Life: It Goes On - August 25

Happy Sunday! School may be back in session but we're getting a 100 degree reminder today that it's still summer. I'll probably spend most of the day inside enjoying the air conditioning...but I'd still rather it be summer than winter!

Last Week I: 

Listened To: We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichi and I started Elon Hilderbrand's The Five-Star Weekend. Up next is Trust by Hernan Diaz. 

Watched: The Democratic National Convention. 

Read: Lisa Wingate's Shelterwood and Shea McGee's The Art of Home. 

Made: On repeat from past weeks: pasta with olive oil, garden tomatoes & fresh basil; BLTs. This week we used up the rest of the bacon and more tomatoes with wedge salads. 

Enjoyed: I got a promotion at work the beginning of the month so The Big Guy and I finally celebrated last night. Food was so good (always is) and the service was marvelous; but we both ate too much and came home at 9:30 and crashed in front of the television. We're getting so old! 

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This Week I’m:  

Planning: When Mini-him moved, he discovered that he had a sturdy shelving unit that he didn't have room for so I told him I would store it for him as long as I got to use it while it's in my house. Yesterday I put it to use which had me working again in the basement. Took a load of stuff I'd culled last week to donate yesterday and almost have another load ready from what I got through yesterday. I'm inspired to keep working down there this week while it's too hot to spend too long outside. 

Thinking About: When we were at Miss C's parents' home last weekend, I was really envious of their basement (another thing that has me inspired to do the hard work downstairs). This week I've been pondering how to make our basement work in similar ways and what we might do long term. 

Feeling: Somehow I've managed to injure my back on the left side (it's the right side that has plagued me off and on the past couple of years) so I'm frustrated by the limitations that's put on me. 

Looking forward to: A three-day weekend next weekend. 

Question of the week: Do you have a basement? If so, what do you use it for? Family room? Craft room? Man cave? Mostly storage? 

***This week's review theme will be nonfiction.***

Decluttering At The Speed of Life: Winning Your Never-Ending Battle With Stuff by Dana K. White

Decluttering At The Speed of Life: Winning Your Never-Ending Battle With Stuff by Dana K. White

240 pages

Published February 2018 by Nelson, Thomas Inc. 

Publisher's Summary:

While the world seems to be in love with the idea of tiny houses and minimalism, many of us simply can't purge it all and start from nothing. Yet a home with too much stuff is difficult to maintain, so where do we begin? Add in paralyzing emotional attachments and constant life challenges, and it can feel almost impossible to make real decluttering progress.

In Decluttering at the Speed of Life, decluttering expert and author Dana White identifies the mindsets and emotional challenges that make it difficult to declutter. In her signature humorous approach, she provides workable solutions to break through these struggles and get clutter out—for good!

Not only does Dana provide strategies, but she dives deep into how to implement them, no matter the reader's clutter level or emotional resistance to decluttering. She helps identify procrasticlutter—the stuff that will get done eventually so it doesn't seem urgent—as well as how to make progress when there's no time to declutter.

In Decluttering at the Speed of Life, Dana’s chapters cover:

• Why You Need This Book (You Know Why)
• Your Unique Home
• Decluttering in the Midst of Real Life
• Change Your Mind, Change Your Home
• Breaking Through Your Decluttering Delusions
• Working It Out Room by Room
• Helping Others Declutter

As long as we're living and breathing, new clutter will appear. The good news is that by following Dana’s advice, decluttering will get easier, become more natural, and require significantly fewer hours, less emotional bandwidth, and little to no sweat to keep going.

My Thoughts: 

You may well be wondering why someone who has read so many books about decluttering, done 40 Bags In 40 Days so many times, and who follows multiple organizing/simplifying accounts on social media would need to read yet another book about decluttering. Fair enough. Even I wondered why I was checking out another book about decluttering. But Myquillen Smith, the Cozy Minimalist, recommended it and she recommended this one as one of her favorites. So here we are. 

And guess what? 

I learned a different way to view and attack decluttering. Some of what White says goes entirely against what I've learned before but I can certainly see the logic of it, especially for those who are new to decluttering. 

