Tag: friends

books, reading, romance

Romance on Tap

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When life becomes overwhelming, it’s always good to pick up a Romance Novel. You are assured a happy ending – something we need more than we would likely admit.

This summer, I have indulged in this genre. Too many heavy books during this unsettling time led me here – and I am not apologizing for it.

Friday Night Cocktails by Allison Rushby

Two friends, Gemma and Sarah, create a list of cheating, lying or despicable men they dated, permanently taking them off the eligible list. This list has been written on loose leaf paper, with a place of honor on the fridge door. When the list becomes too bulky for the magnet to handle, Sarah suggests putting it online. Gemma, an underemployed writer, puts it on her homepage, and it goes viral. Taken by surprise, Gemma works with her friend to make this into a business. While learning how to do this, she begins a journey of self-reflection on why men are bastards, why she has a chip on her shoulder about her ex, and what her role was in their breakup. More self-reflection than expected, but it was a fun ride.

The Summer of Us by Holly Chamberlin

Three vastly different women who don’t know each other decide to rent a house on Martha’s Vineyard for the summer. Through the support they provide for one another, they all begin to see themselves differently and become more comfortable with who they truly are.  

The Bookish Life of Nina Hill by Abbi Waxman

Nina was brought up by a single mother, never knowing her father. With a dream job at a bookstore, a winning trivia team, and a cat, she doesn’t think she needs more from life. Then a lawyer shows up and informs her that her father has died, and she has a number of siblings, nieces, and nephews, and they are all nearby! She begins to step into a world of a family – and of the real world outside the cocoon she has wrapped herself in, including the possibility of a boyfriend.

The Little Cottage on the Hill by Emma Davies

Maggie comes to the country with a job to promote a luxurious holiday retreat. When she arrives, however, she finds a rundown estate. She has everything riding on this job, after a scandal pushed her out of the London PR firm she was at. Maggie digs in, working with Seth – the owner – and his friends, and they both end up coming out ahead.

Death Takes a Honeymoon by Deborah Donnelly

This is the fourth installment of a series centered on Carnegie Kincaid, a wedding planner. In this story Carnegie is convinced to come home to Montana to help her best friend cover a secret from her beloved husband. Other strange happenings occur, as people begin to die as the wedding of the third friend, now a famous actress, is upset by more murders. Predictable, but fun.

The Lost Girls of Ireland by Susanne O’Leary

Lidia Butler has nothing left, so she moves with her daughter to her Great Aunt Nellie’s home in Sandy Cove, Ireland.  As she begins to heal from her trauma, Lidia finds herself building relationships throughout the town. As Lidia comes to embrace her past and forgive herself for it, she builds a new life based upon her strengths and friendships.

book-review, books, mystery, reading

Thursday Murder Club #1-4 by Richard Osman

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Thursday Murder Club; The man that died twice; The bullet that missed; The last devil to die

Please read this series in order. You lose too much if you don’t. 

At a peaceful retirement village in Kent, England, four friends meet Thursdays to solve cold case murders in the puzzle room. As these four friends work to solve these murders they make friends with two police officers, and many other friends, new and old, that help them solve the murders.  Through the course of these books, you learn of each of these senior’s strengths, and how each fill needs in the overall group. It is through the lived experiences that they are able to accept themselves for what and when they can help the others achieve the group’s goals. They learn to rely upon each other to help open themselves up to the world they are facing, including challenges of aging and identity.

Joyce, narrator to her diary in between the chapters that helps the story move forward, or stay confused, is a former nurse who is the glue that keeps everyone together with her chattering, baking and sunny disposition, but she is struggling to maintain a connection with her adult daughter.  Elizabeth, a former spy, takes control of each situation due to her experience in the thick of surviving life, but when it comes to saving her husband from dementia, she is out of her element. Ibrahim is a retired psychiatrist, with an analytical mind and a protective demeanor, who the group relies upon for a cool head and clear insights.  Ron, a former union leader, is a staunch Ham football supporter and a bit rough around the edges. His heart is shown when Ibrahim is hurt when he refuses to allow Ibrahim to be alone in the hospital.  Add in two Kent detectives, a news caster, a makeup artist, a Polish handyman, a teacher, a KGB operative, a drug dealer, an art forger and a diamond thief and a couple of dead bodies and you have a series of mix ups and intrigue that will keep you and the pensioners on their toes.

