Sunday Salon -- So much crying

Sunrise with tip of Mt. Rainier from Eatonville, Washington

Weather: Cold and clear. Temperatures at night are below freezing.

So much crying: Last week I spent just about every day crying, often to the point of feeling crummy probably from dehydration. Why so many tears? Good question. I am not sure. I have some theories ---

• Grief is For People -- I read this memoir by Sloane Crosley, who is devastated due to the death of her friend by suicide. For some reason I was not prepared by how hard this book would hit me, causing me to think of suicides of former students and the tragic death of a family member. I cry a lot when I read but not usually this much. This book about grief was clearly one of my crying triggers. 
• A favorite quote: "And then because I cannot call you home, I call it [grief] home. I open my eyes and in a flash it come back to me, zipping itself to my edges, bobbing between my fingers. It's made a real life for itself here. Oblivious to its own power, it snores sweetly on my chest, this outline of a woman whose time has not yet come."
• Sandwich by Catherine Newman -- the next day I finished this little gem which "caused me to laugh continuously," as author Ann Patchett said of it, "except for the parts that made me cry." The ending was especially poignant thinking about how the mother parents her adult child right up to the time of death. So sweet and so touching. 
• Favorite quote: “And this may be the only reason we were put on this earth. To say to each other, I know how you feel. To say, Same. To say, I understand how hard it is to be a parent, a kid. To say, Your shell stank and you’re sad. I’ve been there.”
• "Kimberly Akimbo" -- Last Sunday Carly took me to see a play, "Kimberly Akimbo", in Seattle. It is about a girl who is aging very, very fast due to a genetic condition and at 16-years she has  probably just about lived to the limit of her life span. But she wants to be normal, to go on adventures, to experience life. Carly and I sat next to each other, both of us crying. I felt like sobbing but somehow kept myself from completely falling apart. We went out to dinner after the show and both of intentionally chugged glasses of water to ward off that icky dehydration feeling.
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• On reflection I wonder if my many tears are a symptoms of something else. Even though I went through menopause YEARS ago, I wonder if what I am experiencing is partially hormonal. When one cries during commercials on TV there has to be some reason, right? Or what about the low-grade depression I seem to be experiencing due to the upcoming presidency of Trump. I still can barely watch the news or read anything political. About the only channel I can trust for my political news is Comedy Central. I can only stand to hear the bad news if it arrives with a joke. I don't plan on watching the inauguration on Monday, but I will have my TV on all day set to QVC or Comedy Central, so his ratings will go down. (Tiny acts of deviance.)
• Oh, and the death of Jimmy Carter. He was really, really a fine man. His tributes make me cry for what we have lost. 
• Beauty -- unusual sunrises and sunsets (see photos above and below) this week and set me to crying for joy. Below is the sunset we saw in Seattle after we left our show. It was so bright it looked like the sky was on fire.

Sunset over Elliott Bay as viewed by the Seattle Convention Center.

Books finished this year so far:

• The Red Address Book by Lundberg-- a book club selection.
• The God of the Woods by Moore -- a mystery set in the Adirondacks. Don and I listened to the audiobook together. It has a ton of characters and kept up us guessing to the end.
• Grief is For People by Sloane Crosley -- a memoir. See note above.
• Sandwich by Catherine Newson -- a novel. See note above.
• The Backyard Bird Chronicles by Amy Tan -- a nonfiction journal about the author's experiences bird watching in her backyard.

Currently reading:

• The Optimist's Daughter by Eudora Welty. A classic. 40% complete. Print.
• The Mighty Red by Louise Erdrich. a favorite author. 66% complete. Audiobook.
• Sense and Sensibility by Austen. Part of the Austen25 project. My intro post here.

Blog posts:

• Review: Book of Doors (my last review for books read in 2024)
• A look back at 2024 through my 2024 Sunday Salon posts.
• TTT: The Most Anticipated Books of 2025
• My Year in Books -- a meme
• 2025 Reading Goals and Challenges
• Austen25: An Austen Reading Project

Not all tears, there is this --

The grandsons went up the Space Needle today with my daughters. Mt. Rainier is in the background.

My daughter said they spent a lot of time laying on the glass floor of the Space Needle.

...and photo-bombing sisters taking selfies.

-Anne

Review: SANDWICH (+ discussion questions)

Sandwich by Catherine Newman

Harper, 2024. 240 pages.