White speaks from experience; while she may not have met the dictionary definition of "hoarder," she started married life in a house that already had too much in it when two complete households merged with no reduction in "stuff." White is a person that can't pass up a good bargain and held on to things because they "might" be useful in the future. Then kids came along, items were inherited, hobbies came and went. She knows how hard it is to start the process and how much it takes to change a mindset. 

Thus was born a desire to reset her life and along the way she has developed a system that worked for her and has now worked for thousands of others. White hosts a podcast, writes a blog, and is the author of three books. She's speaks from her own experience and those of people who have reached out to her. 

Here's what differed in her approach from other approaches I've learned about: 

• She advocates using the Visibility Rule: start with the most visible spaces first. White advises this will ensure the results of efforts will be visible which will inspire readers to keep going and increase decluttering energy. 
• She does not advocate emptying a space, because you might lose steam part way through the process and end up with a bigger mess than you started with or become so overwhelmed that you just stop. 
• She does not, in this book at least, correlate decluttering with organizing. White wants it to be clear that you cannot even think about organizing until after you have completely decluttered and maybe not even then. Perhaps just keeping things decluttered will be enough, using her steps, to keep things relatively organized. 

In every space White recommends readers follow five steps: 

• Step 1: Trash - this one is self-explanatory and the easiest of the steps. Start with the most visible mess and do as much as you can in the time you have. 
• Step 2: Do The Easy Stuff - "Easy stuff is the stuff that has an established home somewhere else." What's different for me in this step is that White advocates taking each thing you find that's out of place to the correct place immediately; she suggests that putting in a box to handle later causes a potential new problem. 
• Step 3: Duh Clutter - these are things that you immediately can see need to be donated. 
• Step 4: Ask the Two Decluttering Questions - 
• #1 - If I needed this item, where would I look for it first? Take it there immediately. 
• #2 - If I needed this item, would it ever occur to me that I already had one? This might be something you use so rarely that you forget you own it and buy another without thinking to look for it. 
• Step 5: Make It Fit - like other decluttering experts, White urges readers to think of their spaces as containers. Your home is a container; each room, each closet, each cupboard, each drawer is a container. First consolidate the things you've been left with after the first four steps and then purge down to the limits of the container. 

White takes readers through each of these steps, room by room, including hobby rooms and storage spaces. She talks about having to declutter dreams (the hobby you'd been so excited to start, the baby clothes when it becomes clear there will be no more children). There is a section on helping others, including friends, children, and spouses (sadly, there was no magic trick to get your spouse on board) and another section on decluttering when you have to do it all (moving, elderly parents). Finally, she talks about how decluttering has to become a lifestyle, that it is something that you will always need to keep doing. Which is just what I needed to hear - I so often feel that I am failing when I am once again decluttering areas that I have decluttered again and again. Some of the advice here is old news to me and some of the steps won't be necessary for me in most spaces. But I'm definitely going to try using this system in some areas that have confounded me over the years. Wish me luck! 

The Paris Architect by Charles Belfoure

The Paris Architect by Charles Belfoure Paris Architect by Charles Belfoure

Read by Mark Bramhall

11 hours

Published October 2013 by Sourcebooks

Publisher's Summary: 

In 1942 Paris, architect Lucien Bernard accepts a commission that will bring him a great deal of money – and maybe get him killed. All he has to do is design a secret hiding place for a Jewish man, a space so invisible that even the most determined German officer won't find it while World War II rages on. He sorely needs the money, and outwitting the Nazis who have occupied his beloved city is a challenge he can't resist.

Soon Lucien is hiding more souls and saving lives. But when one of his hideouts fails horribly, and the problem of where to conceal a Jew becomes much more personal, and he can no longer ignore what's at stake.

My Thoughts: 

This book has been on my radar since shortly after it was published, but, as books do, it got pushed down the list until I couldn't remember what it was about. Not only that, but I was paying so little attention that, for some reason, I didn't really notice that picture on the cover, it was as if it were a blur to me. Now I can't imagine why I didn't see what it is and understand what the book was going to be about. As you know, though, I'm kind of a fan of going into a book unaware of what's coming. 