The story keeps building upon itself, so the characters are revealed over the arc of the stories, thus the need to read them in order. I am looking forward to seeing where else the group can go, but I am satisfied with the current ending. The last installment showed how the core four friends are understanding of each other and have helped each person be where they needed to be to survive. The gentleness of which they care for each other was so real that I wept.  If the story follows only a few, I would be afraid the charm of the group would be sacrificed.

Spend the time getting to know these pensioners – you will not regret it.

books, read around the world, reading

His Only Wife by Peace Adzo Medie

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Meet Afi Tekple of Ghana. She is about to married Elikem Ganyo – who will not be at the wedding because of a business trip. We meet Afi’s greedy Uncle Pious, her best friend Mawusi, her mother, and her mother-in-law “Aunty”. At the wedding ceremony Eli’s brother Richard stands in for him.

And we hear the story of when Afi’s father died his brother Pious did not take in Afi and her mother, but Aunty took her in and gave her a place to live and work. How generous and kind Aunty is, and how much Afi and her mother owe her. As the story continues, we learn that Afi has ambitions to be a designer – she is already a seamstress. She agrees to marry Eli, who is with an unsuitable woman according to his family that does not take care of their sickly daughter, because of what is owed to Aunty. But Afi wants the fairytale – to have him fall in love with her, to win his heart.

After the wedding Afi and her mother are sent to Accra, where Richard and Eli live. She is given a flat with modern conveniences she is not accustomed to. Yet Eli still doesn’t come. Afi decides she would like to go to fashion school to help her achieve her own goals. Eli, who she speaks to daily on the phone, supports her both financially and emotionally.  Aunty’s daughter, Eli’s sister, Yaya comes to take Afi to look at schools. As time passes it is apparent to Afi that everyone around her is reporting her actions and interactions with Eli and others back to Aunty, and she is beginning to feel uncomfortable with this – no one seems to be looking out for only her, but to protect what they had been given by Aunty’s “generosity”.

As Afi makes her own friends and her confidence grows in her fashion abilities, she is able to connect with Eli and their marriage becomes closer to what she wants, but the “other woman” remains in the picture. When Afi decides it is time to demand what she wants, regardless of anyone else’s desires, that she begins to grow for herself. As Afi defies Eli’s family, and her own family, she begins to make strides toward building her own dreams.

As Afi continues to grow up and be successful, she continues to be true to herself and her needs and desires. Ultimately this is a story of knowing who you are, what you will accept, and not compromising your values to get part of it.

This was a fun book to read. I look forward to reading more from this author.

Black Experience, book-review, books, reading

The book of lost friends

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This is a book with at least two stories, all that intersect around family, and history.  We start meeting Benedetta Silva, known as Benny as she starts her first job teaching at a poor rural school in Louisiana to help pay off her student debt.  Although she is white, she is living in poverty until her first paycheck arrives.  She is intimidated by the unruly teens that await her, fighting with each other, and never listening.  She tries everything to get them engaged, even buying treats for those that are hungry from her low salary. 

Next we meet Hannie and her slave family were being moved from Louisiana to Texas by a relative to keep them from being set free.  Out of sight of the owners, the relative starts to sell off the family in ones or twos the whole way there.  The last to be sold, Hannie finally gets the buyer to understand that she was stolen and sold away from her rightful owner.  Along the way, she had kept track of who was sold where, in the hopes to reunite with them in the future.