My book club meets next week. At our monthly meeting we have to select new books for upcoming meetings. Sandwich by Catherine Newman was suggested by one member as one she thought we could all relate to -- women sandwiched between our parents and young adult children; women who have experienced menopause symptoms and now are coping with some of the side-effects of aging. Plus, she said, it is funny.

Now funny is the part I was most interested in. Life hasn't been terribly funny the past few months with the disastrous election results, the abrupt death of a friend, and a cancer diagnosis of another. I craved laughter so I made Sandwich a reading priority before our meeting wanting to make an informed decision about it.

The publisher describes the book as "a moving, hilarious story of a family summer vacation full of secrets, lunch and learning to let go as Rocky [the mom] navigates hormonal changes, past memories, and the acceptance of life's changes." 

Ann Patchett, a favorite author, describes Sandwich as "joy in book form. I laughed continuously, except for the parts that made me cry." I am pretty sure that was my experience with the book, too. I laughed and cried in equal measure. In fact, I found the ending so poignant it felt like I was crying for hours, and probably felt crummy after finishing it just from dehydration. I definitely hope we read this as a club. I believe all of us will have a lot to discuss. 

Discussion question possibles:

• Let's talk about secrets. What were the big secrets in the book? How did they impact the characters? Have you ever held a secret that impacted your health or your relationships?
• Let's talk about parenting. What aspects of mothering did you relate to? Do you think Rocky is/was a good mother?
• Let's talk about relationships. What did you like about Rocky and Nicky's relationship? Their relationship with their children? Parents?
• Let's talk about food? How did the family celebrate with food? Can you relate to their experiences with food? How? 
• Let's talk about the term "sandwich."
• Let's talk about the characters. Which character was your favorite? Why? 
• Let's talk about health and aging. Do you think Rocky overreacted to her parent's aging health? Why do you think her parents didn't share what was happening with their only daughter. Have you experienced anything similar in your family? Do you think the mental health issues were handled accurately?
• What did you think of the book? How would you describe it to a friend who hasn't read it? 
• What are a few of your favorite quotes? Here are a few of mine---
• “And this may be the only reason we were put on this earth. To say to each other, I know how you feel. To say, Same. To say, I understand how hard it is to be a parent, a kid. To say, Your shell stank and you’re sad. I’ve been there.”
• “Life is a seesaw, and I am standing dead center, still and balanced: living kids on one side, living parents on the other. Nicky here with me at the fulcrum. Don’t move a muscle, I think. But I will, of course. You have to.”
• “But grief was like a silver locket with two faces in it. I didn’t know what the faces looked like, but it was heavy around my neck, and I never took it off.”

I thought the summary in the NYT review of Sandwich was so perfect and so funny, I'll repeat it here for you:

If this story sounds privileged, well, it is; if you’re looking for wars, drug cartels or Grisham-level plot, Newman is not your go-to. But if you want to laugh out loud, tear up, and rush to pull out a book in the 35 seconds between subway stops, this sweet, savory, tenderhearted Sandwich fits the bill, and goes down like (bread and) buttah. (NYT, June 21, 2024)

My rating: 5 stars.

-Anne

Austen25: Sense and Sensibility -- I Begin

Joining Austen25 to honor a favorite writer as we near her 250th birthday, this month we are reading Sense and Sensibility, Austen's first published work. I joined the project just this week, so I am behind and will have to play catch up in order to finish the book by the end of the month.

My plan is to read a set number of pages a day. The edition I am reading was published by Barnes and Noble Classics in 2004 with an introduction by Laura Engel. It has 312 pages. Dividing up the days left means I need to read a minimum of 21 pages each day through the end of the month. Doable.

In the introduction, Laura Engel describes Sense and Sensibility as "a coming-of-age novel and also a work that chronicles Austen's own 'coming of age' -- her development as a writer" (xi). When Austen began working on "Elinor and Marianne" she was only twenty and surely thought she had the possibility of marriage and motherhood ahead of her. By the time the book was finally completed fifteen years later, her circumstances were quite different. She'd been disappointed in love, lost her father, moved two times and now lived in Chawton with her mother and sister, Cassandra. 

