Book Love & Coffee Mugs

  A magnetic novel about two families, strangers to each other, who are forced together on a long weekend gone terribly wrong Amanda and Clay head out to a remote corner of Long Island expecting a vacation: a quiet reprieve from life in New York City, quality time with their teenage son and daughter, and a taste of the good life in the luxurious home they’ve rented for the week. But a late-night knock on the door breaks the spell. Ruth and G. H. are an older black couple—it’s their house, and they’ve arrived in a panic. They bring the news that a sudden blackout has swept the city. But in this rural area—with the TV and internet now down, and no cell phone service—it’s hard to know what to believe. Should Amanda and Clay trust this couple—and vice versa? What happened back in New York? Is the vacation home, isolated from civilization, a truly safe place for their families? And are they safe from one another?  Suspenseful and provocative, Rumaan Alam’s third novel is ...

What happens when you hear of another couple this year that is divorcing?  A couple that from the outside held hands, said sweet things and took adventures together.  A couple whose marriage you would have said you admired and wanted to replicate.  What does that mean? For the 485th time it means that no one knows what's within the marriage other than the two people in it.  That's it.   I'm saddened to see so many couples whose love and patience have withered.  I'm also sad to know that what's been going on inside has been painful and trying.  This breaking of a bond is neither good or bad.  It could be both.  Right now it's painful and sad. Marriage to me is one of those things that I admire endurance.  It's certainly not easy.  Take patience, practiced kindness, listening when it's the last thing you possibly want to do and choosing to be together more than you want to run.  It is the joining of lives into one household, into...

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.