February reading roundup #2

February has been a strange month – I’ve been fighting a weird upper respiratory infection, and the weather has swung from frigid to balmy, with very little snow. Meanwhile, here’s what I have been reading:

The Cuban Heiress, Chanel Cleeton
Two women – and the man on whom they both want revenge – board the SS Morro Castle, a pleasure cruise between New York and Havana. Elena is determined to get her daughter back, and Catherine (who’s not really an heiress) is wary of both her fiance and a mysterious jewel thief she meets. I like Cleeton’s historical novels, but this one felt a little thin; I prefer her series about the Perez sisters. To review for Shelf Awareness (out April 11).

Pride & Puppies, Lizzie Shane
Dr. Charlotte Rodriguez is swearing off men after dating too many not-Mr.Darcys. She gets an adorable golden retriever puppy, Bingley, and everything is fine – except she might be falling in love with her sweet neighbor, George. Meanwhile, George is head over heels for Charlotte but weighing a possible move back to Colorado (with plenty of unsolicited advice from his sisters). I loved this modern-day Austen-inspired romp with two wonderful main characters (and so much puppy cuteness).

See No Stranger: A Memoir and Manifesto of Revolutionary Love, Valarie Kaur
I picked up Kaur’s memoir at Yu and Me Books in NYC and was blown away. Kaur tells the story of her childhood in California, her family’s Sikh faith, her experience mourning and documenting hate crimes after 9/11, and her journey into love, healing and activism. She’s a strong writer and an even stronger person. Thought-provoking and compelling.

The Language of Trees: A Rewilding of Language and Literature, Katie Holten
Holten, an Irish artist and writer, has invented a tree alphabet – and this gorgeous collection of essays, poetry and quotes features each piece in English and in her Trees font. Wide-ranging, thoughtful and an urgent call to preserve and cherish the trees we still have. To review for Shelf Awareness (out April 4).

The Lioness of Boston, Emily Franklin
When Isabella Stewart Gardner came to Boston as a newlywed, she struggled to find her place in the rigid, wealthy Brahmin society. After struggling with infertility and losing a young child, she eventually began traveling and buying art – becoming a famous “collector” of both art and people. This novel – elegant, intimate, fascinating – narrates Isabella’s story in first person. I loved it, and it made me want to go back to her museum. To review for Shelf Awareness (out April 11).

The Stories We Tell, Joanna Gaines
This book showed up in my Christmas stocking, and I’ve been reading it slowly. I like its emphasis on owning all the parts of your story, though lots of it seemed vague and repetitive. I most enjoyed the parts where Gaines actually shared her personal experiences. Warmhearted, but a mixed bag.

A Murderous Relation, Deanna Raybourn
Veronica Speedwell and her colleague, Stoker, are called upon to investigate a scandal possibly connecting a prince to the Whitechapel murders. The case takes them to an exclusive brothel and all over London – including face-to-face with several villains they didn’t expect. A fun entry in this highly entertaining series; I was glad they didn’t dive over-much into the Jack the Ripper cases.

How to Be Brave, Daisy May Johnson
Calla North is used to looking after her mother, Elizabeth, who knows a lot about ducks but not much about everyday life details. But when Elizabeth goes on an expedition to the Amazon and Calla is sent to boarding school, she must band together with an unlikely crew of friends (and nuns!) to rescue her mother. A super fun middle-grade adventure with engaging characters.

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

What are you reading?

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Give me the tulips

Give me a garden full of strong, healthy creatures, able to stand roughness and cold without dismally giving in and dying. I never could see that delicacy of constitution is pretty, either in plants or women.

—Elizabeth von Arnim, Elizabeth and Her German Garden

I was searching last week for that von Arnim quote on tulips, because it is tulip season in the Public Garden and I agree with von Arnim: they are my favorite. While double-checking that quote, I came across these lines, and was immediately struck by them: yes.

I love looking at the graceful potted orchids at my florist’s shop, but as Anne Shirley has said, I want flowers I can live with. Instead of sensitive hothouse orchids, give me this:

Give me the crocuses, pushing their purple and golden spears up through the snow at the end of winter. Give me the daffodils, slender but steely, dollops of bright gold against crusted snowbanks and worn-out winter dirt. Give me the lipstick-pink tulip magnolias, petals winging their way off the ends of their branches like butterflies, and the blush-pink apple and cherry blossoms, ruffled and gorgeous even in the rain.