In the early parts of the novel, Marianne and Elinor, though close-knit sisters, struggle to communicate openly with one another. In Austen's world women were not encouraged to reveal too much about themselves. Rather they had to "perfect the art of innuendo, leading questions, and disguised sentiments. The slippery properties of language became a heroine's greatest weapon" (xiii). I'm only on page 42 and already I've seen example after example of the ways women attempted to find out information without asking directly or being very frank with one another. Throughout the story, Engels tells us, women characters had trouble understanding Elinor and Marianne and this was likely due to the misuse or misunderstanding of language. One has to wonder if this is the way people misunderstood Austen herself. 

Austen played a lot with the theme of both sense and of sensibility throughout the book. It is generally thought that Elinor is full of sense, leading with her head. While Marianne, who is much more emotive than her older sister, always seemed to lead with her heart. But other characters show off their sense and sensibility, too. "It is the characters with the least sense who got the most airtime and those with the most important news who are ignored" (xx). For example, Willoughby makes fun of the more staid Col. Brandon by saying "whom every body speaks well of, and nobody cares about; whom all are delighted to see, and nobody remembers to talk to" (42). And Marianne recognizes her faux-pas in speaking too frankly and openly. "I have erred against every common-place notion of decorum; I have been open and sincere where I ought to have been reserved" (40).

This is a reread of Sense and Sensibility for me. I first read it in 2013 where I decided to read and write a reflection on my blog once a week after reading a minimum of 50 pages. I invited other readers to join me, but no one did and I think few people even read my weekly posts about the book. I am posting links to them below, in the event you want to take a peek at any of them. For each entry I summarized the action from that week's reading, reacted to something surprising in the text, and then posed a question which sometimes I attempted to answer. This process of summary and questioning helped me read the book to its completion. A year earlier I had attempted to read Emma and found myself floundering until I changed tactics and challenged myself to stay on a reading/examining schedule. If you find yourself having a similar problem you may want to adopt a similar tactic to read the Austen or other classic books.

• Sense and Sensibility Week #1, May 2013. 
• S & S, Week #2, May 2013.
• S & S, Week #3, June 3, 2013.
• Week #4 update, June 11, 2013
• S & S #5 Update, June 18, 2013
• Final Sense and Sensibility Update, June 25, 2013.

Oddly, in all my updates from 2013, I never mentioned the introduction by Laura Engel. I bet I didn't even read it then. Since that time I find myself always reading the introductions included with classic book editions, finding insights I know I would have missed without them. One more piece of advice from me to you -- read the introductions. Tee-hee.

Now I am off to read my daily page installment.

-Anne 

Nonfiction Review: GRIEF IS FOR PEOPLE

Title: Grief is For People by Sloane Crosley

Book Beginnings quote: 

All burglaries are alike, but every burglary is uninsured in its own way.

Friday56 quote: 

During the closing lecture of the festival, a Scottish author winds down her reading with a folk song about the sea...She lilts all over the stage. I imagine this moment holding me up on its hip, bouncing me. Wave goodbye to Russell! Say: Bye-bye, Russell! I can feel my heart pounding in my neck. Salt water drips down my face and I scratch my pinkie so hard, I nearly break the skin.

Summary: Following the death of her closest friend, Sloane Crosley explores multiple kinds of loss in this disarmingly witty and poignant memoir. (Publisher)

Review: This book wasn't what I thought it was going to be. It took me several chapters and a major thought-realignment to get my brain around the reality of the book not the imaginary one I had worked out in my head. I was expecting a self-help book for those coping with grief. This is NOT that book.

This is a memoir about friendship and death. This is a hard book, one which consolidates the truth -- Everyone grieves in different way and there is no timeline on that grief. The last chapters were especially poignant as Sloane Crosley gains a bit of distance from her grief and is able to take a look at it with a bit of objectivity. A bit.

When Sloane's friend, Russell, dies by suicide, she is left to grapple with her grief alone. She loosely follows the Kubler-Ross stages of grief for her format: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance as she outlines what her life was like after his death. In the middle of all this, a pandemic descends on the world and she has to cope with it, too, just like we all did. See why I say it is a hard book?

I admit I spent the whole last half of the book crying -- not for the death of Russell, I didn't know him. But for the death of D, who I did, and for all those people, like Sloane Crosley, who are forced to traverse alone in an unknown world known as "Grief World." It reminded me of this quote from another book Hum If You Don't Know the Words:

Only after I had learned those boundaries and generalities of my grief was I able to venture further into the mountains and valleys, the peaks and troughs of my despair. And as I traversed them-breathing a sigh of relief thinking that I'd conquered the worst of it-only then would I finally arrive at the truth about loss, the part no one ever warns you about: that grief is a city all of its own, built high on a hill and surrounded by stone walls. It is a fortress that you will inhabit for the rest of your life, walking its dead-end roads forever. The trick is to stop trying to escape and, instead, to make yourself at home. (Hum If You Don't Know the Words, 320).