• Charles Belfoure is himself an architect which becomes clear because of the detail involved in explaining both the buildings Lucien designs for the Nazis and the hiding places he designs for the Jews. 
• Lucien is a man of questionable morals. He makes little effort to save his marriage, chases after his mistress like a school boy, justifies designing the buildings for the Nazis by convincing himself that the buildings will be used by the French after the war, and only creates the hiding places because it gets him the bigger projects and pays exceedingly well. Slowly, his eyes begin to open, his heart begins to open, and he risks himself for more than just prestige and money. 
• There are some interesting characters in the book: Manet, the industrialist who draws Lucien into both working with the Nazis and hiding the Jews; Herzog, the Wehrmacht officer in charge of the buildings Lucien is designing, who Lucien develops a bond with; and Pierre, a French Jewish boy who comes to live with Lucien after his entire family is killed. 
• I wish Belfoure would have spent more time developing these characters and less time writing about sexual exploits and torture for a particularly horrible Nazi soldier. You can imagine how unprepared I was for those, having had no idea what I was getting into when I picked up the book - I had to fast forward over them, they were so gruesome. 
• I found the ending very satisfying. That last hour of the book held some surprises, some people got what they deserved, some people turned out to be more than I expected. 

I'm Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy

I'm Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy

Read by Jennette McCurdy

6 hours, 26 minutes

Published August 2022 by Simon & Schuster

Publisher's Summary: Jennette McCurdy was six years old when she had her first acting audition. Her mother's dream was for her only daughter to become a star, and Jennette would do anything to make her mother happy. So she went along with what Mom called “calorie restriction,” eating little and weighing herself five times a day. She endured extensive at-home makeovers while Mom chided, “Your eyelashes are invisible, okay? You think Dakota Fanning doesn't tint hers?” She was even showered by Mom until age sixteen while sharing her diaries, email, and all her income.

In I'm Glad My Mom Died, Jennette recounts all this in unflinching detail-just as she chronicles what happens when the dream finally comes true. Cast in a new Nickelodeon series called iCarly, she is thrust into fame. Though Mom is ecstatic, emailing fan club moderators and getting on a first-name basis with the paparazzi (“Hi Gale!”), Jennette is riddled with anxiety, shame, and self-loathing, which manifest into eating disorders, addiction, and a series of unhealthy relationships. These issues only get worse when, soon after taking the lead in the iCarly spinoff Sam & Cat alongside Ariana Grande, her mother dies of cancer. Finally, after discovering therapy and quitting acting, Jennette embarks on recovery and decides for the first time in her life what she really wants.

Told with refreshing candor and dark humor, I'm Glad My Mom Died is an inspiring story of resilience, independence, and the joy of shampooing your own hair.

My Thoughts: 

• I was aware of this book when it first came out, just a year and a half after my own mom died. I couldn't have picked it up then; I couldn't have imagined being glad your mom died, even though I was certainly aware that there are a lot of terrible moms out there. 
• I listened to this one. You all know that I'll often push the speed up to 125% when I'm trying to finish a book before my loan expires OR if I feel like the reading is just too slow. Sometimes it sounds much more normal, sometimes it sounds like someone is racing through the book but I generally grow used to it. In this book, McCurdy is reading at a pace that kept me checking to see whether or not I'd upped the speed to 125%. It's fast, her voice is high pitched. I actually considered slowing the speed. 
• I got to the last five minutes of the book and was confused about when McCurdy reached the point when she felt like she was glad her mom had died. I mean, it's clear that she does and that the point of the book is to show the reasons why the book has its title. But when we got to that point, I think it was even more impactful because she waited to long to get there. 
• Wow. McCurdy's mom was a real piece of work. I mean, I've heard of moms causing eating disorders in their children and forcing them into careers because that's what the mom wants. But I have never heard of a mom insisting on showering her children well into their teens. Or moving in with them after they move out.
• I didn't know who McCurdy was before this book. My daughter must have missed the iCarly years and certainly missed the Sam and Cat years. But of course I was familiar with Nickelodeon. What an eyeopener this book is into the workings of that channel. She doesn't name names, to her credit; but does reveal that the creator of her shows was eventually made to sit in a different room when the shows were being filmed. 
• It's a tough read (or listen, as the case may be) even though McCurdy uses humor throughout. "Seeing" someone being abused, developing an eating disorder, falling into toxic relationships, and becoming an addict is hard. Especially having raised a daughter who suffered from an eating disorder, was an addict, and has been involved in a number of toxic relationships. But much as my daughter survived and now thrives, McCurdy is an inspiration and an example of how therapy can save lives. 
• In the end, as hard as it is to read, I hope McCurdy's candor will help others. 

