lisapeet 2024: Dispatches from the Back Yard

I'm Lisa, an editor and journalist who writes about libraries. I live at the tip-top of NYC in the northwest Bronx with one husband, one dog, and four cats. I have a grown son who's married and is a second-year general surgery resident upstate. I'm a visual artist, baker, gardener, fountain pen collector, and letter writer. I read pretty widely, and—other than stuff for work or my book club—randomly.

Because my dog, Jasper, is a fairly recent rescue from rural Texas and is still scared to walk out on city streets, we spend a lot of time running around in the yard while he builds his confidence up. While I probably won't actually be posting from there, I'm usually thinking about things, including what I've read. I took this photo in the yard on Boxing Day, early evening, almost a full moon.

And here's your Jasper tax for good measure:

Jasper is such a cutie. I hope he gets acclimated to urban life. Welcome back to Club Read! Fingers crossed 2024 will be a better year for you than this.

Welcome to 2024. I hope it is a better year for you.

Thanks for the pics of the moon in your back yard, and ow wonderful Jasper. Good luck with the continuing adjustment to city life.

Ah, Jasper…! Here’s hoping for a better 2024 for us both.

Hi Lisa, thanks for the card. Jasper has the nicest face.

That’s a beautiful opening photo. Happy New Year Lisa. I wish you and your family, furry ones includes, a wonderful new year.

After following your discussion with Alison on her thread about art and in particular your comments about Drawing Together, I went online and checked it out. I am so excited by the children's curriculum. I immediately joined and downloaded the educator's guide. I've requested the books to accompany lesson one from the library. Thank you for the rec!

Hello, I'll be here for the year of reading! (And for the Jasper!)

I'm glad your husband is doing better. As the caretaker for my husband during the last many years of first cancer then transplant-patienthood, I know how hard it is, and I was retired, not still working a full time job. So take care of yourself too.
And I'm glad you got Jasper. We love our Dulci!

Happy New Year, Lisa. I hope 2024 is a good year for you and Jeff. I look forward to following your reading again. I'm here:
https://www.librarything.com/topic/356547#n8339936

Welcome back Lisa and Jasper. Hope 2024 is full of creativity and great books.

And I hope you feel better soon, Lisa. My daughter came home with a bad cold (testing negative for Covid), and feels miserable. So many things going around right now.

>13 labfs39: There a lot of respiratory viruses going around now. It could be the flu. I had something like a cold a few weeks ago. I was ok but it weakens the body. Hope she’s ok.

Thank you, everyone, and Jasper sends his thanks along as well. He's such a little ray of sunshine.

>8 labfs39: I'm glad you took a look at the Drawing Together curriculum—I think Wendy is a great booster for art-making and taking the fear out of it, and she has a really nice presence. I'm enjoying the Grown-Ups Table—there's a big emphasis on doodling and just mark-making right now, which is fun and relaxing. I'm a little bummed because I realized that I had let document (waterproof) ink dry up in my favorite drawing fountain pen, and now it's not writing well. So I need to soak it in some pen flush and hope that does the trick.

How's your daughter feeling, Lisa? We're both on-and-off miserable, but it doesn't look like it'll get worse than this head cold and nasty cough. We both just got flu and covid vaxxes, so that's sort of a comfort. And one thing I bought myself for Christmas was a couple of pairs of fleece sweatpants, which are the BEST, so hanging out with Jasper on these cold mornings is pretty tolerable.

Still reading The Golden Notebook! These Nyquil-fueled evenings don't help.

Will peek in on what you are reading from time to time:-}

>15 lisapeet: Are you getting anything out of The Golden Notebook? I’m wondering if it’s stood the test of time.

>15 lisapeet: Wendy Mac's curriculum for kids focuses on social-emotional learning, so lots of art to reflect feelings, process emotions, and relax—all in a very fun and upbeat way. My niece used to be very reluctant to draw, frustrated when things didn't look "right". We've gotten past that, so I think this will be a nice next step.

My daughter continues to feel crummy. I think it's going to be one of those viruses that lingers. My sister had a relapse with the pneumonia too. Neither of them can seem to kick their respective illnesses. So far my covid booster and flu shot seem to be doing the trick (knock on wood, salt over shoulder, pth, pth, pth). I hope you guys start feeling better soon.

I got a pair of fleece lined pants when I moved to Maine and loved them so much I bought another identical pair. On cold days they are so comfy-licious. Speaking of cold days, batten down your hatches. Looks like this weekend could get ugly. Does Jasper like snow? Ace loves it, and hates rain.

>18 labfs39: our last 2 dogs really didn’t care if it rained. Cisco, the standard poodle, was fine with rain and getting wet. Shaka, the German shepherd, didn’t seem to notice rain. He was exactly the same rain or no rain - totally just liked being outdoors. They both adored snow - it maxed out their happiness meters.

>16 avaland: Hopefully I'll actually finish something to reward your peeking in...

>17 kjuliff: I am getting value from The Golden Notebook, though maybe not in the intent it was written. Much of it really reinforces why second-wave feminism was important, and not something for Gen-Zers to pooh-pooh—and even though I know the lay of the land very well by now, it still incenses me to read. That intense introspection, though, about men and friendship and writing and the Communist Party and everything else—I'm not sure I have the right temperament for it. But it's interesting, and well-written, so it's moving along well at least.

>18 labfs39: >19 dianeham: I'm pretty sure Jasper has never seen snow, since he came from the Houston area and is too young to have been around for the 2021 snow there. Our last dog, Dorrie, was a beagle/coonhound from Little Rock who had definitely never seen snow, and she LOVED it—we have some great photos of her in the big 2006 storm, her first winter here, jumping through drifts so deep you can only see the tip of her tail. Even in her old age, it would always perk her up enough to run through. She hated rain, though. Jasper doesn't mind rain, so we'll see.

>20 lisapeet: Glad you like The Golden Notebook. Regarding your apt point about second-wave feminism. Yes it was was important for those of us living through that time. I always get annoyed when later generations complain about what was important to people raising young families in the 70s - after all, no one chooses the period they were born in to!

Recently I read On Rereading, and The Golden Notebook was one that Meyer Spacks reread. I think she didn't like it as much on her second reading.

Hi Lisa glad youre back! hoping this new year brings you good health , much joy, and lots of good reads

>15 lisapeet: my biggest takeaway from reading The Golden Notebook is that rather than have "stage-directions" describing the notebooks/hand-writing, that I really wanted a specialty printer create a graphically designed version printed in the various ink colors with the handwriting reproduced rather than described.

It could have made a fabulous 50-year anniversary edition.

Hey, Lisa... I haven't read much Lessing and don't think I like her (dour, plus ex-communist) but the (nonfiction) In pursuit of the English was eye-opening... have you read it? That one I'd push on people.