There were two excerpts which touched me specifically. Let me see if I can find them...

“But there was never going to be a version of the story in which it wasn't my missing jewelry and my dead friend. You can ignore grief. You push it around your plate. But you can't give it away.”

_____________________________________________________ 

"My grief for you will always be unruly, even as I know it contains the logic of everyone who has ever felt it. Sometimes I close my eyes so that I can listen to it spread. So I can make it spread. I run it up the walls of my apartment. I listen to it circle the door frames and propel itself out the window. I can hear it clonking down the fire escape, cracking the concrete as it lands. Sometimes I hear it in the rivers, sloshing against the stone, or in the subway screeching to a halt. And then because I cannot call you home, I call it home. I open my eyes and in a flash it come back to me, zipping itself to my edges, bobbing between my fingers. It's made a real life for itself here. Oblivious to its own power, it snores sweetly on my chest, this outline of a woman whose time has not yet come."

Both of these quotes really spoke to be about how grief changes us and it can't be ignored. We are forced to grapple with grief once it arrives at our doorstep.

I do recommend this book, but it isn't an easy read. If you are in the middle of a deep grief, I'd proceed with caution.

My rating 4.25 stars.

-Anne

Austen25 -- A 2025 Project

In conjunction with Brona @This Reading Life and her yearlong #ReadingAusten25 project, The Classics Club is hosting a Sync Read (or readalong) of all six of Jane Austen’s novels, in chronological order) throughout 2025.

• January 2025 – read Sense and Sensibility (1811) with your guest host Brona
• March 2025 – read Pride and Prejudice (1813) with your guest host Meredith
• May 2025 – read Mansfield Park (1814) with your guest host Mary
• July 2025 – read Emma (1816) with your guest host Christina
• September 2025 – read Northanger Abbey (1818) with your guest host Adam B.
• November 2025 – read Persuasion (1818) with your guest host Adam S.

January is all about Sense and Sensibility.

Getting a late start on this one, but have been feeling the need to immerse myself in Austen again, so here I am joining another reading project.

Here are a few notes by the host of this project and the first book:

Sense and Sensibility was first published in 1811 anonymously, By A Lady.

Jane Austen wrote the first draft of the novel in epistolary form perhaps as early as 1795 when she was about 19 years old. Novels-in-letters was a style she was playing with at this time, as Lady Susan also dates from this time (1794) and Pride and Prejudice more than likely began life as epistolary fiction in 1796/7.

Her working title was Elinor and Marianne.

In November 1797, Austen began working on her manuscript again and converted it into a narrative (just thinking about the work involved in making this dramatic change makes my head spin).

In 1809/10 she gave it a final edit before submitting it to the publisher Thomas Egerton of the Military Library publishing house in London, with her brother, Henry’s assistance. Egerton accepted the manuscript for publication in three volumes. Austen not only paid to have the book published but also paid the publisher a commission on sales. Jane Austen made £140 in sales from the first edition of Sense and Sensibility. About £24,000 in today’s money. --Brona

And we're off.

-Anne

My Year In Books -- a meme

I was looking at old posts and I stumbled upon this one, an old meme, My Year in Books, from 2017. Thinking it was pretty fun and creative I decided to do it again. Join me.

My Year in Books

Rules?

• Answer the questions with titles from books you read in 2024. (Some may end up being silly, others may seem overly serious.)   
• The goal is to have fun. 
• Participate by copying the questions below. Erasing my answers and inserting you own.  
• Once you've created your post, link it below so others can see it, then visit others' posts to see how they answered the questions.
• Spread the word. Let's see if we can make this a thing again this year!