Life: It Goes On - August 18

Happy Sunday! I hope you all had a lovely weekend! We certainly did. Got up early yesterday and drove, with Mini-him and Miss C, north to visit her parents. They have such a beautiful home in a wooded area overlooking Lewis and Clark Lake. We attended River Boat Days, visited a good local brewery, took a sunset-into-night boat ride, and went out for breakfast on the lake this morning. We very much like Miss C's parents and talked and laughed a lot and made plans for another visit. Our boys have both hit the jackpot with in-laws (or, as this case may be, future in-laws). 

Last Week I: 

Listened To: I finished The Villa by Rachel Hawkins then took a break from books and listened to an episode of Kelly Corrigan's podcast, Kelly Corrigan Wonders, and a lot of music. 

Watched: The closing ceremony of the Paris Olympics which I thought was kind of a bore, some preseason NFL football, and the first two episodes of season 4 of Emily In Paris (even though I wasn't happy about what happened in episode 1). 

Read: The Art of Home by Shea McGee and Shelterwood by Lisa Wingate. 

Made: Lots of caprese (salad, platter) and a couple of different pasta dishes because it's summer and everything has to have tomatoes involved in some way. 

Enjoyed: More than once this weekend, I looked over and saw this two holding hands. Again and again, I heard them laughing together. My boy is so relaxed and himself around Miss C. It makes this mama's heart so happy to see her kid this happy. 

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This Week I’m:  

Planning: What I didn't enjoy last week was getting water in my basement after we got 7" of rain in 24 hours. I spent a chunk of Wednesday evening and a good part of Thursday dealing with the aftermath of that. Being in the basement that much had me really thinking about what should stay and what needs to go. I have a vehicle load ready to go and this week I'm going to work on getting a second load of stuff out of there. After being in Miss C's one-year-old home this weekend and seeing their basement, I have visions of what ours could be and I'm inspired to make that happen. 

Thinking About: Doing some painting. I just ordered four paint samples. We'll see how long it takes me to get around to using them! 

Feeling: I'm so tired. We did spend a lot of time sitting and relaxing this weekend, but being "on" for 36 hours wears me out, even when I do like the people and I am enjoying myself. 

Looking forward to: Book club Tuesday to discuss The Measure. 

Question of the week: Are you in camp "let's don't rush summer" or camp "schools in so it must be fall now?"

Here One Moment by Liane Moriarty

Here One Moment by Liane Moriarty

512 pages

Published September 2024 by Crown Publishing

Source: my copy courtesy of the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review 

Publisher's Summary: [SKIP THIS IF YOU WANT TO BE SURPRISED BY THIS BOOK]

If you knew your future, would you try to fight fate?

Aside from a delay, there will be no problems. The flight will be smooth, it will land safely. Everyone who gets on the plane will get off. But almost all of them will be forever changed.
 
Because on this ordinary, short, domestic flight, something extraordinary happens. People learn how and when they are going to die. For some, their death is far in the future—age 103!—and they laugh. But for six passengers, their predicted deaths are not far away at all.
 
How do they know this? There were ostensibly more interesting people on the flight (the bride and groom, the jittery, possibly famous woman, the giant Hemsworth-esque guy who looks like an off-duty superhero, the frazzled, gorgeous flight attendant) but none would become as famous as “The Death Lady.”
 
Not a single passenger or crew member will later recall noticing her board the plane. She wasn’t exceptionally old or young, rude or polite. She wasn’t drunk or nervous or pregnant. Her appearance and demeanor were unremarkable. But what she did on that flight was truly remarkable.
 
A few months later, one passenger dies exactly as she predicted. Then two more passengers die, again, as she said they would. Soon no one is thinking this is simply an entertaining story at a cocktail party.
 
If you were told you only had a certain amount of time left to live, would you do things differently? Would you try to dodge your destiny?