Well I finally landed on your CR thread. Cheers!

>20 lisapeet: "I'm pretty sure Jasper has never seen snow, since he came from the Houston area and is too young to have been around for the 2021 snow there."

Our German shepherd Rosie has had her first-ever snow experience over the past couple of days. We brought her from northern California, where, except at elevation much higher than where we were, the snowfalls are rare, indeed. However, it doesn't seemed to have phased her a bit. Well, she is at least a quarter Husky, so that probably explains it.

We read something recently about the potential harm to dogs of the rock salt that gets thrown down in NYC (and elsewhere, I'm sure). When the salt gets stuck amidst the footpads and toes and so forth, it can cause dogs very painful irritation. So these snowy days we're always careful to wipe her feet and between her toes when we bring her in from a walk.

>26 rocketjk: Although our German Shepherd doesn't seem to have the problem, our former lab used to get terrible ice balls between his toes when going on hikes in snow. We had to get him booties to wear when we went snowshoeing. Ace (the GS) on the other hand, used to wear booties occasionally in Florida when it was so hot that the pavement got soft. The tar would otherwise burn his pads! The trials and tribulations of having paws.

I've posted a photo of Rosie in the snow in Central Park today over on my thread.

lisa havent heard from you in a while, you doing ok?

Oh hello—I'm still alive and fine, just spending a lot less non-work time online. Logging in lots of yard hours with Jasper, mostly, and generally just giving the internet a bit of a rest during my off hours. Plus work, work travel, the endless battle of housework, having a little social life... the usual. Last weekend we went up to Syracuse to see my son and daughter-in-law, which was a lot of fun—they're doing great, busy and enjoying life, and were terrific hosts. It's a neat town. And despite being pretty miserable during the car ride up and back (even with meds), Jasper was an exemplary guest. If he didn't hate the travel part I 'd bring him with me everywhere, because he has such nice manners. He's still not walking out on the street, but we've made tiny progress—he'll go down to the sidewalk and up and down our block before wanting to go back, so I'll take the small victories for now. He's a happy dog, otherwise.

I've done some good reading, though probably less than usual—again, more yard time than armchair time—but that's fine. I'll try to get to some reviews here.

>25 LolaWalser: I haven't read In Pursuit of the English (though I did finish The Golden Notebook... I'll keep an eye out, though.

>24 ELiz_M: I would have loved to read a special edition like the one you described. I love reading things in people's handwriting (if it's legible).

I finished The Golden Notebook in time for my book club, and had a lot of mixed thoughts about it—as did all of us talking about it. The portrait of what it was like for women during that period of time, just before the second wave of feminism ramped up, was interesting—although having grown up in a household where that was definitely a part of the goings-on, it wasn't news to me. Also the glimpse into the politics of the British Communist Party, which I knew less about. But the nonstop introspection wore on me a bit—the deep dive into unhappy, dissatisfied hearts and minds was a lot to sustain over 600-odd pages. Though it also made me think of my mom a lot, as she lived through that time and that dissatisfaction, which was necessary for her to get to the life she wanted to live. The book was on our shelves growing up, and I do wish I could talk to her about it now.

Ultimately I'm glad I read it. It sparked a great conversation, lots of very different thoughts and opinions, so it was a great book club choice in that sense. I'm happy enough to leave the characters behind, but I keep thinking about it at odd moments, so in that sense it was also a worthwhile reading project (but it did feel like a project).

It's nice to hear from you, Lisa. I'm glad things are going well and that Jasper continues to be a delight. I too was spending more time working in the yard thanks to a mild winter and early spring, then we got 8" of snow and ice last night. Boo.

Missed you!

>32 labfs39: I saw you got a big snow dump. Just hard-packed earth here, lots of sticks and branches (Jasper doesn't mind), and poor crocuses and daffodils trying to fight their ways aboveground.

>33 dianeham: Thanks! Just life getting in the way of cyber-life, you know how it goes.

I've also read:

Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle by Emily Nagoski—I think self-help really isn't my genre, but I give it a chance every so often.

Touching the Art by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore—neat, seriously offbeat queer art memoir/biography with zero accompanying images (at least in the library ebook I read), which made for some sometimes frustrating and other times interesting visual imagination-stretching. It was set largely in Baltimore, and I was there for work about a week after I read it and had hoped to do a little walking around and landmark-spotting, but it was 22˚ there and icy, and... nope.

Drinking from Graveyard Wells by Yvette Lisa Ndlovu—contemporary retellings and reimaginings of African folk tales centering women. The author is Zimbabwean and her take is consistently interesting, though the stories felt very short-arc (as, I guess, folk tales are).

American Ending by Mary Kay Zuravleff—good historical-ish fiction about a girl growing up in a Russian immigrant family in an early 20th-century Pennsylvania mining town. Some lovely writing, and a lot of good—if not deep—characters, generally a good read.

Women Artists in Midcentury America: A History in Ten Exhibitions by Daniel Belasco—a very interesting and super well-researched dive into 10 all-women shows that predated the feminist art consciousness of the 1960s and onward. A little on the academic side but really fascinating and knowledgable, and he doesn't shy away from talking about the lack of women of color represented and how that could have been addressed.

Now reading Rumer Godden's In This House of Brede, which I'm loving, though it's been a bit slow going because my copy has tiny type and I'm ooooold (and very tired at the end of the day).

Nice roundup, Lisa. Great comments on The Golden Notebook; I've never read it, and the size is rather intimidating. At some point, I will probably read it. In a recent read of mine On Rereading, The Golden Notebook was one that Spacks reread, having good memories of it the first time. She was less impressed on rereading it.

>36 BLBera: When (what year or time in her life) did she first read it? I can see it not hitting the same way a second time around if it was a seminal book for someone initially.

How did you like On Rereading? I'm behind on everyone's threads...

Here's an obligatory Jasper photo:

>38 lisapeet: So handsome! Good to see you back here, Lisa.

>38 lisapeet:

I wanna squosh those ears

>38 lisapeet: A gentleman! Much petting to him.

Jasper is a cutie.

>37 lisapeet: I think she originally read it while she was in college? I did like On Rereading; it's been a while since I read it, but it was interesting. I'll have to look back on my comments. I remember her discussion of The Golden Notebook the most.

Maybe this is too much information, but I found my comments on On Rereading:
I enjoyed Meyer Spacks' exploration of rereading. She looks at a variety of books, from childhood favorites, to various books she both enjoyed and didn't enjoy in the past. Some books hold up better than others. Childhood favorites like The Wizard of Oz and Treasure Island, she still finds rewarding, while The Catcher in the Rye and The Golden Notebook, books she read when they were published in the 50s and 60s, don't fare as well.