Give me the tulips, holding up their vivid cups to sun, rain, brisk spring winds or anything else nature might throw at them. Give me the lilacs, budding even now as the nights persist chilly, and the shock of yellow forsythia, and the shy, trailing hellebores in cream and mauve and green. Give me the blue scilla dotting the ground, the blaze of azaleas and rhododendrons, the wild violets showing their faces here and there along the river trail.

Give me, too, friends of stalwart courage and fighter hearts, those who don’t run away when life gets messy or tough or complicated. Give me a band of strong women who will bolster me up, and accept my help when it’s my turn to do the same. And give me a lion heart so I don’t fail those same friends, a fierce resolve and bold kindness to stand with them and for them, and for myself, when I need it.

Amen.

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February reading roundup #1

 

So far this month, I’ve been flipping through old favorites and diving deep into new books. Here’s the latest roundup:

I’ll Be There For You: The One About Friends, Kelsey Miller
I’m a longtime Friends fan, though I came to it late. I blew through this smart, well-researched, loving look at the origin, history and cultural impact of one of my favorite shows. Miller adores the show, but she’s not afraid to question its more difficult parts. Fascinating and so much fun.

Four Gifts: Seeking Self-Care for Heart, Soul, Mind and Strength, April Yamasaki
Sarah Bessey chose this book to kick off a yearlong challenge to read spiritual formation books by people of color. My go-tos in this genre are all white women, so I appreciated the nudge. Yamasaki is wise and thoughtful. Lots of her advice is common sense – but we all need a reminder sometimes.

What Now?, Ann Patchett
I love Patchett’s essays and some of her novels (and Parnassus, the Nashville bookstore she founded). This quick read is based on her commencement address at Sarah Lawrence College. Warmhearted, wise advice for college grads and anyone who’s ever wondered about their winding path (which I bet is most of us).

Wishtree, Katherine Applegate
I picked up this slim middle-grade novel at Porter Square Books. It’s narrated by Red, a red oak tree who serves as the neighborhood “wishtree” – people tie wishes to its branches. When a young, lonely girl moves in next door, Red becomes determined to help her find a friend. A sweet story with gorgeous illustrations (and I loved Bongo the crow).

Belong to Me, Marisa de los Santos
After rereading Love Walked In last month, I turned back to this sequel-of-sorts, which finds Cornelia in the suburbs, struggling with new challenges. This book is full of warmth and vivid detail and characters I want to be friends with – even Piper, Cornelia’s neighbor, who is hard to like at first, but I’ve come to adore her. So many good and true lines.

Out of Sorts: Making Peace with an Evolving Faith, Sarah Bessey
Reading Four Gifts (see above) spurred me to (finally) pick up Sarah’s second book, on her struggles with church and faith and how she found her way back. I love the sorting metaphor, and it feels particularly apt right now as I am between churches. Her words on community and grief and calling are so good.

The Golden Tresses of the Dead, Alan Bradley
Flavia de Luce is back for a 10th adventure, involving a human finger found in her sister’s wedding cake and a couple of mysterious deaths (naturally). I like this series, though I think it’s struggling a bit lately. Really fun escapist British mystery.

Placemaker: Cultivating Places of Comfort, Beauty, and Peace, Christie Purifoy
Christie is a gardener, a writer and an Internet friend of mine. This, her second book, examines the places she’s lived and loved (each chapter has a different tree motif) and her efforts to care for them. So much here about loss, grief, joy, transition, community and how we shape and are shaped by our places. I loved it. To review for Shelf Awareness(out March 12).

Most links (not affiliate links) are to my favorite local bookstore, Brookline Booksmith.

What are you reading?

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December reading roundup #2

December reading is always a crazy mix of airplane reading, the last few review books of the year, and a couple of Advent/Christmas staples. (Above: the book of readings that has shaped my experience of Advent since 2001.) Here’s the last roundup of 2018:

Harry’s Trees, Jon Cohen
I grabbed this novel at the library after Anne raved about it. A slow start for me, but I fell in love with Harry Crane, a Forest Service employee who escapes to the woods after his wife dies. I loved the people he meets – Oriana, a young girl who’s lost her father; Amanda, her relentlessly practical mother; and Olive, the elderly pipe-smoking librarian who gives Oriana a book that changes everything. Magical and moving.

Darius the Great is Not Okay, Adib Khorram
Leigh and Kari both loved this book, and I really enjoyed it. Darius is an Iranian-American teen (and tea lover) who travels to Iran for the first time. His relationships with his dad and little sister were so well drawn and real, and I loved watching him make a real friend and bond with his grandparents.