Questions:

In high school I was: The Girl I Am, Was, and Never Will Be (Shannon Gibney)

People might be surprised: No Cure for Being Human (Kate Bowler)

I will never be: When Women Were Dragons (Kelly Barnhill)

My fantasy job is: The Plague-Busters (Lindsey Fitzharris)

At the end of a long day I need: The Kissing of Kissing (Hannah Emerson)

I hate it:  The Plague of Doves (Louise Erdrich)

Wish I had: A Book of Doors (Gareth Brown)

My family reunions are: Tell Me Everything (Elizabeth Strout)

At a party you’d find me: I Cheerfully Refuse (Leif Enger)

I’ve never been to: A Strange Library (Haruki Murakami)

A happy day includes: Ice Cream Man (Glenda Armand)

Motto I live by: Leave Only Footprints (Conor Knighton)

On my bucket list is: Braiding Sweetgrass (Robin Wall Kimmerer)

In my next life, I want to have: Too Much Happiness (Alice Munro)

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

-Anne

1st book of 2025, a review: THE BACKYARD BIRD CHRONICLES

First book of the year: The Backyard Bird Chronicles by Amy Tan

My first book completed and reviewed in a new year -- The Backyard Bird Chronicles by Amy Tan -- is an illustrated journal of Tan's experiences as a bird watcher/feeder/artist/enthusiast. 

Tan, the famous author of several works, among them are The Joy Luck Club and The Bonesetter's Daughter, took a bird-watching class in 2016. During the class the instructor, Jack, also shared his ideas how to draw birds. Since they don't sit still for long, one has to really hone their observational skills to be successful. Tan started practicing her illustration skills while looking out the windows of her home in Sausalito, California. Over the course of six years she kept an illustrated journal of the birds she saw in her yard. In it she talked about the techniques she used to lure the birds to her yard, while not attracting mammals like rats and squirrels. As her bird feeding techniques got more sophisticated, so did her illustrations.

In the preface Tan says, 

These pages are a record of my obsession with birds. My use of the word obsession is not hyperbole. The Backyard Bird Chronicles contains excerpts from hundred of pages gleaned from nine personal journals filled with sketches and handwritten notes of naive observations of birds in my backyard...My perception of [bird] behaviors changed as I continued to watch day after day, year after year, most of the time sitting at the dining room table overlooking the patio, where I wrote my new novel, or tried to without leaping up whenever I saw a bird doing something I had never seen before, which was often. The Chronicles is also a record of my growth as an artist.

The first journal entry in this book was dated September 16, 2017. It begins --

While watching hummingbird buzz around me, I recalled a fantasy every child has: that I could win the trust of wild animals and they would willingly come to me.

With text on one side and a journal page entry on the other side we are shown the marvelous skills Tan employed to gain the trust of her avian friends and the steps she used to get closer to them. Here is a sample from page 52--

Here Tan is imagining what the Lesser Goldfinch and the Purple Finch must be thinking as the feeder is removed to prevent the spread of disease.

On another page, Tan journals about the Golden-Crowned Sparrow and makes observations --

Though these illustrations are good, one can tell they were done in a hurry. Later in the book she shared more detailed illustrations of Several birds who visited her yard. She clearly spent a lot of time of these works. Some people have told her she rivals Audubon's illustrating skills. I see why --

Great Horned Owl

Chestnut-backed Chickadee

I selected The Backyard Bird Chronicles to be my first read of 2025. It had arrived off hold at the library right before the end of December and I'd long wanted to read it. When I began the book, however, I realized it wasn't a good 'first book' selection since I wanted to take my time and savor it. No one is keeping track (except me) how fast I read and finish a book, but still I felt some disappointment in myself because my first book of the year wasn't done until the end of the first week of the year. Sigh. Anyway, it was worth the time it took to read slowly and savor it.

One note which surprised me. Amy Tan was working on this project before, during, and after the COVID pandemic shut-downs. She barely mentioned this fact. Perhaps because she works at home as a writer, her life didn't change as much as everyone else experienced during that time. Or perhaps she made an editorial decision to talk about herself only in relationship to what was happening with the birds and they weren't impacted by out pandemic. I suspect it was the latter case. Interestingly, she had to remove all her feeders several times in fear of bird flu or other deadly diseases to birds. She let her readers draw their own conclusions about how that could or should relate to human behavior.

My rating: 4.5 stars.

-Anne

TTT: Most Anticipated Books of the First Half of 2025

Top Ten Tuesday: Most Anticipated Books of the First Half of 2025

If you know me well you are probably rolling your eyes at this list, or me making this list at all. Afterall, I never pay any attention to what is coming in the book world. I'm always looking back at what books I missed. In order to put anything down for this post I consulted Goodreads' list of most anticipated books of 2025 and I picked a few that sound good. In the process I found two or three books it is very likely I will read sometime this year. The others? I'm not sure how hard I will try. The graphics are straight from the Goodreads page (in case you couldn't tell.) I've posted them in the order I'm most likely to read.

