon after, she stumbles into a summer romance with her best friend’s brother – but both of them start wanting more. A super sweet second-chance romance with real adults; I found Ali frustrating but endearing, and I adored her kids and her one-sided conversations with her mom. To review for Shelf Awareness (out June 4).

The Good, the Bad, and the Aunties, Jesse Q. Sutanto
Meddy Chan and her new husband are off to Jakarta for Chinese New Year, along with Meddy’s mother and her three overbearing aunties. Once there, of course, they get mixed up with several local mafia bosses who are rivals – and one of them is Second Aunt’s long-lost love. I adore this zany series and this third book was fast-paced, hilarious and sweet.

The Last Twelve Miles, Erika Robuck
I flew through this whip-smart, fascinating dual-narrative novel set during Prohibition, following the real-life struggle between rum-running queen Marie Waite and cryptanalyst Elizebeth Smith Friedman. Robuck alternates between their two perspectives, capturing each woman’s drive and ambition, and the complexities of both their home lives. Fast-paced, vividly detailed and so good. To review for Shelf Awareness (out June 4).

The Paris Secret, Natasha Lester
Fashion conservator Kat Jourdan stumbles upon a collection of Dior dresses in her grandmother’s cottage in Cornwall. Digging into the dresses’ legacy, Kat unearths a complicated story of female pilots, clashing sisters, espionage in WWII, and great suffering. Lester writes wonderful narratives – rich and compelling, with characters I love. Heads up for multiple concentration-camp scenes.

Most links (not affiliate links) are to my local faves Trident and Brookline Booksmith. Shop indie!

What are you reading?

Poetry Friday: William Stafford

Yes

It could happen any time, tornado,
earthquake, Armageddon. It could happen.
Or sunshine, love, salvation.

It could, you know. That’s why we wake
and look out – no guarantees
in this life.

But some bonuses, like morning,
like right now, like noon,
like evening.

April is National Poetry Month, and I am sharing poetry on Fridays here this month, as I do every year. 

on random book earworms

This week, I’ve been reading Table for Two, Amor Towles’ new collection of short fiction. (He’s an elegant writer, though so far I prefer his novels, especially Rules of Civility.) Every time I glance at the book cover, though, my mind re-registers the title and then goes somewhere completely different: an old George Strait tune from an early nineties album, which begins, “At a table for two / With candlelight and wine…”

It is, of course, not the first – and I’m sure not the last – earworm occasioned by a book.

Some of them are inevitable, the book’s title chosen deliberately to evoke a certain song: Let the Circle Be Unbroken. How to Save a Life. Dream When You’re Feeling Blue. In the Bleak Midwinter (or, really, all of Julia Spencer-Fleming’s wonderful series featuring Clare Fergusson and Russ Van Alstyne). Some titles are about music, invoking handfuls of titles within their pages, like Marissa R. Moss’s brilliant Her Country (pictured above), Matt Hay’s memoir The Soundtrack of Silence, or Jack Viertel’s highly entertaining The Secret Life of the American Musical.

But some earworms are unique to me, matching my musical fingerprint to the books I come across. For example, Nicola Yoon’s Instructions for Dancing always evokes “The Book of Love” by the Magnetic Fields. David Whyte’s Consolations had me humming “Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus” (“Israel’s strength and consolation…”) Kathrine Switzer’s memoir, Marathon Woman, sometimes puts me in mind of “American Woman.” And Sarah Smarsh’s Heartland, perhaps fittingly, takes me right back to George Strait: “When you hear twin fiddles and a steel guitar…”

Does this happen to anyone else? I’m curious – am I the only one, or do you also sometimes find a book title puts a song in your head that you can’t shake? Please share, if you’re so inclined – then we can all spend days humming those random tunes!

Reclaiming Cambridge

I wander out of Harvard Yard, skirting the broad Science Center Plaza or passing through the wrought-iron gates to cross Mass Ave. I turn right, circling past the First Parish Church cemetery with its leaning headstones, and the worn stone marker that always gives me pause: Boston, 8 miles. It harkens back to the days when Boston to Cambridge was a journey, when hazards lurked along the roads, when traveling from one fledgling city to the other took much more effort than hopping on an often-too-slow Red Line train.