Discontent and its Civilizations: Dispatches from Lahore, New York and London, Mohsin Hamid
Hamid is better known for his novels – like Exit West, which I loved – but this collection of his essays is wise and thought-provoking. I learned a lot about Pakistan from the “Politics” section, but found more to enjoy in “Art” and “Life.” Found (on sale) at the charming Papercuts JP last month.

Running Home, Katie Arnold
Arnold became a runner as a kid, almost by accident – at the urging of her photographer dad. She chronicles her journey with running (and later ultrarunning), interwoven with her dad’s illness, his death, and their complicated but deeply loving relationship. So many great lines about writing, life, family, and how we shape the stories we tell ourselves. I loved it as a runner and a writer, but I think even if you’re neither, it’s well worth reading. To review for Shelf Awareness (out March 12).

Star Crossed, Minnie Darke
Justine is a whip-smart Sagittarius with journalistic ambitions and little regard for astrology. Her childhood friend Nick is an aspiring Aquarian actor who trusts the stars for major life decisions. They reconnect – and Justine starts dabbling in astrology – in this fun Australian novel. I loved all the intertwined stories and Darke’s sharp observations about various star signs. To review for Shelf Awareness (out May 21).

Holy Envy: Finding God in the Faith of Others, Barbara Brown Taylor
Teaching Religion 101 to undergraduates in Georgia for nearly two decades, Taylor (a former Episcopal priest) found much to admire and even envy in Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism and Islam. She explores her experiences alongside her students’, and muses on what “holy envy” may have to offer those who are still deeply committed to their own faith. Thoughtful, insightful and so well done, like all Taylor’s books. To review for Shelf Awareness (out March 12).

Summer at the Garden Café, Felicity Hayes-McCoy
I loved Hayes-McCoy’s memoir about Ireland and enjoyed her first novel set there. This, the sequel, is charming and fun. It follows the lives of several people in a small village in western Ireland: librarian Hanna, her daughter Jazz, their colleagues and friends.

Winter Solstice, Rosamunde Pilcher
I received this book as a gift over a decade ago, and I still revisit it almost every December. It’s a story of five loosely connected people who end up in the north of Scotland one Christmas, and the ways they bring hope to each other. So good.

Most links (not affiliate links) are to my favorite local bookstore, Brookline Booksmith.

What are you reading as we head into 2019?

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Poetry Friday: Ada Limón

Instructions on Not Giving Up

More than the fuchsia funnels breaking out
of the crabapple tree, more than the neighbor’s
almost obscene display of cherry limbs shoving
their cotton candy-colored blossoms to the slate
sky of Spring rains, it’s the greening of the trees
that really gets to me. When all the shock of white
and taffy, the world’s baubles and trinkets, leave
the pavement strewn with the confetti of aftermath,
the leaves come. Patient, plodding, a green skin
growing over whatever winter did to us, a return
to the strange idea of continuous living despite
the mess of us, the hurt, the empty. Fine then,
I’ll take it, the tree seems to say, a new slick leaf
unfurling like a fist to an open palm, I’ll take it all.

I found this poem via the good folks at Image Journal. Their ImageUpdate e-newsletter is always full of thoughtful, luminous writing and art.

We’re very much in the bud-and-bloom stage here, and I’m loving it. But I also love the image of the patient leaves growing despite hurt, despite cold, despite pain and scars: Fine then, I’ll take it. I’ll take it all. (I just read that Limón has a new collection coming out this summer, too.)

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

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August Break 2016: green

 

Looking up at the late-summer trees as I waited for the bus this morning.

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Not only color but a glowing

“The climate changed quickly to cold and the trees burst into color, the reds and yellows you can’t believe.

“It isn’t only color but a glowing, as though the leaves gobbled the light of the autumn sun and then released it slowly.

“There’s a quality of fire in these colors.

—John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley

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Poem for October

Autumn

The morns are meeker than they were,
The nuts are getting brown;
The berry’s cheek is plumper,
The rose is out of town.

The maple wears a gayer scarf,
The field a scarlet gown.
Lest I should be old-fashioned,
I’ll put a trinket on.

—Emily Dickinson

 

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The underlying shape of things

Autumn was his favourite time of year, not simply for its changing colours but for the crispness in the air and the sharpness of the light. As the leaves fell the landscape revealed itself, like a painting being cleaned or a building being renewed. He could see the underlying shape of things. This was what he wanted, he decided: moments of clarity and silence.

—James Runcie, Sidney Chambers and the Shadow of Death

This is the time of crisp, cloud-edged mornings and golden afternoons, of apple cider at the farmers’ market and velvet twilights falling all too soon after work. Harvard Yard is a welter of green and gold, and the small, brave maple trees that always turn first have already flamed out in crimson and then lost most of their leaves.