1. I know I will read this book because I am a huge John Green fan.

2. Another favorite author. I think of her as a YA writer so I am interested in this one written for adults.

3. Another book I'm likely to read. I pretty much read everything Brooks has written.

4. I know nothing about this book except what I read in the above blurb, but it sounds good.

5. Vuong is a poet and writes beautifully but the other book I read by him was quite disturbing. This is a definite maybe.

6. I might read this since I've read all the other books in the Hunger Games series. I didn't care for The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, so I'll have to wait to read others' reviews first.

7. This book sounds fun and funny but I don't usually read Sci-Fi so there is a big question mark if I'll manage to read it or not..

8. Every Backman book I've read I liked but I haven't read that many (only the ones listed in the blurb, actually.) Will this be one I read?

9. Which Anne Tyler wrote this book? The one I like (Accidental Tourist) or the one I don't (Breathing Lessons)?

10. I know. Stephen King!!!! But I don't do horror. How horror-full is this one? As good as he is I probably won't read it.

And two others that piqued my interest:

-Anne 

A Look Back at 2024 Through My Sunday Salon Posts

Taking a peek back on 2024!

As I look back on a year of my Sunday Salon posts, 2024 comes back into focus before many events will begin to fade from my memory. Please click on the hyperlinks to read more about my year.

Our grandsons splashing in puddles. January 2024.

Yesterday Don looked out the window at our backyard and commented that January days remind him of the song "In the Bleak Midwinter". I agreed and thought back to this post from January 27, 2024 where I tried to address how to cope with the winter doldrums. I didn't say we should all jump in puddles, but it does look fun, doesn't it? [January 27.]

Fred and George playing with the new quilt. February.

Our daughter, Carly, moved home to live with us for a short time with her two cats, Fred and George, during a transition between renting and buying a new townhouse. My sister gave me a small homemade lap quilt for my birthday that month. I put the quilt on the green chair and the cats claimed it. They slept on it, pigged it so the other couldn't get on it, made tunnels with it, and fought over it. When the cats and our daughter moved into their new home, the quilt went with them. (The cats have continued their fascination with the quilt since the move, carrying it around the house in their mouths including up the stairs. No easy feat.) [February 25.]

Mom turns 95 in March.

Our Easter family photo was supposed to be a sweet one. Jamie had other ideas.

Much of my extended family gathered to help Mom celebrate turning 95 in March. She still lives in her own home and is very healthy. This post included several photos with the funniest being this one of my family taken the week before Easter. Jamie is not happy to be photographed.  [March 24.]

Canyon Overlook Trail, Zion National Park. April.

In April we took a big family vacation to Utah to visit several of the national parks. While there I read a book called Leave Only Footsteps. My Sunday post was a combined review of the book with stories and photos from our fabulous time. [April 14]

Tulip festival love. April.

One week after we got home from the Utah trip, we headed north to take in the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival. The weather that day was warm and beautiful and Don and I had such a fun time together enjoying the colorful flowers set against a blue sky. Being retired sure is fun. Click on the link to see many more photos from the day. [April 21.]

Aurora Borealis. Photo taken just outside our front door. May. 

I'm in my 60s. I had never seen the Northern Lights (Aurora Borealis) until this year and I was so psyched to witness it. [May 11.]

Three sisters. Frogner Park in Oslo, Norway. June.

Grace and Kathy, my sisters, and I went on a sisters trip to Norway and Germany in late May/early June. We visited our 3rd cousin in Norway after doing some sightseeing. Then we flew to Germany to visit our niece and her family. Look at us! You can tell we are sisters! What a wonderful, meaningful trip. We did so much I had to blog about it twice. [June 9, June 16.]

A day hiking in Mt. Rainier National Park. July.

Midsummer is so beautiful in the Pacific NW. This post highlights much of that beauty often spent with friends and family. [July 14.] 

Two concerts sandwiched between a vacation with family. July.

I titled the July 28th post: "Concerts, Vacations, Politics, Oh My!" We traveled to Oregon for a family vacation the day after seeing John Legend in concert at a local winery. Then we raced home to attend a Chris Stapleton concert in Seattle. I was still hopeful about politics and a portion of this post was dedicated to that hope. [July 28.]