Meyer Spacks' academic approach may not appeal to everyone, but I found a lot to think about, and as a academic, I could relate to many of her experiences.

Two quotes that strike me:

"The discoveries of each new reading of a given text -- 'bad readings' included -- add up to a richer interpretation than a single reading could offer."

"It's a problem for precocious readers that they invariably read much that they're too young for, and they don't necessarily realize that fact."

This last quote hit home to me; I read so many books in high school that I appreciated much more when I reread them later, particularly The Great Gatsby.

Our educational system often requires young readers (precocious or not) to read work they're not ready for. Is any 17-year-old ready to grasp King Lear? Crime and Punishment? Waiting for Godot? (All three were part of my senior year English class.)

Hi everyone! Thanks for the warm re-welcome.

>43 BLBera: Thanks for the info on On Rereading, Beth. As someone who almost never rereads anything, I'm interested in the concept, if not the practice.

>44 KeithChaffee: My go-to example is always Death in Venice. Yeah, youth and beauty fleeting. But isn't that message—and the book as a whole—kind of wasted on 16-year-olds? I, for one, was not that reflective until I was, I don't know... 40?

>43 BLBera:

I read so many books in high school that I appreciated much more when I reread them later

>44 KeithChaffee:

Is any 17-year-old ready to grasp King Lear? Crime and Punishment? Waiting for Godot?

The answer may well be "no", but I've come to lean to the side of better getting an introduction to the greatness of literature early than never at all. That is, maybe the notion that literature can be great, elevating, spirit-transforming, the holy of holies etc. is the important thing getting transmitted in school, sooner than real deep understanding of specific classics.

I received, on request, the complete set of Dostoevsky for my 14th birthday and breezed through it in months. Whether I was grasping it and what was I grasping (in the light of all the ignorance, inexperience and naïveté of that laughable age) pales in comparison to what I was getting from it. (And this is nothing special to me, Canetti, for example, describes a hilarious and somewhat frightening encounter with a young lady so enthralled with Dostoevsky she produced reams of writing hallucinatingly in his style. There are many such stories about that particular contagion.)

Something, I mean to say, does travel. One doesn't have to have been in love, or heterosexual, or forty in order to appreciate Shakespeare's language in Romeo and Juliet--but one does need ears and a will to listen. And that is the part that--ideally--would be supplied by proper schooling.

Welcome back Lisa

I can imagine that The Golden Notebook encouraged plenty of discussion in your book group, especially if most of your members are women. I found it a very powerful book and the last 50 pages or so that chart the descent into a mental breakdown are mesmerising. Much of the novel is based around Lessing's life, although it is not an autobiography. I am a Londoner who knew Earl's Court fairly well at the time that Lessing was describing and so it had perhaps more of a cultural impact on me. I would have liked to have been a fly on the wall at your book club meeting.

>47 baswood: >43 BLBera: >15 lisapeet: The Golden Notebook played an important part in my life when I read it in the late seventies. I don’t remember it as being specifically English. I identified with the main women. I’d put it second to Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunich in helping me put my innate feminism into a theoretical construct. I would not want to re-read either of these works as they played their part in my life and perhaps they would not be so relevant to me now. But I feel I owe a great debt to both Lessing and Greer. Both relevant to their times.

>46 LolaWalser: "an introduction to the greatness of literature"

Yeah, that's the theory. I think that it would be more effective, though, to introduce teens to the greatness of literature with books that are (a) written in their own language as opposed to archaic dialects of English and (b) more directly relevant to their own lives. But then, I never believed that throwing someone into the deep end of the pool was a good way to teach swimming, either.

>39 RidgewayGirl: So handsome and he knows it. But charming as well, which goes a long way.

>40 LolaWalser: I squosh them so often I'm surprised they still stand up.

>41 rv1988: I often describe him as a gentleman with our cats, and he often lies with his front paws crossed ever so elegantly, so I guess the description fits.

Whoa, Lisa, you've got quite the pedagogy discussion going here! >46 LolaWalser:, >49 KeithChaffee: I think the answer lies somewhere between these two ideas. As a college English teacher, I saw way too many students who were turned off reading because they weren't reading anything that meant anything to them. On the other hand, I think we can teach Shakespeare to high school students; it's just that too often it isn't done that well.

>51 BLBera: im with you; it does depend on the teacher or other knowledgable adult. The problem lies with the school boards who are easily swayed by parents in terms of curriculum and dont really know enough about kids to fashion a decent one, so their choices are just way off, and of course the actual teachers dont get a say, and so dont have much of a choice what they teach

>49 KeithChaffee:

I think I wasn't clear enough-- the "greatness of literature" is too vague, but the idea that "literature is or can be great", or even just "this is important" may be what stays with people even when they don't grasp all the depth and nuances.

I don't believe in drowning people but in making them stretch, yes. Seventeen was a fairly "adult" age for most of civilised humanity's existence, there's no reason to suppose they lack the ability, the imagination, to immerse themselves in the new and unknown.

>51 BLBera:

I saw way too many students who were turned off reading because they weren't reading anything that meant anything to them

But that's the thing that has to be taught--why and how X means to them. At a minimum, exposure to the variety of human experience enriches one's existence, widens one's experience. "Nothing human is foreign to me."

I fall in between these schools of thought too, in what's probably an overly idealistic way. I do think it's important to make students think, stretch their concept of what's possible in literature, and build their empathy muscles as much as one can with teens or young adults. Challenging them is good. But I also think that teachers need to hook them in, which means meeting them where they are sometimes. I see a lot of complex YA and graphic novel material being used, at least on the library side—I don't really know what goes on in high school or college classrooms anymore. I think teaching lit to young folks requires someone with a sense of the work being taught, how to combine it, its cadence throughout the year or semester, not just phoning in selections from a (anyone's) canon. Which is all easy for me, who's never taught, to say. And why teachers should be paid a whole lot more than they are, but we all knew that already.

>54 lisapeet: I agree, Lisa. For kids who enjoy reading and are fluent readers (like most of us here), stretching them is great. For kids who don't enjoy reading or who struggle to read, you need to hook them before anything else can happen. Ideally this would happen in middle school, but sometimes it doesn't happen until later, or sadly never at all. And I do think that some of the Western canon that is still fawned on in high schools simply will not connect with kids until they've had some life experience. With so much great literature out there, why forego something that would appeal to most kids for something that won't?

Just saying hello, re-welcoming you. 🙂 I’m happy to see your updates. Jasper is a fine looking pup. Great discussions. One day I would like to try some Lessing, including The Golden Notebook

I hope Jasper was okay during your quake. It must be frightening for animals.

>56 dchaikin: Hi, Dan! I'm not sure if I want to read more Lessing, but I never say never.

