Home again

I got in late last night after a really lovely trip to visit my mom. It was a lovely visit despite the 108° temperatures. We went out to eat. We cleaned out boxes. We went fabric shopping. And I saw a good number of friends that I don't get to see nearly enough. Plus, I read four complete books. 

The first was an N. K. Jemisin book called The City We Became. I checked it out from the library because I liked her trilogy that begins with The Fifth Season so much. It's speculative fiction and for the first third I had to just keep reading despite not really having any idea what was going on. It was very much a matter of trusting the author. The book is very much a love letter to New York City while at the same time being a pretty sharp social commentary. If you appreciate speculative fiction, I recommend this to you. I have the sequel sitting in my pile waiting for it's turn. 

Then I read a book on animal communication followed by The Correspondent by Virginia Evans which I think everyone and their dog has read by now. Normally I wait for several years before reading a super popular title, but my mom has a copy and I was worried about running out of books, so I read it. It was a decent epistolary novel which only caused a small amount of personal guilt because I am so dreadful at keeping up with people. 

The last book was God of the Woods by Liz Moore. I had seen it recommended in various places so decided to try it. I wasn't wholly convinced that it was going to be to my taste. I ended up really liking it despite the multiple viewpoints and jumping around in the timeline. (Does anyone else feel that every book does this now? It feels rare to have a single narrator in a chronological timeline.) Anyway, it was a good story well told. I recommend it if you're looking for a book to read. 

Everyone at home fared well and it's nice to be back home with them all. Now if I can just reset my inner clock back to my own time zone. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Making bias tape... otherwise known as the Sew, Mama, Sew! Giveaway

Image
( Sorry, the contest is now closed .... though you're welcome to leave a comment if you like.) [This picture has absolutely nothing to do with this post, but is here solely to give Blogger a different photo to post in the thumbnail.] It's Sew, Mama, Sew Giveaway time again.  I love bias tape.  It is so useful and so easy to use... finishing edges ... finishing seams ...  And while the pre-packaged stuff has it's place and I use it often, I really like to have patterned bias tape as well.  Enter one of my favorite little tools: the bias tape maker.  This one make 3/4 inch bias tape and I will be giving one away at the end of this post.  But first, I thought some of you might like to see what it does if you've never used one before. I don't have a rotary cutter, nice cutting mats, or even a proper cutting table (I cut-out things on my floor), so if I can do this, so can you.  Here is my admittedly quirky method. Step 1:  Lay out the fabric an...
Read more

Sew, Mama, Sew! Giveaway

Image
Sew, Mama, Sew! is hosting another giveaway day , the day where many bloggers giveaway things they have made or supplies to make things or both.  It is great fun to visit a lot of blogs and try to win cool stuff.  So fun that I thought I would participate this year. I had great hopes of making a set of coordinating mother/daughter aprons.  But reality reared its ugly head and I came to terms with the fact that my time is not limitless.Instead of aprons,  I must continue to spend quality time with yards and yards of red plaid flannel.  What am I making?  Well, as I tell my children, it is the season not to ask questions... I will be able to let you know sometime after the 25th. Instead of making something, I went to my favorite thrift store and found some supplies in the form of sheets and pillowcases (some of my favorite raw material).  I'm giving away three pillowcases and one twin flat sheet. I decided to go with bright, springy colors...
Read more

The mystery of the missing soap

You all know that I am an avid reader of mysteries, but sometimes we have our own real life mysteries here as well. Take the case of the missing soap. One of our bathrooms upstairs is the children's bathrooms, whose sink is lower than other sinks upstairs. Now, since it is the children's bathroom, it is not always pristine and things cannot always be found when they are needed. Are we the only house where things just randomly vanish, never to be seen again? This happens fairly frequently. Often the items are too big to have been taken by Borrowers , but every human in the house disavows any knowledge of the missing item. As far as they are concerned, they never even knew said item existed, so how could they have taken it? Often Mr. Nobody gets the blame and we move one, the item sometimes resurfacing at a later date and sometimes not. Early last week, when the little girls went upstairs to get ready for bed and found an entire bar of soap missing, it was classed as one of ...
Read more