My Christmas read was kind of a dud
Snow by John Banville
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This is a beautifully written but dull book. I didn’t care about any of the characters, and the snowy landscape wasn’t particularly evocative of any specific place (and I did so want it to feel really Irish), and did nothing to heighten tension. It’s really only about two and a half stars worth of the same old story of priests abusing children.
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Have fun deciphering my handwriting, y’all!
When I posted about my friend Marty Cesana on Memorial Day, some of you said you’d like to know more about him. We’re all too complex and cool to summarize, of course, and most of what you’ll read about him is that he was a West Pointer and a combat engineer and really good at…
All of my journaling about staying in a bad situation or going to an unknown (but also guaranteed to be difficult) one led to two pro-con lists that cancelled each other out entirely. What was good about one element was negated by something pretty awful on the other side.
My Dearest Bea: Love Letters from the USS Midway by Peyton H. Roberts My rating: 4 of 5 stars I don’t know what it is about epistolary books, but lately I can’t get enough of them. Something the author says in her postscript rang true to me: “As handwritten correspondence becomes a lost pastime, I…
I have often thought that putting together a group exercise class is like telling a story: first, there’s a beginning. There are peaks and valleys and a conclusion you hope feels satisfying. A class literally moves people. It makes them feel things and teaches them something about themselves. Ideally, an exercise class uses its physical…
A bit of a book review, more moodlin’ than maudlin: A conversation went deep at the Little Ripon Bookshop the other night, discussing how family stories are shaped and told (in reference to Kate Grenville’s Restless Dolly Maunder, a not very sympathetic fictionalization of her grandmother’s life that was shortlisted for the 2024 Women’s Prize)….