As we follow Hannie, who is returned to the original plantation alone but strikes out as a sharecropper with a few other slaves that had remained, we see that she is smart and resourceful.  Lavinia, the plantation owner’s pampered daughter, meets with Juneau Jane, the plantation owner’s mulatto daughter by his mistress.  Afraid that Lavinia’s arrival meant that the head of the Gossett plantation was dead, Hannie listens in to find out what is happening because there was only one year left on the lease before the sharecropping land was to be free and clear for her and those working it.  The three end up in an odyssey to find the father, to determine who was entitled to what property.  At one point the three end up in a church, where the walls were covered in posters of letters to friends, where people were looking to reconnect with those that had been sold away. 

Benny, who is renting out a home near the plantation because it was the cheapest she could find, needs help when the roof starts to leak. Through this challenge, Benny meets marvelous women that have kept the community together and give Benny hope for surviving.  Through the stories that Benny hears from Mrs T, she decides that this is the story that would resonate with her students, and asks her to come and tell it to the kids.  The kids are hooked and come up with a way to bring the stories to life.  While not approved by the school board, made up of rich white folks, the stories are coming from the Carnegie Library, a source of pride of the community at one time.  Facing a threatening police force, and the school board that sends their own kids to a private school instead, Benny is told to just let the kids get a vocational education as they were not better than that. 

Throughout the chapters flipping between the two, actual letters written and sent are included.  These had been published in the Southern Methodist newspaper and was shared via pulpits across the country.  The heartwrenching stories behind each of these hit home for me.  I did not know that these adverts had been created for people to finds each other in the late 1800 – early 1900s.  I did, however, understand these completely.  As a Jew, I am fully aware that after WWII, the same was happening in the displacement camps throughout Europe with people searching for any connections that may be left.  It is the guilt at being alive, combined by the fear of being alone, that makes these so sad.  While the longing is always there, sometimes it is easier not to ask the question for fear of the answer.

That also is true when it comes to a hard past.  In the Louisiana is the reality that slavery did happen.  Ancestors we part.  But in order to remain in power, the stories and intimidation continued.  It is this need to keep the power structure as it is, and the fear of what will happen if it is not, that keeps the true history of the plantation and those that lived on it.  Until you face the choices that you made, good or bad, and acknowledge them, you are doomed to spend your life covering up for them. 

book-review, Historical Fiction

As the year winds up

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As I look back at the last installment of this blog, I realize I have not been reading much at all. My near constant review of Goodreads.com or the library website available ebooks has significantly fallen off. One friend just posted they made their goal of 50 books, and I realize that I had been within striking distance for months but have not gotten over the line. That was when I started to have the desire to read come back.

As I started to feel this way, I started at my own bookcase. I have a few “easy starters” ready, but they actually were put aside when I started planning and cooking for Thanksgiving. Yes, I made a 15 pound turkey with all the sides, got out the good china and set the dinning room table for just my four. We have these, so we need to use them. More stress from work, and I finally started to get bored with the holiday movies on Hallmark. It was inevitable. I usually ban these things until after Thanksgiving, but I started to indulge much earlier this year – early to mid November. The shorter days, lack of vacation, and general lack of leaving my house is getting to me. I needed a book to get me out of myself. One book group I have fallen behind on this year had just read Finding Dorothy, which I had recommended. I found it at the library and read the first chapter. I was engaged, but fell asleep. The exhaustion of life has been getting to me and I am sleeping fitfully if at all, so when it happens I go with it.

Then I start to knit again. My friend had a baby at 24 weeks, and we have all been on pins and needles. He is growing well, and is now over six months, breathing on his own, but not yet home from the NICU. I start to knit his baby “lovey” and blanket in hopes I will be able to finish before he makes it home in late January, early February. As I sit doing this, I go to hoopla and download The Queen’s Gambit. Again, this captures my attention, and with the novice knitter I am, I have plenty of time to listen to the book.