>58 labfs39: Apparently he slept through it, as did my husband. I was in Columbus, OH, and heard about it (my neighborhood listserv blew up) before they did. The day before that our power had been out from midnight to 5 p.m. I miss all the fun.

But my time in Columbus, at the Public Library Association conference, was fun. It was a high-energy, everyone-glad-to-be-there show, and I learned a lot and saw a bunch of my favorite folks, and came home with 10 galleys/ARCs:

The Second Coming - Garth Risk Hallberg
Old King - Maxim Loskutoff
Enlightenment - Sarah Perry
The History of Sound: Stories - Ben Shattuck
The Horse: A Novel - Willy Vlautin
Fire Exit - organ Talty
The Garden Against Time: In Search of a Common Paradise - Olivia Laing
Bear - Julia Phillips
Flight of the Wild Swan - Melissa Pritchard
and the one that made me go "ohhhhh!" when I picked it up: Dear Readers and Riders: The Beloved Books, Faithful Fans, and Hidden Private Life of Marguerite Henry - Lettie Teague. I don't care if it's good—I was such a horse girl when I was 8, 9, 10, and devoured those Marguerite Henry books. Just looking at the little thumbnails on the cover of the ARC gave me a happy rush. And while I was standing by the publisher's table reading the blurb, another woman walked up, picked up the book, and said, "Ohhhhh!"

I started Jamel Brinkley's collection Witness last summer, I think, reading for LJ's best short stories of 2023, and then it got nudged off my virtual nightstand by one book and another. I picked it up again for my trip to Columbus and liked it a lot. These are largely stories of people whose lives veered off, either largely or in small ways, from the course they thought they were on—which is simplifying things in an effort to sum up, but I think it's a good frame. Brinkley writes beautifully, and I'm not always sure I buy his dialogue, it's part and parcel of that elegant prose so I'm fine with that. Less of the fierce energy of his first collection, A Lucky Man, but a good set of stories that make you think about life and trajectories and expectations, and care about even the most poorly behaved of his characters (there are a few).

Now I'm reading Alice Winn's In Memoriam, on the recommendation of a bunch of people.

>59 lisapeet: Nice Haul, Lisa. I have the Talty and the Phillips on my WL, waiting for them to come in at the library. I didn't know that Perry had a new one out. I will check that out as well.

>59 lisapeet: I'm glad you had a good PLA conference. I love the Marguerite Henry anecdote.

have you read a garden against timeLooks very interesting

>61 BLBera: Anything I get to first (not much chance of that... everyone here reads way faster than I do), I'll share out.

>62 labfs39: The publisher's rep at the booth said she saw the same response over and over. Mostly women but not all.

>63 cindydavid4: Nope, haven't read any of my PLA haul—they just arrived last week. But that one will be first, since I have a friend who's a fellow Olivia Laing and gardening person, and if I like it I'll buy her a copy when it comes out.

Sorry you missed the earth shake but glad you had a good conference. I like the idea of a history of sound (from your arcs)

>65 dchaikin: I was drawn to the title too, though it's a short story collection. We shall see...

Finished Alice Winn's In Memoriam on an otherwise unambitious post-errands Saturday. I had heard a lot of positive things from friends who'd read it and it didn't disappoint—a solid, often gripping, story of two British public school boys/young men each silently in love with the other who both enlist to fight during WWI. It's a very strong first novel, where you can see Winn exerting very careful control over the pacing so that it's not all carnage—but I did feel that when the story left the trenches it lost some energy, I suppose by virtue of how do you write non-action action that stands up to that. But I was still drawn in, and I thought she did a good job of keeping the love story not too sentimental, given the backdrop. Plus you've just got to hand it to the author for taking on that war as subject matter in the first place—it was an ugly, out-of-scale conflict (I know, when are wars not).

Now, finally, doing what I've been wanting to all year—picked up Daniel Mason's North Woods again after having put it aside months ago for various other distractions. So far it's very charming, and a nice break from the Somme.

oh i hope you enjoy! Im half a mind to reread it!

And here's my official review of Daniel Belasco's Women Artists in Midcentury America: A History in Ten Exhibitions:

In this well-researched survey, art historian Belasco takes on a particular cultural moment: the relatively conservative period when women were emerging as a force in contemporary art, but before the feminist art movements and calls for greater representation of the 1960s and ’70s. From the 1943 Exhibition by 31 Women at Peggy Guggenheim’s Art of This Century gallery in Manhattan, which showcased American women as heirs to the male European avant-garde tradition, to the 1962 Mount Holyoke College Art Museum’s energizing Women Artists in America Today, Belasco plumbs publicity material, photographs, correspondence, and reviews to dive deeply into each show and its art-world reverberations. Belasco’s presentation is academic but accessible, and his scholarship is rewardingly thorough, providing extensive context around the curatorial choices involved in assembling the featured paintings, sculpture, photographs, prints, and textile art. He pays close attention to the frequent exclusion of the art of women of color from these shows—the San Francisco Women Artists 1952 exhibition being a notable exception—and points to Black, Asian, Native, and Latina artists of the time whose work might have strengthened the exhibitions.

Scholarly in tone, this would be a good inclusion for a contemporary art history collection, with appeal for students, researchers, or anyone with a strong interest in modern art or women’s studies.

>69 lisapeet: Oh, I am very interested in that one. Is that work by Ruth Asawa on the cover?

>70 RidgewayGirl: That is Ruth Asawa's work on the cover, from the San Francisco exhibit—it's one of the things that attracted me to the book in the first place, aside from the subject of women in art, which is a big interest of mine. I saw the Asawa drawing show at the Whitney last winter and it really hit me hard, just one of those times when an exhibit can fire up all your synapses—I had to get the catalog (from Better World Books—much better price than the museum store, sorry Whitney) just to have all that good art close at hand when I want to look at it again.

The book is good. It's a little dry in a way I can't quite put my finger on—not academic exactly, and it doesn't even try to be chatty in the way that Katy Hessel is, for instance. Maybe dense is the better word. But it's absolutely worth taking your time to read if you're into the subject, because he's super thorough, and brings in a lot of external information, as I mentioned in my review. You come away from it very informed and plugged into that whole time. Well, I say you... I did. Everyone's mileage will vary.

>69 lisapeet: This does sound fascinating, Lisa. Great comments. It does sound like a book to be taken slowly. I will look for it. The cover is stunning.

>67 lisapeet: Glad you enjoyed In Memoriam. I agree it was imperfect, but for me the good far outweighed the flaws and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

>69 lisapeet: Looks interesting!

>71 lisapeet: >72 BLBera: >73 AlisonY: Both very good books in VERY different ways. I do like mixing up my reading experience like that

Right now I'm deep into North Woods and enjoying it so much—a favorite time range and place for me, and I really like Mason's writing about the natural world. He has a lot of heart in general, and it all is working for me so far.

