Halloween Costumes: Making Good and Making Do
My husband and I have been invited to a Halloween party requiring costumes, and we are panicked. What will we wear? I’ve seldom put a lot of effort into Halloween. As I’ve written before, I am the pumpkin carver in the family, and we usually have a jack o’lantern for the front porch. I buy […]
Haunting Books: The Cuckoo’s Calling and The Silkworm, by Robert Galbraith (J.K. Rowling)
I’ve mentioned before that I wasn’t fond of the Harry Potter books. But I read all seven of them, if only so I could talk to my nieces and improve my crossword puzzle performance. Despite my indifference toward the Harry Potter books, when all the hoopla arose around J.K. Rowling hiding her identity to publish […]
Seeking the Familiar in the New: The Columbia and the Rhine
I think it is human nature that we try to make sense of our world, to organize what we encounter in life so it makes sense with what we already know. I had this experience on our recent cruise along the Rhine River. Each place I saw, I thought, “This is like . . . […]
Haunting Book: The Goldfinch, by Donna Tartt
The Goldfinch, by Donna Tartt, haunts me because I hated it so much. I know it won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2014. I also know I hated it. Earlier this year, I wrote a review of the book on Goodreads that read “While this book is well written, the only character I cared […]
On Baking Cakes: Generations of Life Lessons
My mother’s death brought to mind many memories for all her family members. My son sent my father a letter describing one of his memories–a time when my mother instructed him in how to bake a cake. He was a Cub Scout at the time, and the pack was holding a fundraiser. The fundraiser was […]
Haunting Book: The Luminaries, by Eleanor Catton
This month I’m writing another series of book reviews on “haunting books.” I haven’t read that many really good mysteries or thrillers by new authors this year, though I recommend to readers that you try any book by Tana French (see review of In the Woods here) or William Landry (see review of Defending Jacob here). Therefore, my reviews […]
Travels to Europe As Book Ends of a Career
In August 1979, shortly after the bar exam, my husband and I traveled to London for two weeks. It was our delayed honeymoon, almost two years after we were married, and celebrated the end of law school and the beginning of our working careers. We knew that it would be a while before we would […]
Western Heads Cool As Gold Fever Begins in the East
When autumn came to 1848, San Francisco was already a boom town and coping with the influx of gold. At the same time, rumors of the gold rush were just reaching Washington, D.C. By late September, more than 6000 men were mining in California. Wealth from the gold fields flooded into San Francisco soon after nuggets […]
Before the Good Ones Are Taken
I mentioned last week that I left home for college about the time my sister turned nine. She soon found out that she missed me more than she thought she would. Shortly after I arrived at Middlebury College, my sister wrote me a letter. I don’t have the letter any more, but it made its […]
Happy 50th Birthday To My Sister!
My brother and children seem to think they get treated unfairly in this blog, so this time it’s my sister’s turn. She turns fifty this week, so she is fair game. My sister was born when I was eight and a half. Too much younger to be a friend when we were growing up. Not […]