The listen is absolutely worth it. I may need to pull apart three days of work because I can’t figure out how I have extra stitches, and I have no idea what row I am on, but at least I have this book as my outcome from all the effort.

The story could have gone in many directions, but remained focused on the main character and the insular world she has built herself. The other avenues, while they are ways I would love to explore, are closed to us, as the protagonist has closed them to herself. She has control only on the chess board, and does not allow herself to explore much outside that. Taking from that, also, the writing shows options of how choices are reviewed and examined, but as the pieces of life move, you respond based upon the plan you have made. Beth’s actual playing is reflected in the choices she makes in the book, each mirroring back to the other. When things go differently than expected, she acts rashly and ultimately learns that bad choices can take her farther from herself and any goals she may have. She also learns that it is not enough to want something – you need to work for it.

This all makes more sense after you read the book, but I don’t want to give away too much here. Suffice this to say, it was an engaging book, with characters you care about but not too much, a game that most don’t fully understand, and a metaphor for how to live a life.

book-review, Family Drama, read around the world, romance

Lucinda Riley’s The Sun Sister

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Some times life can overwhelm you, and you just want to escape. That is the best time to pick up a good book and dive on in. Last week I took the opportunity to do that with the sixth book in Lucinda Riley’s Seven Sisters series, The Sun Sister.

As a reminder, this series is centered around a family of adopted daughters – six in total, that are named for the Seven Sisters constellation. Each is brought to their adoptive father’s home in Geneva but none ask for information on where they have come from. After Pa mysteriously dies and the body is whisked away, there remains some questions about what has happened. Coordinates are left for where they were born, as well as a quote to start them on their quest. The sister’s stories are all explored in each book. In this book, Electra is the focus. The sixth sister, she is a famous model, who is drowning herself in vodka and sleeping pills. After a breakup with Mitch, a rock star that she thought was “the one,” Electra has been using alcohol and pills to face each day, quieting the voices in her head. She had run away from her boarding schools, and was expelled from others. She had moved to Paris at 16 and was discovered at the café she was working as a waitress at. From that time, she had been on the road constantly. One evening Mitch told her she he was going to announce his engagement to another woman, and all Electra’s belongings that had been at his house were returned via moving van. It is in these boxes that the final letter from Pa and the coordinates are found. Electra finds out she has a grandmother. Electra downed at least one bottle of vodka and an unknown number of sleeping pills, and her assistant found her and helps her survive what could have been a fatal mistake. After this, Electra agrees to enter a rehab center recommended by her sister.

As the story progresses, we learn a story from her Grandmother, Stella. Cecily, a woman in 1930s New York society, is abandoned by her fiancé, and suffers the humiliation of being overlooked as the former future husband introduces a new woman as his new fiancé weeks after the breakup. In order to remove herself from the snubs that were happening daily, she chooses to travel to Kenya with her godmother, Kiki. Upon the insistence of her mother, Cecily goes via England, to stay with her mother’s best friend. While there she is romanced by the heir to the earldom, who disappears before she leaves. When Cecily and Kiki finally arrive in Kenya, Cecily is overwhelmed by how beautiful the country is. As she meets people and makes friends, and ends up marrying Bill. As their story progresses, you see glimpses of “Out of Africa” on the love and beauty of Kenya, misunderstanding and forgiveness.

As both stories are unravelled, the stark reality of race relations is examined. It is revealed that Electra is black, and that has kept her felling different and outside always. These themes were more serious than the other sister’s, so I was much more wrapped up in the story here, both for Cecily and for Electra.