I played hooky for half of last Thursday after finishing up a huge work project, and met a friend at the Morgan Library and Museum—one of my very favorite NYC museums. We saw two great animal-centric exhibitions: Beatrix Potter: Drawn to Nature, which featured a lot of Potter's sketchbooks (both juvenilia and adult), plus her illustrated letters to her former governess's young son; and Walton Ford: Birds and Beasts of the Studio.

I'm a lifelong lover of Potter's work, since my parents got me all those beautiful little books of hers when I was a kid—I would read anything with a talking animal in it, and those were just such jewels. As a letter writer, I especially loved her picture letters, with animals both real and imagined.

Ford is a contemporary artist who paints animals somewhat in the style of Audubon, but with more of an edge. He often takes legends (urban and otherwise) involving animals being where they shouldn't—often escaped zoo and circus beasts. This show had a few of his large paintings and a lot of studies and sketches, which I always really like to see. I got a kick out of the resonance of one of the large paintings, Ars Gratia Artis, and the cover of the book I was reading at the time, North Woods.





Anyway, if you enjoy art about animals and are in the NYC area (Potter is up until June 9, Ford into October), definitely take a detour there. Plus the library part is neat, if you haven't been. Well, even if you have.

>76 lisapeet: My mother-in-law lived next door to the Morgan Library, so we used to pop in fairly often. I would like to go back, maybe when I'm in NYC in July. I haven't been in ages as she passed away 16 years ago. Have you read The Personal Librarian? I did for book club, and it gave me added insight into the library's history.

>77 labfs39: I haven't read it, Lisa, but I definitely have an interest in Greene. I've heard mixed things about the book but would read it anyway, just for that. Some of the most electrifying shows I've seen have been at the Morgan—something about the small size, the curation, I don't know.

>78 lisapeet: I would preferred to have read a biography, but my book club chose it the novel. My MIL was frustrated during the building of the addition because of the noise and traffic. The new cafe is nice though. :-)

Both Potter and Ford exhibits sound fascinating, Lisa. The Morgan will be on my WL for my next NYC visit.

Happy belated birthday, Lisa. I hope you celebrated.

>81 BLBera: Thanks, Beth! I had a lovely birthday, spread out over a few days, in spite of (or maybe because of) zero expectations going in. Saw lots of good, longtime friends—a bunch from high school—over the course of three days, plus went to a Joni Mitchell tribute concert, the Sonia Delaunay exhibit at the Bard Graduate Center (early 20th-c. textile and general design, really neat), and the American Museum of Natural History, where my friend and I caught the insectarium, hall of gems and minerals, and revamped Northwest Coast Hall (which is still the best-smelling place on earth, IMO). Lots of good shared meals, including a very fancy sushi dinner and ice cream after, plus some happy phone calls.

I got one book from my friend Lauren, who can always pick a good one that I don't have: a lovely Persephone edition of Marjory Fleming by Oriel Malet, which she recently read and loved.

And just in case I hadn't gotten any books at all, I bought myself two from my wish list: Helen Humphreys's The Frozen Thames and The Eye of the Beholder: Julia Pastrana's Long Journey Home by Cecilia Fajardo. Julia Pastrana was a "hairy girl" (aka bearded lady) and performer in the early 19th century, and a hairy girl figures in my as-yet-and-probabably-not-ever-to-be-written novel—the book is on the academic side, though with lots of nice illustrations, and I've wanted it forever, so this was my treat to myself.

Also a bunch of fountain pen ink to use up a gift card that was going to expire next month.

So: another year older and very behind in my reviews... I'll get to 'em. Hope everyone here is doing OK.

That sounds like a perfect set of birthday activities!

>83 RidgewayGirl: It was! I tend to have kind of ehhhh birthdays—last year for the big one with the zero at the end I was at a work event, and then did nothing fun after I got home. But this was a great confluence of friends in town, and we picked good stuff to do.

Trying to catch up a bit on my reviews... at least some of the more noteworthy books.



Finished Rumer Godden's In This House of Brede on Easter, appropriately enough, since there are several great set pieces in the book that take place on Easter, and just in time for my book club discussion. We all loved the book, as did I—it's both smart and kind, and very well written. I've got a soft spot for nun stories, and the writing and structure here are great. It's a lovely portrait of the dynamics of an enclosed group of people deeply involved in each other's lives—really, anyone who thinks first person plural is an interesting way to get at a cluster consciousness but finds that it gets tiring after a while should take a look at what she does here, moving between voices and minds and even time frames with beautiful, almost acrobatic control, but the writing's never flashy. It's about NUNS, so of course it's not—small, deft story arcs, characters who grow through their voices and deeds, and what struck me as a beautiful portrait of the contemplative life without ever being sentimental.

I know a few other folks here have read it—what did you think? It was a great book club choice, lots of ways into liking it.

Happy belated birthday, Lisa. It sounds like you had a pleasant one. And books!

>86 labfs39: Thank you! It was, and there were.

Belated happy birthday! oooh fountain pen ink splurge, how I feel it. Have you seen the line made by Pilot (Iroshizuku) in Japan? It's not new but I've been collecting them slowly. The latest I got is the "Murasaki Shikibu" ... plummy, ofc!

>82 lisapeet: Happy Belated Birthday! The Frozen Thames is a lovely book, and one you could dip into every winter I think.

>88 LolaWalser: I love that Murasaki Shikibu! Those Pilot inks are really luscious in general—I recently got a bottle of the very sexy Yama-Budo. In this batch I got a few different dusky pinky-purple-grays, of which I probably own too many already, but I really like writing with them.

It sounds like you had lovely birthday, Lisa. I will suggest In this House of Brede to my book club. I love The Frozen Thames.

>76 lisapeet: I'd like to visit NY so I can go to places like the Morgan Library and Museum you mentioned a while ago. NY has a lot of cool museums.

>82 lisapeet: A belated happy birthday!

>85 lisapeet: I'm adding this to my wishlist though as neither my local or state library have it I'm not sure where I'm going to get it from.

Happy very belated birthday, it sounds like you had a lovely celebration.

>91 BLBera: >93 rv1988: >94 rhian_of_oz: Thank you! Last year's (six-oh) was such a bomb, so I was happy to get a good one on the books.

>92 icepatton: There's so much good stuff to see here! I hope you do make it some time. I've been making a conscious effort to get out to museums and galleries more often—it's at least part of the reason to put up with living in NYC. I'm certainly not here for the weather (well, except last week, which was post-heat-wave gorgeous).