Highlights of our trip to the Northeast: Boston and Maine. October.

When friends, Ken and Carol, invited us to stay with them in a rental house in Maine for a week we jumped at the chance to visit a part of the country we've never been to before. We added several days in Boston to explore the historical sites, as well. We crammed so much into our whirlwind of a ten-day trip. We'd happily go back in a heartbeat. [October 20.]

Mom, age 95, and her cousin-in-law, age 99, reuniting at the Oregon vs. Illinois football game. Don and his brother, Jon, "helping coaches make halftime adjustments." October.

A good deal of our Fall was taken up with football and politics. This post reflects both. I was so sure that Kamala was going to win. Sigh. But at least we have the happy memories of unlikely family reunions now that Oregon and Illinois are in the same football conference. As season ticket holders, we spent a lot of time in our car zooming up and down the freeway which also gave us lots of audiobook listening time. On this particular trip Don and I listened to Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent by actress Judi Dench. Loved it! [Oct. 27.]

The days after the election. November.

A few days after the disastrous election, I published this post called "Self Care". It was one of the most popular Sunday Salon posts of the year. I take it I wasn't the only one needing self care and wondering how to move forward. [Nov. 10.]

Our family together at Zoolights at the Point Defiance Zoo in Tacoma. December.

On December 7th my Sunday Salon post was entitled "Stuff." I talked about all the stuff we have. The topic originated with my recognition of all the Christmas decorations we have but don't use. It was a very popular post with lots of commenters saying they have the same problem with stuff. The very next week my husband won a raffle and got about $1500 worth of new kitchen gadgets. Ha! I'm trying to get rid of stuff and we get more of it. This is a fun post because it also talks about all the events we participated in leading up to Christmas, like going to Zoolights with Don's cousin and her family. [Dec. 14.]

One of my last posts each year is my Survey of Books where I talk about books I loved and others I didn't. I look back on these posts often to remind myself which books I was reading when and what I thought of them. I hope you take a moment to peek at the survey. [2024 Survey of Books.]

The Chinese Garden at The Huntington, Pasadena, CA. Dec. 31, 2024.

We spent our last day of 2024 in Pasadena sightseeing -- visiting the famous Vroman's Bookstore, wandering The Huntington's galleries and gardens, and a fabulous dinner -- all in advance of the next day to take in the Tournament of Roses Parade and the Rose Bowl game. You can see by our clothing colors, we are proud Oregon Duck fans.

Good-bye 2024! Hello 2025!

-Anne

Review: THE BOOK OF DOORS

Title: The Book of Doors by Gareth Brown

Book Beginnings quote: 

In Kellner Books on the Upper West Side of New York City, a few minutes before his death, John Webber was reading The Count of Monte Cristo.

Friday56 quote:

"The young have the loudest dreams,” Drummond murmured, more to himself. “Unfettered by life and reality."

Summary: Cassie Anderson works at a bookstore in NYC. She befriends a lonely man who often comes to the store for a company and a coffee. The night he dies he is reading The Count of Monte Cristo. When Cassie finds him, there is a small book next to him on the table, a gift book for her. The inside inscription reads "Any door is every door. All you need to do is step through them." This is the book of doors, a magical book with magical powers. When Cassie gets home she and her roommate Isabel discover they can travel the whole world simply by picturing a door in another place and stepping through to visit a new place. It is fun in the beginning. But Isabel is worried that no good will come from it, and she is right. Other people, with their magical books want hers and soon she and Isabel are being pursued all over the world and back and forth throughout time.

Review: My daughter read The Book of Doors first and highly recommended it to me. I started it a few days before Christmas and just couldn't put it down, or didn't want to put it down. It has been a long time since I have been so captivated by a book. The book is very dark. The underbelly of the world seeking a book from two regular, innocent girls. In a way the book of doors reminded me of the ring in the Tolkien series. Everyone wanted it and most of those seeking it were up to no good and willing to exert deadly power to get it. At first this darkness really put me off. But soon, as the good guys started to emerge, and as the time travel started up, I was hooked. I had to know how this all was going to possibly work out. Many deep and confusing conversations with my daughter ensued, too, as I have a hard time figuring out how time travel works out when placed against the "now." Anyway. We had fun discussions.

My rating: 5 stars.

 

-Anne