I started the series last year, not realizing that I was going to catch up and overtake the author in the books being finished. This one was published in October – and now I probably have to wait two years to finish this series. It will be hard but I have no choice.

books, reading

Notorious Rights – RGB and Clara Barton

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Non-fiction continues in my life, as I checked out Notorious RGB this past week.  Right up my alley, she is a bodacious woman who has spent her life trying to protect individual’s rights under the law.  This

close up court courthouse hammer
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book, which had been on my TBR list, was the perfect read after Men Explain Things to Me and A Story of a Happy Marriage.  Both of these books had been about standing up for your rights, your voice, and your choices, be they conventional or not.  RBG is the beacon of this. She has been fighting sexism for over 50 years for both men and women. The story of how she led her life, and her passion for representing all who needed to be protected will be her legacy. As she remains a leader of the left, strongly believing in the constitutional rights of people to be heard and counted, she is a voice in the minority too often. As the men on the court continue to make decisions that are pro-business, they don’t understand the ramifications that some of the decisions made have upon women. Until the court is filled with people of various backgrounds, and different upbringings, there will be blind spots in the interpretation of the words written so long ago – “We the people, in order to form a more perfect union….”  We are still trying to build the union more perfectly. For this, we need to learn from all who have arrived on these shores for a better life, regardless of where they have come from or when they arrived.

The new book I have just started A Woman of Value Clara Barton and the Civil War is takes me back to another time when women were fighting for the right to make choices on what their life should be. She chose not to marry but remained careful of conventions to not appear in public without a male escort. She accepted a job at the patent office, for a fraction of what men were paid. She kept pushing, but within the parameters that would not embarrass her family. As we continue to move forward down the road ahead, as Rebecca Slotnik stated, we are walking from the path of those who came before. While we continue to see setbacks, we must recognize how far we have come in life. As Notorious RBG has shown, a slow and steady pace will help us achieve a better world for us all.

books, reading

From Riyadh to Memphis

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As the world gets busy preparing for holidays, I got busy to move more books off my TBR list.  The library came through and delivered me a book to check off a country on my armchair travel list – Saudi Arabia.  Girls of Riyadh by Rajaa Alsanea, translated by Marilyn Booth was a hit in the region, and I was excited to read about life from a woman’s point of view. The book, relating the quest for love by 4 women of Saudi, is told by an unnamed person writing emails to an email group. The names of the friends were changed, but the reality of the “lives” was shared by this third person.  I admit I was expecting anything but what I got. This book was related as though the emails were sent in 2004-2005. The lives of these women, while striving for love and self worth, are complex and rich. While the society does impact who and how they can be, they all take different paths to finding themselves and their own voices. And even if you don’t like which path they took, you are faced with the undisputed fact that they did all choose their own paths.

While I was reading this story of choosing paths, I was also reading Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate.  In a different era, there was a horrible person that brokered babies, stealing them from poor parents and not providing safety or food properly, while doing the “good work” of finding homes for some children.  As the story is pieced together, the girls that are the focus are the “strong” ones – favorites of the fathers.  Both do their best to keep the family together, placing that above all else, until they are both faced with the fact that they need to put themselves first.  In doing so, they find a new peace.

In both cultures, across the span of time, the central characters don’t feel they have the ability to make a choice other than what their family wanted. And while the strong are the only ones left standing, the key to survival and happiness is always being true to who you are and who you want to be.

woman wearing hijab
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book-review, books, Family Drama, literature, reading

Eleanor Oliphant has been here

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A typical crisis for me is there are too many book to choose from. After picking book group titles last week, I had to read another title I proposed that others had already read.  Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine, by Gail Honeyman, was a joy.

At times reminiscent of The Rosie Project or A Man Called Ove, this fish out of water story had a bit of a dark twist.  While stumbling into real life, Eleanor is forced to face her past instead of drowning it in vodka. She begins to plan for a life with a man she has never met. As she executes this plan, she begins “self improvement” with a new haircut, new clothes, and new makeup. Outside of this plan, however, are interactions with people in ways she is unfamiliar with. Raymond, the tech support at her office, and Sammy, the person they helped when in distress on the street, provide her with more support than she knew she needed.