Today's cultural public service announcement is for a little animated film, Robot Dreams, which I saw last week. If you like a little ambiguity with your gentle but bittersweet stories, if you miss New York City the way it used to be (or think you might), and if you like really fun animation, check it out. This is the movie I wanted to make when I was an 18-year-old art student—I drew reams of cartoons of punks and city dwellers as animals—but never had the attention span for animation, and I'm so glad someone else did! I ended up buying the graphic novel it's based on, also called Robot Dreams, which is a great little wordless book that I'll be reading with (not just to) my future grandchild, due this January (talk about burying the lede, eh?).

I'm just back from the American Library Association Annual conference in San Diego—it was lovely getting a dose of Southern California after all this NYC summer, but too much air time for my liking, even if they were totally trouble-free flights. I'm tired! But grabbed a bunch of cool ARCs. I had them shipped, because I'm getting smarter in my old age, and will let you know what I got when they arrive.

>95 lisapeet: Thanks for the link to Robot Dreams, the trailer looks so interesting. I especially liked the door to the dog's house, accurately labelled "Dog". Not sure why but that really tickled me.

Whoops, I've been away a while.

>96 rv1988: Rasdhar, if you have a chance to see Robot Dreams—I think it's in wider distribution at this point—it's worth seeking out. Lovely dry humor and sweetness.

I'm going to see if I can catch up on some reviews, and get back in the swim here.

I really enjoyed Daniel Mason's North Woods, diffused and variably paced as it was. It's a place saga, set on one piece of property in Western Massachusetts, from American settler times to the present, telling its stories as it changes hands. They're all very different, in tone as well as players, and most are engaging, often moving, funny, sometimes surprising in delightful ways. Most of the set pieces landed really nicely, and I actually liked how Mason wove in a thread of the supernatural—I'm not always a fan of such things in an otherwise realist book, but these fit naturally, the way you have at least one friend who bona fide believes in ghosts or astrology and it doesn't make them particularly weird, it's just their thing. Plus the setting and a lot of the history lined up with my personal likings, so that was a winner. Long book, but it goes by quickly, like a river tour where you get out every mile or two to visit what's on shore. Very worth diving in.

I liked Waubgeshig Rice's Moon of the Crusted Snow well enough—it was a quick read that kept my attention all the way through. The Indigenous community setting was probably my favorite part, and the widespread grid failure disaster at the heart of the story was plenty scary to consider. But that's the thing—the apocalyptic event was scarier in my mind than on the pages, which focused on the native community and personalities, and didn't always keep the tension intact. There was a lot more telling than showing all the way through, which in the end left the book a bit flat for me. It wasn't bad, though, and I still may read the sequel just to find out what happened to everyone.

At first glance, the three disciplines referenced in the title of Yxta Maya Murray's We Make Each Other Beautiful: Art, Activism, and the Law seem like vastly different concepts. But the reader with an interest in any one of them will get the connection within a few pages: Art, activism, and law have full potential to inform each other deeply, and do—particularly in the work of woman of color and queer of color artist/activists, or artivists, as Murray terms them. Murray, a Latinx art critic and law professor, tells the story of these artivists and their work with insight, affection, and an eye for interconnections and influence. There is something here for anyone with an interest in art, power, change, and hope, and much to be learned. As Murray writes, “artivism ‘works’ as an agent of legal change in the same way that social movements have always done: by pushing at the law, disagreeing with it, challenging it, breaking it, and thus transforming it.”

I interviewed Murray about the book for Bloom. If this sounds like your kind of thing, then it probably is—it definitely is an interest of mine, and I wasn't disappointed in her scholarship or the points she made. Smart stuff, with a strong sense of how art connects to the world at large if you pay attention.

Janet Hobhouse's The Furies was beautiful and sad—a beautifully well-written story of growing up as a brilliant and dysfunctional woman, in a family that mirrored and reinforced those qualities, during the mid-20th century. Also tragic because Hobhouse died of cancer in her early 40s before it was completely finished, so the pacing is a little uneven—but the first part, where she's growing up with her charismatic mess of a mother, is just gorgeous.

Aww, I liked Téa Obreht's The Morningside so much for what felt like purely emotional reasons. It was a fun and often very sweet dystopian read—I don't even think those two terms are at odds anymore, which probably says more about my reading habits than I'd like—about an island city, loosely modeled on NYC, in a climate-ravaged future, and an immigrant girl and her mother navigating the strange world that's new to them in layers of ways. Obreht came to the U.S. as a child, so she gets the child's immigrant sense right (to the best of my knowledge), and even though the story is told years later in the adult voice of the girl, I still bought her as a young, brave, scared young person and liked her for it. Obreht crammed an awful lot of stuff in, subplots and questions of what reality looks like to a young person without enough personal or familial ballast, but I found them all engaging and enjoyed the book as a whole. Points also for the post-climate-change dystopia being very believable.

OK, I'll stop with the back reviews for a bit. The summer has flown by a bit alarmingly... I know time speeds up as you get older, but this is ridiculous. Highlights post-ALA conference included a lovely, hot day with Lisa (labfs39) at the Cloisters, which is probably the best place for feeling cool in NYC, with its two-foot thick stone walls—we gave up on the idea of walking anywhere after, though, and had a nice air conditioned car ride downtown. Saw a couple of films and art exhibits—made it to the Met for the Harlem Renaissance/European Modernist show just in time before it closed—and have mostly been spending a lot of time hanging out in the yard and going for short walks up and down the block (progress!) with Jasper. And working, of course, in case I even need to mention that. I'm off for the next week-plus, though, which is very welcome. My sister-in-law is coming to town, so I figured I can have a little social time, help my husband wrangle her, and get some errands out of the way, plus take naps and read and eat lots of stone fruit before it goes away—this was a fabulous summer for nectarines and plums! And my tomato crop did well too.

Exciting news: I'm going to be a grandma! My son and daughter-in-law are expecting a baby boy at the end of January, so that'll be pretty awesome. I'm trying to find a date when I can get up there soon for a long weekend—he doesn't get a lot of two-day weekends as a resident (third year!), so planning gets like a logic puzzle.

And I never listed my ALA haul:
  
The Berry Pickers by Amanda Peters
Homeland of My Body: New and Selected Poems by Richard Blanco
That Librarian: The Fight Against Book Banning in America by Amanda Jones
I Heard There Was a Secret Chord: Music as Medicine by Daniel J. Levitin
Playground by Richard Powers
Book and Dagger: How Scholars and Librarians Became the Unlikely Spies of World War II by Elyse Graham
A Kid from Marlboro Road by Edward Burns
Isola: A Novel by Allegra Goodman
We Were Once a Family: A Story of Love, Death, and Child Removal in America by Roxanna Asgarian
Tasmania by Paolo Giordano
Rental House by Weike Wang
The Heart in Winter by Kevin Barry
and, sadly, just a sample (yes, I'm greedy) of Tell Me a Story Where the Bad Girl Wins: The Life and Art of Barbara Shermund by Caitlin McGurk... I'll probably end up buying the book.