My Thoughts: 

Oh gosh, I just told you not to read the synopsis and now I have to give you my thoughts without giving away anything! Ok, let's give it a shot: 

• First up, it's Liane Moriarty. That's all it took for me to know I wanted to read this book and I suspect many of you will be feeling the same. Even when I didn't feel like her writing was up to her best (Nine Perfect Strangers), she always gives readers interesting characters and plenty to think about. Here One Moment succeeds on both counts. 
• I was twenty pages into this one and already telling a friend NOT to read the synopsis because it's key in those first pages to go in without any preconceived notions, to be left wondering who this woman is and why she is, in fact, remarkable.

"Later, not a single person will recall seeing the lady board the flight at Hobart Airport.

Nothing about her appearance or demeanor raises a red flag or even an eyebrow.

She is not drunk or belligerent or famous.

She is not injured, like the bespectacled hipster with his arm scaffolded in white guaze so that one hand is permanently pressed to his heart, as if he's professing his love or honesty.

She is not frazzled, like the sweaty young mother trying to keep her grip on a slippery baby, a furious toddler, and far too much carry-on.

She is not frail, like the stopped elderly couple wearing multiple heavy layers as if they're off to join Captain Scott's Antarctica expedition."

• When we figure out why the woman is remarkable, we'll spend the rest of the book thinking we know what's going to happen, waiting for it to happen, and wondering how Moriarty will frame it so that it's not anticlimactic. Trust me when I tell you that she will. 
• I absolutely loved how Moriarty moves from the plane to focus on just a few characters, whose stories we'll alternate between...including that woman. In fact, she will be the person we'll get to know the best, the one we'll grow to care the most about. 

If you're a fan of Moriarty's, you wont' be disappointed by this one. If you've never read Moriarty before, you'll become a fan of the way she can help readers relate to and care about her characters. Is it her best? In my opinion, no; that honor still goes to Big Little Lies for me. But this one is right up there, if for no other reason than the way she made me care about one particular character. 

Ladykiller by Katherine Wood

Ladykiller by Katherine Wood

368 pages

Published July 2024 by Random House Publishing Group - Ballentine/Bantam

Source: my copy courtesy of the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review

Publisher's Summary: 

Gia and Abby have been friends since childhood, forever bonded by the tragedy that unfolded in Greece when they were eighteen. Now thirty, heiress Gia is back in Greece with her shiny new husband, entertaining glamorous guests with champagne under the hot Mediterranean sun, while bookish Abby is working fourteen-hour days as an attorney. When Gia invites Abby on an all-expenses-paid trip to Sweden to celebrate her birthday, Abby’s thrilled to reconnect.

But on the day of her flight, Abby receives an ominous email that threatens to unearth the skeletons of her past, and when she and Gia’s brother, Benny, arrive in Sweden, Gia isn’t there. Worried, Abby and Benny fly to Greece, where they find Gia’s beachfront estate eerily deserted, the sole clue to her whereabouts the manuscript she penned, detailing the events leading up to her disappearance. Gia’s narrative reveals the dark truth about her provocative new marriage and the dirty secrets of their seductive guests, a story almost too scandalous to be believed. But the pages end abruptly, leaving more questions than answers.

How much of Gia’s story is true? Where is she now? And will Abby find her before it’s too late?

My Thoughts: 

The publisher reached out to me in December about this one, preapproving me to read it in Netgalley and I was intrigued enough to download it. But let's be honest, that cover would have drawn me to it if I'd come across it in December and I'm surprised I didn't "pick it up" immediately for a break from the winter weather.

But Ladykiller a summer read, through and through, the kind of book to devour on the beach or curled up in a vacation rental. While there's plenty of darkness in this one, it's not the kind of book that you'll get emotionally involved in to the point where your mood is impacted. 

Wood takes readers back and forth between Abby's point of view (present day and memories of how she and Gia came to be friends and how she came to be haded to Sweden) and Gia's latest manuscript. We're well into the book before we know why we're reading Gia's manuscript and not getting Gia's present day point of view and that's part of what makes this book work. There are a lot of twists and turns, a lot of questions about what happened in the past, a lot of red herrings, and a lot of setups that turn out to be not what you were expecting. 

