It feels like I’ve been caught up in a fairy tale. Who could believe it? One minute our house is drowning– my sister told the kids that it was being attacked by water dragons. Wise sister, knows that fantasy can turn even the...
The insurance adjustor says they’ll pay for us to stay in a residential hotel, two one-bedroom suites. We argue… seven people in four rooms for a month or more… sounds like hell. We make a counter-offer, combing Vrbo and...
A friend offers his family’s vacation house on Cape Cod for a couple of weeks. We accept his offer. And once all our things are packed and moved we check out of the hotel and decamp to the Cape. It’s a gorgeous vacation cottage in...
It was a slow trickle. The floorboards in the hall seemed wet. Did someone spill something? The water was definitely under the floorboards. They sloshed when you walked down the hall. Water oozing up with every step. The wet area got bigger and...
1. The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O by Neal Stephenson and Nicole Galland A fun science-fantasy time travel romp. Gosh I went in not knowing anything about DODO, not even that it had time travel and I really don’t want to spoil it for anyone. It...
1. A Time to Dance by Padma Venkatraman A juvenile novel set somewhere in India (I don’t think it’s ever made clear where the protagonist lives) with a first person narrative told as a series of lyric poems. Veda has been certain she has...
Interior, Blue A woman sits in a room alone at a table. Not a table with food or a table with work. A table that gleams faintly in the sunbeam that comes from the far window. Her eye traces the grain of the wood where the light makes it gleam and...
1. What Elephants Know by Eric Dinerstein A lovely middle grade novel about a boy in Nepal, a foundling whose adoptive father is head of the royal elephant stable. Nandu was found in the jungle being watched over by wild dogs; he says that...
Stop all the Clocks Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone, Silence the pianos and with muffled drum Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come. Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling...
1. Quo Vadis by Henryk Sienkiewicz I wrote a little (well, honestly, quite a bit actually) about the theme of Divine Mercy in Quo Vadis here. And I think that’s all I have to say for now, though this is one of those novels that I can tell is...