In fact, when she first met Raymond he found a virus on her computer and was able to clean it so it would be more effective. Same could be said of how he helped Eleanor. There were people to help around her always, she just needed to have some programs tweaked to have her work effectively with them. Another metaphor in the story is how she sets to cleaning her apartment. It transforms from a sad, uncared for space into a bright space looking for interesting things to add to the walls. She was a sad, uncared for person (she thought), but when she cared enough to buy herself things more than “useful” she is no longer just her scars, but a beautiful woman.

And while the dark part of the story was not hard to guess at due to the clues, the fact that she had so successfully fallen through the cracks of the system that was to help her was a sad comment on those the legal system that is meant to protect children.

books, reading

To book group or not…..

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What is a book group?  Is it a place where people come carrying the book reverently to make sage pronouncements on someone else’s story? Dissect it with the skill of a surgeon, laying the structure and content out for all to examine in a slightly different way.  Or is it a group of people who come with bottles of wine, heaps of food, and, if remembered at all, a well-worn book?  Is it none of the above? Or all of the above?  For me, the answer is all of the above.  Each grouping of people bring different experiences, expectations and egos to the room.  The key is knowing your audience, and yourself.

When I was young, I discovered that I loved sharing my ideas about books I had read with others.  Part of this love, however, was that I was showing off my ability to see the depth of the books, parse the content and dissect the structure. I joined a group that met at a bar (The Colorado Library if you can believe – on the East Coast!!) and read The Bend in the River, The Remains of the Day and Palace Walk.  We were cosmopolitan and globally minded and our reading reflected this view of ourselves.

I then began leading a book group for a volunteer organization to help a community center in the city build a library for their neighborhood.  How perfect – mixing my love of learning with a group of people that were working to make life better for others.  We chose provocative titles, biographies, memoirs and novels, opening me up to new writers.  A Long Walk To Freedom by Nelson Mandela, Caucasia by Danzy Senna, and The color of water by James McBride.  I had grown to expand my reading and what I defined as my community.

After a few years, that group disbanded (the library opened), and I took a break to have kids and read Sandra Boynton, E.B. White and JK Rowling.  Once I finished the Harry Potter series aloud, I was ready again for a book group.  I began leading a group of women that focused on Jewish topics – past, present, and future.  I approached this as I did the last one, but it never fully realized that scholarly tone I had thought was needed, because I had grown to realize it was not needed to convey my messages.  Each discussion began about the book, and evolved to other things, like politics.  I was actually fascinated to learn that a nuclear scientist in the group thought the Iran Nuclear Deal was a good one, and cited scientific facts for why.  And I am so very glad that I started this group with a bottle of wine, macarons, and an assortment of petit fours to match The Paris Architect by Charles Balfoure.  That caught on, and we had a ball.

Fast forward a few year, and at a social event I became re-acquainted with someone who was involved with the Goodreads community.  I joined up, and have been having fun with that, too.  I am now invited to a real life group that will be reading a heavier book, The Heart’s Invisible Furies by John Boyne, and I am excited to meet and talk to smart people.

And one night I was on my friend’s porch with a group of friend.  I looked around and I saw a group of incredible women that were all pursuing life with passion and wanted to make connections with others.  That night I decided that I would launch my own group – which still needs to be named – where we would pick deliberately lighter books and use the time together to “discuss the book” – heavy on the “” -and make our own community.  And so, this past week I gathered friends from different places in my life, opened a bottle of wine, put out cupcakes, and let the conversation flow. And while we didn’t do the book any justice with an examination, we had a great time.  And agreed that the next meeting will be at an ice cream parlor.

So when you are invited to a book group, don’t always feel that you need to have read a book completely and are ready to analyze it from stem to stern.  Sometimes it’s okay to just use that time to be together.  And just like choosing who you play golf with – make sure you have the right group to make sure it meets your needs.  Because sometimes, it’s just good to pick up the ball and walk to the next hole while enjoying your friends.

adult celebration cheers congratulations
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