In other reviews, I found that a lot of people don't like the ending of this one; it's ambiguous and leaves a lot of things open. Me? I really liked that - you know how often I say that I prefer books that don't tie everything up with a bow in the end. But there were things sprinkled throughout that book that didn't work as well for me. I struggled believing that someone as smart as Gia would be so gullible on multiple occasions. Near the end there's a reveal that didn't work for me, either. I felt like those involved would have caught on much more quickly. Will it stand the test of time or become a massive hit? Probably not. But it gave me plenty to like and was just the kind of book I like to pick up this time of year.  

Life: It Goes On - August 11

Happy Sunday! What a beautiful weekend we've had here - sunny with unseasonably cool temperatures. We spent the weekend evenings on decks/patios and blankets and jackets were required. Don't get me wrong - that doesn't mean I'm looking forward to autumn! In fact, I'm heading out today to buy more plants for my pots out back because I'm planning on being out there for another couple of months. 

Last Week I: 

Listened To: I'm Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy and I'm about half way through The Villa by Rachel Hawkins.

Watched: Not much besides the Olympics and some news coverage. 

Read: I finished Liane Moriarty's Here One Moment and started Decluttering at the Speed of Life: Winning Your Never-Ending Battle with Stuff by Dana K. White. I've also started Kate Atkinson's Death At The Sign Of The Rook and Lisa Wingate's Shelterwood. It's a good thing the Olympics are done today - I need to get back to spending more time reading and less time in front of the television! 

Made: Lots of quick and easy pasta meals this week - spaghetti with meat sauce and something I'm calling Italian goulash. I roasted a lot of tomatoes for future use, as well. 

Enjoyed: My brother and sister-in-law came back through on their way home Wednesday so we got to spend time with them again, we had a lovely evening with friends on their deck Friday evening, and we got to spend some time yesterday with Mini-him and Miss C. Best part of that last one? They hauled out two more loads of their stuff. I may soon be able to move in my basement again! 

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This Week I’m:  

Planning: You know me - whenever I'm reading something about decluttering, I'm planning my next decluttering project in my house. The book I'm reading now (and Go Simplified) really stresses thinking of your bookcases as containers and you can't have more books that there is realistically enough room for in your container - our shelves are bulging at the seams and it's time to make some tough decisions. 

Thinking About: School started for our school district last week - a full week earlier than my kids started when they were growing up. With so many kids involved in organized activities for the first six weeks of summer, it doesn't leave much time for kids to just relax and be kids. Also, it seriously impinges on the number of weeks I get a significantly easier commute! 

Feeling: Lazy. To be fair, I got thrown off my game yesterday when Mini-him decided they'd be coming to get their stuff and I had to help with that (and to encourage them to shop my basement to get even more things out of it!

Looking forward to: An upcoming visit to Miss C's parents' home. We really enjoy them. 

Question of the week: We did a back-to-school supply drive at work and I was astonished by the things the kids need these days. So many things I wish the schools were able to supply but clearly can't afford to provide. Do you still have kids in school? If so, what's the thing that those of us who don't would find the most surprising? 

**This weeks review have this in common - they are both books I was offered through Netgalley.**

Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout

Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout

352 pages

Published September 2024 by Random House Publishing Group

Source: my copy courtesy of the publisher, through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review

Publisher's Summary: 

Elizabeth Strout returns to the town of Crosby, Maine, and to her beloved cast of characters—Lucy Barton, Olive Kitteridge, Bob Burgess, and more—as they deal with a shocking crime in their midst, fall in love and yet choose to be apart, and grapple with the question, as Lucy Barton puts it, “What does anyone’s life mean?”

It’s autumn in Maine, and the town lawyer Bob Burgess has become enmeshed in an unfolding murder investigation, defending a lonely, isolated man accused of killing his mother. He has also fallen into a deep and abiding friendship with the acclaimed writer Lucy Barton, who lives down the road in a house by the sea with her ex-husband, William. Together, Lucy and Bob go on walks and talk about their lives, their fears and regrets, and what might have been. Lucy, meanwhile, is finally introduced to the iconic Olive Kitteridge, now living in a retirement community on the edge of town. They spend afternoons together in Olive’s apartment, telling each other stories. Stories about people they have known—“unrecorded lives,” Olive calls them—reanimating them, and, in the process, imbuing their lives with meaning.