Across the Yard, there’s a golden tree I love to sit under. For now, it’s still warm enough to bask in the dappled sunshine, wearing a coat but not shivering – yet.

Some still-green leaves, edged with brown, are made beautiful by a trick of the light: they glow gold when the afternoon sun shines through them.

I love autumn even while I dread winter: I do not look forward to the too-short days, biting winds and heavy snow that turns into gray slush. But I love this ripening time, the spires of Cambridge standing out in sharp relief against the deep, deep, infinitely blue skies.

As often as I can, I steal away from the computer, with its stacks of emails and insistent to-dos, and walk among the trees, turning my face up to the light.

As the leaves fall, I will watch, like Sidney Chambers above, for the slow revelation of the clean lines of buildings and bare branches. Late autumn has its own spare, muted beauty – though, for now, I am glorying in every vivid leaf and streak of golden light.

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the may books, part 2

The Penderwicks on Gardam Street, Jeanne Birdsall
I’m a sucker for a fun, well-written children’s story – and I loved The Penderwicks, which begins the chronicle of Rosalind, Skye, Jane and Batty. So I picked up the sequel, and loved it too. From spying on the new neighbors to writing plays about Aztecs to setting their father up on dates, the girls are always thinking up new adventures. The Penderwicks simply don’t believe in dull moments – and there aren’t any.

Seeds, Richard Horan
A fun idea for book and nature lovers – a scavenger hunt for the seeds of trees beloved by famous American authors, or located near their homes. I admire Horan’s passion and tenacity, though I got fed up with his verbose, self-consciously clever writing style.

Picnic, Lightning, Billy Collins
Collins is probably my favorite poet – so this was pure pleasure reading. The best of these poems are also collected in Sailing Alone Around the Room, but it was fun to revisit them. (I also love his collection The Trouble with Poetry.)

The Little Women Letters, Gabrielle Donnelly
I’m a longtime Little Women fan, so I’m a bit protective of Jo March and her sisters. Anyone attempting to piggyback off their story – much less write in Jo’s voice – had better do it right. And Donnelly does – the letters from Jo sound awfully like her. And I loved her modern-day characters – sisters Lulu, Sophie and Emma, who are supposedly Jo March’s great-great-granddaughters. Such a fun, heartwarming, spunky read. Loved it.

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, Aimee Bender
I had high hopes for this one – and the writing is beautiful. But I found it hopeless and empty, much like the lemon cake of the title. When it comes to food and magical realism, I think Joanne Harris (Chocolat, Blackberry Wine, etc.) does it better.

The Penderwicks at Point Mouette, Jeanne Birdsall
This third Penderwick story is another fun ride – this time to Maine, for an eventful summer vacation. I missed Rosalind, the oldest sister, but loved watching Skye, usually second in command, rise to the occasion as the OAP (Oldest Available Penderwick). Lots of fun beach adventures and a sweet subplot involving a long-lost father and son.

Winona’s Pony Cart, Maud Hart Lovelace
This was the only Deep Valley book I hadn’t yet read – it was a pleasant way to spend my morning commute. I like spunky, sassy Winona (though she is a bit spoiled), and this was a fun trip to a fictional town I love. (Also: it’s always interesting to see Betsy Ray from her friends’ perspective.)

A Vintage Affair, Isabel Wolff
Lush descriptions of vintage clothes, a little romance (with the wrong guy and then with the right one), and a long-buried World War II secret both heartbreaking and lovely. I quite enjoyed this feel-good story. (And – as always – I love me some British spellings and expressions. Happy sigh.)

The Saturdays, Elizabeth Enright
I hadn’t read this in years…until a blog reader reminded me of how much I’d loved it (thanks, Allison!). The story of Mona, Rush, Randy and Oliver Melendy, and their Saturday adventures in New York City, is so fun and utterly charming.

The Four-Story Mistake, Elizabeth Enright
This sequel to The Saturdays is equally charming…the Melendys move to the country, into a large, rambling house with a cupola, a cellar and a hidden room (!). And they have more adventures, beautifully written and lovingly detailed.

Then There Were Five, Elizabeth Enright
The Melendys continue their adventures, which include meeting a lonely orphan boy named Mark and taking him to their hearts, literally and figuratively. So fun to see each child pursuing his/her interests, from Mona’s radio show to Rush’s piano compositions to Randy’s dances and drawings to Oliver’s fascination with bugs and moths. They are growing up, but not yet too grown up, thank goodness.

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