And am I reading any of these? No. I just finished Hisham Matar's My Friends, since this year's Booker longlist caught my scattered attention, and now I'm on to Percival Everett's James, from last year's conference take-home.

Congratulations on your happy family news. Hope to see you soon. Cheers!

Grandkids are the best! Congrats.

Great book haul. And I know what you mean about reading them right away. I am still looking at the pile I brought back from Portland in November...

I also enjoyed Morningside and North Woods. I enjoyed your comments although did you know that The Morningside comments are repeated?

I didn't admire the writing in Moon of the Crusted Snow, and have been debating about whether to read the sequel. Maybe you can read it and tell me what happens? :)

>99 lisapeet: Moon was uneven, but the First Nations aspect and that they simply didn't know what happened and had no way of finding out was a strength. Too many dystopian novels want to explain everything and it's more interesting (and scarier) when we are left as unknowing as the characters we're following. For what it's worth, I liked the sequel but it makes the mistake of explaining things and losing a lot of what made the first book special. Feel free to skip.

>103 lisapeet: Lovely haul and I would be jealous, but I'll be in Chicago for the Printers Row Book Festival and will no doubt return with several books.

Mazel tov! how fun to be a grandparent. My brother just became a great grand (ive been calling him Zayde 2) and he is over the moon. and now Im a great aunt which feels so weird coz the only great aunt I remembered was an old lady. Oh wait......

Congratulations on becoming (soon) a grandparent! I hope you have fun :-)
I don't know what to think of Moon of the Crusted Snow: I was going to download it, then read a couple of negative reviews and decided it probably wasn't worth my time, but the downsides mentioned in >99 lisapeet: are all things I don't mind and I like the premise!

Congratulations on your grandbaby! How exciting! I love your book haul too. Book and Dagger and That Librarian both caught my eye. I'll look forward to your impressions. I just picked up an e-version of The Berry Pickers. Love your book reviews too. I have North Woods in the hopper. I liked Moon of the Crusted Snow in large part because it evoked very pleasant and visceral memories of being at my grandparent's camp in northern Maine.

Good luck to, with, and all around the grandkid!

>104 rocketjk: Thanks, Jerry, and ditto. Fall weather is much more conducive to leaving the house, at least for me.

>105 BLBera: Thank you, Beth—and no, I hadn't realized that I repeated a chunk of the review. That's what I get for cutting and pasting from my different comments here and there. Fixed! I have the sequel to Moon, so maybe I'll read it someday... the first was very good airplane reading.

>106 RidgewayGirl: Or... not. Life is short. And I'm jealous of you for the Printers Row Book Festival—I haven't been to a good book sale in ages and miss that thrill of the hunt.

>107 cindydavid4: Thanks, and yeah, I'm old now. Maybe I'll have him call me Auntie Mame or something (jk... how pretentious would that be?).

>108 Dilara86: Thanks! I wouldn't let me steer you away from the book—it's a good page turner, even with its flaws.

>109 labfs39: Thank you, Lisa! I'm looking forward to digging into that pile.

>110 LolaWalser: Thank you, Lola! It's always nice to have news that invites benedictions.

>103 lisapeet: I just ordered That librarian: the fight against book banning in America by Amanda Jones because I plan on attending her event at the Decatur book festival next month.

article in the NYT about the horrible treatment of librarians in Louisiana. The courts wont stand with them because these rabid dogs hav free speech. I just dont get why people think it ok to verbally abuse others. Im not sure what Id do if I were them. someone said they should move away; They arent the ones that should move. looking forward to your thoughts on her book

Well that's exciting news re the grand baby! Delighted for you.

>112 markon: If you get a chance to see her, do—she's a great speaker and just a lovely, warm person. I've read bits and pieces out of her book but am looking forward to sitting down with it start-to-finish.

>113 cindydavid4: Librarians are getting flak all over the country, even in some areas within states that are very freedom-of-information-friendly, like California. But the courts are actually in libraries' corner just about all of the time, thanks to that handy First Amendment. These threats and attempted pieces of legislation are mostly methods of intimidation and chilling, and largely don't hold up in courts of law, but ohhh don't get me started on the harm they can do in all sorts of small ways.

>114 AlisonY: Thanks! I just got a new set of sonogram photos yesterday—he's healthy and sucking his thumb. He comes by that last naturally, since I sucked my thumb until I was 9 (tmi?).

Yay for healthy grands! And congratulations :-)

Hi again! I've been AWOL again, a combination of work taking up all my patience with being on the computer and typing words and my sweet doggo wanting to go outside and play a LOT.

At the moment I'm writing from a hotel room in Columbia, SC—I'm here for a couple of days for a work event. It's a heavy day to be out in the world, and traveling from the blue to the red. In addition to the event, our annual library Directors' Summit, I'm doing interviews for our post-election library coverage, which will all have to get written up in a big hurry because our next issue closes a week from tomorrow. So... yeah, I think "heavy" is a good descriptor for the moment.

But work and politics aside, things are pretty OK. I've been reading excruciatingly slowly—it took me almost a month to finish Rachel Kushner's wonderfully strange Creation Lake because some days I just couldn't read another word before my eyes rolled up in my head at night—but there's so much I really want to read that I'm trying to prioritize book life a bit more.

Right now I'm reading Sylvia Townsend Warner's Summer Will Show for my book club—dense and twisty sentences wound around a consciously archaic voice, but I'm enjoying it even if I often have to go back and read sentences over because they need more time and concentration. That's not the worst thing in a book.

Went up to visit the son and daughter-in-law a couple of weekends ago and they're all doing great (well, my son came down with something while we were there that turned out to be COVID, but fortunately none of the rest of us caught it). Baby boy is healthy, due at the end of January, and I'm happy to have something to really look forward to in a huge way.

Hello Lisa. I've been AWOL as well and have only just seen your lovely news about your soon-to-be grandson. Congratulations!

A grandson sounds lovely. What a wonderful thing to look forward to. Good luck in Columbia.

It is lovely to think you have a grandson to look forward to.

Congratulations, Lisa. How wonderful!

Thanks for the update, Lisa. Exciting news about the grandson!

Thank you, everyone! I'm glad to have something (someone!) to look forward to... speculation about what kind of world he's inheriting notwithstanding. The baby shower is this Saturday, and they've asked that instead of cards, everyone bring a book—either new or pre-loved: "Each time it is read, baby will think of you!" So of course not to be outdone, I'm bringing a bookshelf—a nice small green one, which I'm hand painting over the next few days with stars and planets and a rocket ship or two.

The event in South Carolina went very well—those few days after the election, people really wanted to talk and be together. Along with a lot of civic and cultural institutions, libraries look to be in for a rough ride over the next four years. We closed the December issue last week, so now on to the next thing and the next.

