Book Love & Coffee Mugs

I have a practice of writing each morning.  This was an exercise sharing in a happiness workshop I attending last fall.  You take the best memory from the day before and detail it out on paper the next day.  It allows you to relive something positive and build upon it throughout your day.  I seem to complete this in fits and starts.  Lately I've been writing quite a bit more.  Its a respite from having to say anything because I can empty what's in my head onto the page. The process I learned also included finding an accountability parter.  My peer in Atlanta, Sherry is the one whom I text with each morning to share completion and check on her.  I love getting those texts it feels like we're in this together. Lately this practice has allowed me to empty all the thoughts that are in my head.  Not just to relive a positive experience, it allows me to empty all the thoughts in my head.  I will share that I haven't have the deep fear ...

"Being a mother is about learning the strengths you never new you had and dealing the fears you didn't know existed." - Unknown "In a Philadelphia neighborhood rocked but he opioid crisis, two once-inseparable sisters find themselves at odds.  One, Kacey, lives on the streets in the vise of addiction.  The other, Mickey walks those same blocks on her police beat.  They don't speak anymore, and the police department has no idea of their connection, but Mickey never stops worrying about her sibling.  Then Kacey disappears, suddenly, at the same time that a mysterious string of murders begins in Mickey's district, and Mickey panics over her sister's safety.  Risking her job, and maybe even the welfare of her four-year-old son, Mickey becomes dangerously obsessed with finding the culprit - and her sister - before it's too late." The hard-life streets of Philadelphia are the setting that has stayed with me from his story.  This hard-life doesn...

“Some signs have saved my life while others reminded me that I had a life worth saving.  Reading them hasn’t always been easy; a precious few are unambiguous; the rest are as ephemeral as smoke and as clear as mud.  None has been quite as definitive as a baby left on my doorstep.” Bianca Marais, If You Want To Make God Laugh   What a tremendous start to 2020.  Finishing this book believing it might be the best book I read all year.  The story that takes place entirely in South Africa and encompasses family, regret, love, loss, violence, disease, reconciliation and forgiveness.  From beginning to end this story took my breath away.  Sometimes for the dusty, hot surroundings and other time for the depth of loss these characters endured.  It filled me with hope, and with the promise of faith.  The title didn’t come into full focus until I closed the book upon completion and held it close.  This I do believe.  We do not know Go...

Choosing the best book of the seventy-five read during 2019 is a daunting task.  Around mid-December I reflected back and the top nine were the ones I established as the 'best of 2019' for me.  I was enamored with each of these stories for different reasons.  There was plot-driven, there was character-driven, there was memoir and slow burns.  There was something in each of them that cracked me open in a way I didn't expect.  And then I finished reading for the month of December. During December I finished both This Tender Land and Olive, Again.  They were wonderful.  And as I thought through the ones I'd previously selected I realized there was so much more to my reading life than the original nine. There was heartache and espionage, there was seeing into the future, there was fantasy and miracles.  How could I leave these nine out of my summary.  I just couldn't.  So my top nine because top 18. And so it was. ...

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Yep, five stars for two books in a row.  How is that possible?  Not sure.  But what it did convince me of was that I shouldn't feel bad about a DNF since there are so many amazing stories out there to read! "Tate's devotion eventually convinced her that human love is more than the bizarre mating competitions of the marsh creatures, but life also taught her that ancient genes for survival still persist in some undesirable forms among the twists and turns of man's genetic code." It was part mystery, part survival, part love story and part fierce independence that ends with a splash in the murky, marsh waters where Kya lived her whole life. Hard for me to pinpoint which parts  I loved the most as I treasured the whole story.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ WOW!  The first five star read of the year!  This one blew me away.  I grew to appreciate the culture, people, loyalty and food of the Palestinian people.  I was troubled by the abuse women suffer at the hands of men - their fathers, their husbands.  The grow up in a culture knowing they don't have choices, knowing they always cover parts of themselves.  Whether with cloth or with silence. The chapters were presented in three voices.  Mostly Ezra the mother and Deya the daughter, and occasionally the mother-in-law Frehda.  It began in Palestine and ended in Brooklyn.  Their home in America. The ending caused be the most confusion and consternation at first.  I finished and didn't know what to think.  Was the ended that had been spelling out earlier not be true.  How could this newly described ending be happening. And then realizing, it ain't over until it's over the ending I knew was true.  The last chapte...

⭐⭐⭐⭐ What a story ..and four star because five don't come that easily to me! Family drama, abandonment, love, loss and forgiveness fill this story that should not be remembered by the title.  Which was only the name of a blog written by an anonymous author.  This family grew apart and then in threads found a way back.  But like any cloth that's been severed, it was never the same strength, feel or look than the original.  Or was the original never that strong.