My Thoughts: 

Elizabeth Strout is one of my favorite authors, an author whose books I will always pick up without even looking at the synopsis. I can be sure of intimate stories about marvelous, real characters. But what makes her books even more wonderful for me is the way she has managed to tie together characters from all of the books she has written. Olive Kitteridge. Lucy Barton. The Burgess Brothers. 

I love these people, with all of their quirks and flaws. I'm always happy to see them again, to pick back up with their lives and to meet the new characters that Strout puts into their lives. I'm a huge fan of Strout's dialogue and the one-on-one interactions between the characters. Here quiet Bob steps up, helping a man who is likely to be accused of his mother's murder. He's a strange, friendless man, the kind of person who might be ostracized by residents of a small town. But Bob works to get to know him, to defend him, to befriend him. And it makes all the difference, as it so often does in life. 

Olive asks Bob to introduce her to Lucy, who has relocated to Crosby with her ex-husband William during the pandemic. Olive has a story to tell Lucy. And so the two begin meeting periodically, telling each other stories about people they've met and situations they've found themselves in. At one point Olive asks Lucy what the point of the story is; Lucy replies "People and the live they lead." Which is exactly what the five books that include these characters are about. As with her other books, as with life, there aren't always clear and defined end points to the plot lines of this book. In this book, for the first time, it felt like that was a deliberate move to leave things open for more stories about these people. And, for the first time, I felt like it might actually be time for Strout to say goodbye to these characters. There are a lot of different stories here, all tied together, but also, if felt to me, holding each other back. 

Life: It Goes On - August 5

Happy Monday! How are we already almost through the first week of August?! Schools here start in a couple of days (not looking forward to that change in morning traffic) which just seems crazy. 

We've had quite a week here. Huge storm blew through Wednesday evening with sustained wind gusts of 80-100 mph. There is damage all across the Omaha metro area. Many are still without power and it will be weeks before all of the tree damage is handled. Spent Thursday and Friday evenings and The Big Guy spent a good part of Saturday cutting things up and hauling them away. What mess and we were exhausted, but we have it so much better than so many.

Last Week I: 

Listened To: I finished The Paris Architect and I'm about 2/3 of the way through Jennette McCurdy's I'm Glad My Mom Died. 

Watched: Oh, you know, about 100 hours of the Olympics! 

Read: I'll almost finished with Liane Moriarty's Here One Moment.

Made: BLT sandwiches using the grill when we were without power on Wednesday evening - haven't toasted bread on the grill since my family used to go camping. Also made my first caprese salad of the summer. Harvested a load of tomatoes the past couple of days so there will be more of that coming - I'll happily eat it every day. 

Enjoyed: My brother, sister-in-law, their daughter, son-in-law and grandsons were headed north to the county fair where my SIL grew up and they all stopped and spent the about 24 hours in Omaha. It was nice to have the adults here; but let's be honest - it was all about those little boys! Took them to a cool new park, a place where they could play in the water, and the giant slides in the mall area in downtown Omaha then finished off with great ice cream and pizza. These two had so much fun playing with toys my boys played with when they were about the same ages! 

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This Week I’m:  

Planning: It's going to be another busy week. We'll have my brother and sister-in-law again Wednesday night on their way home, one evening we'll be taking more furniture to Mini-him and Miss C for their new place, one evening I get my hair down and this weekend BG gets to play with his old band. Needless to say, it will be hard to get much else done most nights but I am hoping to finish up Mini-him's dresser this weekend. 

Thinking About: Getting out of town. Somehow the summer has gotten away from us without us getting out of town at all. We're definitely due for a trip to see Miss C, would like to get north to my sister's, and are hoping to get south to my brother's. But I'd also like to find time for at least a long weekend getaway. 

Feeling: Proud of myself - got a nice promotion last week which will probably convince me to work at least a couple more years. 

Looking forward to: Getting my hair down - I love that couple of hours with no responsibility, getting pampered. 

Question of the week: What's one thing you do for self-care?