I'm still reading Summer Will Show—it's slow going, even though I generally like it, aside from the constant description of one of the main characters as "the Jewess." It's... of its time and place, let's say that. This is one of those books that I think I'll reserve judgment on until I'm done, which will hopefully be sometime this year. My book reading has been pokey. In the meantime, I'll post some back reviews, and pretend I'm reading at my normal rate.

I didn't love Edan Lepucki's Time's Mouth as much as I'd thought I would, given the plot (all-woman cult in the California foothills, time travel, messed-up childhoods). None of the characters gave me much to hang feelings on, either affection or dislike. But it was an entertaining plot line, and good enough to stick with.

I bought Sarah Varon's Robot Dreams after seeing the film it's based on, which is just lovely, and ticked every box I had—everyone go see it! Especially if you lived in NYC in the 80s—it's such a love letter to those days. It's the film I wanted to make when I was 19 and didn't have one iota of the discipline necessary. This storyline is both simpler and more complex than that of the movie, and makes me think of reading with (not TO) my upcoming grandson to talk about friendship, loyalty, loss, etc. I love the simple, soulful illustrations.

Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution was entertaining, with a great premise—19th-century Oxford students of translation come to understand and then engage with colonialism via the nuances of language, all framed in this fantastical alt-universe where industry is essentially driven by silver bars with inscribed words in different languages that have parallel but not exact meanings, powered by the subtleties of etymology... if that sounds confusing it's owing to my description, because she does a great job of building the logic involved. The time and place were a lot of fun, though I do think it dragged a bit at the end, getting didactic and sad. But it's clearly being set up for a sequel, which I'll probably read just to see if Kuang can do it again.

>123 lisapeet: oh what a lovely gift; theyll surely treasure it

My neice just had baby; (How did I get to be great aunt!!?) Ill see her at tday dinner, so excited; but like you, I wonder what her life will be like

>125 lisapeet: oh i want that and so glad you loved Babel!

Hi Lisa! A bookshelf is a great gift. Your grandson will love it. I've had my eye on Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History for a long time; maybe next year. Robot Dreams sounds great.

>129 BLBera: If you enjoy word play and geeky-level etymology coupled with a good academic story, I think you’ll like Babel.

>123 lisapeet:

speculation about what kind of world he's inheriting notwithstanding

Considering the utterly unashamed attacks on what's left of education and culture in the US, I'm picturing something akin to the scattered hovels of the book people hiding in the woods in Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451. Books will be a nice inheritance!

>117 lisapeet: Congratulations, how lovely to have a grandchild to look forward to.

>130 lisapeet: That description sounds like it was written for me. :)

Hello hello—happy end-of-year to all, whether it's happy in general or just happy that this year is over... either works for me.

I'm having a quiet week off, enjoying not having to look at the clock much, the chance to get a lot of little chores taken care of—which I guess doesn't sound like much of a vacation, but given the tight pack of my regular schedule, it feels downright luxurious. We'll be seeing the kids in January when the baby makes his appearance, so we didn't go up for Christmas—just laid low and ate well here. I missed the company, but not the travel arrangements... one of my items for today is to find a pet sitter who can come stay here overnight, because I don't want to bring Jasper up there for this visit. There must be some kind of reliable service that offers such a thing, right? It's New York.

This was a pretty poor reading year for me—too much going on, and too much work wearing my eyeballs out to read more than a few pages before bed some days. But hey, life gets like that. Yet another reason I don't like reading for numbers, or list completion—as if there isn't enough in the world to feel bad about. Reading should be fun, however much or little I get to. I guess the good thing about that is that I'll actually be able to catch up on reviews before the year rolls over—I do like that feeling of completion.

Right now reading Yael van der Wouden's The Safekeep, which is fun. Very steamy, which was a good antidote to sitting in the DMV yesterday (actually not too long, and now I have my Enhanced ID well ahead of the May 2025 deadline).

great to see you around Lisa!

"Yet another reason I don't like reading for numbers, or list completion—as if there isn't enough in the world to feel bad about. Reading should be fun, however much or little I get to. "

this a thousand times this. a reason I let me thread laspe. Too hard to keep up and to many DNF due to lack of interest. I enjoy the serendipity of finding gems in other threads and feel very satisfied with my reading at present

wishing you a very happy new year!

Happy holidays and Hanukkah and time off… and kudos for surviving the dmv.

Glad you had a nice Christmas, Lisa, and I totally get work getting in the way of reading. As you say, there's enough in life to be stressed about without annoying oneself about some target number of books that should be read in a year.

A new grandchild in January sounds just about a perfect way to start into 2025. How exciting!

>134 lisapeet: "one of my items for today is to find a pet sitter who can come stay here overnight, because I don't want to bring Jasper up there for this visit. There must be some kind of reliable service that offers such a thing, right?"

You could try Rover.com If you can afford the not-cheapest option, you'll probably be okay. I found a couple of reliable cat-sitters that are able to give meds through it.

>134 lisapeet: Yet another reason I don't like reading for numbers, or list completion—as if there isn't enough in the world to feel bad about. Reading should be fun, however much or little I get to.

yes! Although I do like crunching the numbers on however many books I do read.

So exciting that the stork is nearly at your son's door!

Your week off sounds great, Lisa. It sounds like you had a nice holiday. A grandchild is the perfect way to start the new year.

Thanks, all! I'm enjoying having some unstructured time to catch up on things—just got to email inbox zero for the first time in probably five months.

Baby's due 1/23. I already said no to a January conference in Phoenix around the same time—I want to be able to jump when they say come on up. Plus I just didn't really want to go to the conference anyway.

I got exactly one book for Christmas, but it's fantastic. A friend who grew up in Moscow lost both parents this year, and has been taking trips over from upstate NY to clear out their apartment. She said she didn't want to keep this book for herself, but couldn't bear to throw it away, either, and knew that I would love it. I'm a big Moomintroll/Tove Jansson fan, and I think this is a compilation of folk tales illustrated by her, or by her and others—I can barely sound out the Cyrillic alphabet, and remember almost none of my high school Russian, so I'm going to have to ask her to translate some for me. But the pen-and-ink illustrations inside are absolutely gorgeous, just my kind of thing.

>141 lisapeet:

That's lovely! Moomintroll, Louis XIV, and others. There's a copy for sale (stated first edition, 1974) asking $550 American. But I think children's lit had huge printings in USSR, so maybe it's not that rare in general.

>142 LolaWalser: Aha! I got the Ludwig part, didn’t think Louis. “And other friends”?

>141 lisapeet: I totally get it but Id so love to have you visit here Maybe another time. But wow what a great find!

>143 lisapeet:

Actually "(others) completely different" which doesnt trip off the tongue that well in English...