I walk up Garden Street, keeping an eye out for leafing trees and nodding daffodils. I reach Appian Way and ramble through the sunken garden, site of many lunch breaks when I worked at the Ed School, and still home to dozens of flowering plants: sprouting ferns, almost-spent crocus, tiny blue scilla. I cross Radcliffe Yard, glance at the concrete bulk of the A.R.T., head down Hilliard Street to see what’s blooming in the flowerbeds there this week.

These streets and corners and gardens were mine before they were ours. I discovered them a decade ago, when I took a job at Harvard and began exploring, finding my own routes through the Square. I worked at Harvard for five years, holding four different jobs in three administrative areas, doing a lot of writing and even more emailing, spending many mornings at Mem Church and untold hours at Darwin’s.

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you also know: I fell in love with a man who was then slinging coffee and sandwiches and chai (my favorite) at Darwin’s, and we walked miles and miles through Cambridge together. We eventually expanded our reach: parts of Somerville, Back Bay, Brighton and East Boston all became ours, at one point or another. But these streets, lined with brick and tall lilacs and elegant houses a century old – more than any others, these streets were ours.

I stayed away from Harvard Square for weeks after we broke up. I couldn’t bear to step onto the streets where we’d spent so much time together, to meet our former ghosts around every turn, to face the memories from the time when we were happy. I missed my beloved haunts, like the gardens above and (of course) my florist, but I couldn’t make myself go back for a while. Even now, sometimes I round a corner or spot a familiar landmark – most of them not otherwise famous, but intimately known to us in our ramblings – and it’s like getting kicked in the chest.

But I couldn’t stay away forever. This patch of ground, home to an ancient university and a neighborhood I adore, has been integral to my life in New England: a place where I built a home for myself, brick by brick, through loss and strain, joy and challenges, and the daily rhythms of the community I made here.

I found my way back to the Square last fall, walking the streets as the leaves turned golden and crimson, popping in to see Stephen and pick up a bouquet of dahlias or sunflowers, slipping into Sunday-morning services at Mem Church. Now, months later, the Square is part of my rhythm again; some Sundays I browse a bookstore or two, or pop into Roust for a chai, or head to Flour for a steaming cup of spicy tomato soup. On most Sunday mornings, you can find me hurrying across the Yard, hoping to make it to Mem Church in time for the opening hymn.

I’d braced myself for a little pain as spring came on: as I wrote recently, spring carries an aching melancholy, a chill-edged bittersweetness that mingles with mild sunshine and new leaves and the fragile beauty of budding flowers. That holds true no matter what I might be dealing with in my life, but in the last few years – with all their losses and light – it has felt especially tender.

I expected that this year would be no different, and I expected, too, to think of him as I watched our favorite places come back to life, alone. But it has felt important to reclaim these streets and gardens for myself. Despite the memories that now taste bittersweet, this place holds other layers of past and present that still resonate with me. The nodding daffodils along the river; the stand of tulips along a white fence near Mt. Auburn Street; the triangular bed of crocuses that are always the first to bloom – these places are still my places, and I wanted to come back to them, to revel in their beauty as I do every spring.

Some weeks – I won’t lie – it still hurts. I see a bright robin or a pink hyacinth or spot a budding lilac, and I remember how it used to be, how we shared these delights for years. I walk along the streets where we strolled and biked and noticed, and I remember how it felt to be together when spring is in the world. There’s no gainsaying loss: it is real and it doesn’t disappear all at once, and its sorrow is not always negated by joy.

Alongside the sorrow, though, is an equally vital truth: the familiar flash of joy, the delight that blooms in my chest in response to a mauve stand of hellebore or the fronds of neon-yellow forsythia. Spring is in the world, and I’m back in my beloved Harvard Square. I am reclaiming these streets, these hidden corners, these gardens: the trees and bulbs, the parks and flowerbeds, that have fed my soul for so many years.

I am adding another layer of spring memories to this palimpsest: not erasing the sadness, but learning to live with it, learning not to let it dominate. I am reclaiming witch hazel and early azaleas and (soon) tulips and lilacs, alongside the stark beauty of winter and early spring. I am walking these streets again, just because I want to. And it feels good. It feels grounding, right, nourishing. It feels, in short, like finding my way back home.