Life: It Goes On - March 29

Happy Sunday from sunny Omaha, where we continue to ride the temperature roller coaster. Wednesday it was 83 degrees, yesterday it was 53 degrees, tomorrow it will be 87 degrees, and Wednesday it will be 46 degrees. I've taken to just keeping a couple of coats in my car; and in the morning, when I get to work, I decide whether or not I need one and, if I do, which one to wear.

I've been hobbled all weekend by a knee that suddenly started hurting Friday evening. One more way for my body to tell me I'm getting old. Finally feeling better, but it's made for a lazy weekend. On the plus side, I've finally powered through a book. Which I a good thing, because I just picked up three more from the library last week and I have five audiobooks checked out! 

Last Week I: 

Listened To: I've been bouncing around. Not because I'm not enjoying the books, but because I have so many I need to listen to whichever is coming due soonest and set aside those that can be renewed in favor of those that can't. Right now I'm a little over half way through The One Hundred Years of Lenin and Margot by Marianne Cronin. 

Watched: As much NCAA basketball tournament as possible, The Voice, and a couple of episodes of The Gentlemen. The latter is not a show I'd pick, but the Big Guy enjoys it so I stay in the room, reading or shopping online while I "watch."

Read: I'm finishing Claire Lombardo's latest, Same As It Ever Was, today. It's almost 500 pages long and not the kind of book that has had me racing through it despite its length, so I'm happy to be done with it. 

Made: In this week's episode of strange things the Sheppards ate, I made bougie macaroni and cheese with hot dogs. Used ditali noodles, chicken broth, dijon mustard, cream cheese, Worcestershire sauce, and chicken and apple sausages and I must say it turned out quite well. Could I recreate it? Not exactly because I never pay any attention to how much of anything I put in dishes that I'm making up. 

Enjoyed: Book club on Tuesday. I'd been battling a headache all day, but good company and lots of laughs helped tremendously.

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This Week I’m:  

Planning: After a lazy weekend, my plans for this week will be to get done the things that I didn't get done over the weekend, 

Thinking About: Easter. It kind of snuck up on me and I don't know that any of the kids will be able to be here. Without my dad around, there hardly seems any point to cooking a big meal, which I'll miss. 

Feeling: Disappointed. I've been wanting a king-sized bed for years and I had finally talked BG into getting one. Then we measured and realized that it won't really fit where our bed most logically needs to be in our room. I almost feel like BG had measured it out, realized it wouldn't work, then said yes so that he could look like a good guy, knowing it wouldn't work. Not really - he would never do that; don't be mad at him on my behalf! 

Looking forward to: Last week had a lot going on so this week I'm looking forward to a quiet week. 

Question of the week: If you've ever had a holiday arrive with no family there, how did you celebrate? Did you still do all of the foods? 

The Maid's Secret by Nita Prose

The Maid's Secret by Nita Prose

Read by Lauren Ambrose

11 hours, 3 minutes

Published May 2025 by Random House Publishing Group

Publisher's Summary: 

Molly Gray's life is about to change in ways she could never have imagined. As the esteemed Head Maid and Special Events Manager of the Regency Grand Hotel, two good things are just around the corner-a taping of the hit antiquities TV show Hidden Treasures and, even more exciting, her wedding to Juan Manuel. 

When Molly brings in some old trinkets to be appraised on the show, one item is revealed to be a rare and coveted artifact worth millions. Molly becomes a rags-to-riches sensation, and a media frenzy swirls as she prepares to sell her priceless treasure. Then, on auction day, the treasure suddenly vanishes. and Molly and her friends find themselves at the center of the boldest art heist in recent memory. 

But the key to this mystery lies in the past, in a long-forgotten diary written by Molly's Gran. For the first time ever, Molly learns about her grandmother's secrets: how she was born into a wealthy family and fell head-over-heels in love with a young man her parents deemed below her. As fate would have it, Gran's greatest love was someone Molly knows quite well.

My Thoughts: 

The Pros: 

• Lauren Ambrose' reading. I'm sure these are quite enjoyable books in print, but Ambrose brings the characters to life, especially Molly. If you're interested in reading the series, I highly encourage you to "read" the audiobooks. 
• The back story - how Molly's Gran came to have a daughter with the Regency Grand Hotel's doorman, Mr. Preston. It wasn't going to be possible to have yet another death in the Regency Grand (I mean, no one's going to stay there if there are deaths there regularly, right?), so Prose had to find another way to work a mystery into Molly's life. 
• Molly. She's always an interesting character who's endeared herself to readers, and to so many people in her life. 

The Cons: 

• The story of how Molly came to be in possession of a rare and coveted artifact is a little improbable.  I wondered how Prose would it out, because it was equally improbable that Molly would suddenly become unbelievably wealthy. The truth of that felt equally improbable to me. Still, it's make believe and sometimes you just have to get over what feels improbable. 
• I'm not sure where Prose can go from here. There is the Christmas book that I reviewed in December but between all of these books, things seem pretty well tied up. 

The Verdict: 

Fans of the series will enjoy this one. The books are light and fun and great for reading between heavier reads. 

Life: It Goes On - March 22

Happy spring?! Yesterday it was 94 degrees here. We ate dinner on the patio, but had to cut our time short out there because we were getting too warm. Crazy for March; in fact, a new all-time high for March in Omaha. Also hard to believe it's spring when we're having fires in this state that we typically wouldn't see until August; thanks to a very dry winter and high winds of late, we've had the biggest fires the state has ever seen. 

Mind you, a week ago, we were in a blizzard warning. 

Last Week I: 

Listened To: Since I last updated, I finished The Silver Linings Playbook, started Perfume (but had to return it before I finished it), and I'm now listening to Stoner, by John Williams. 

Watched: So. Much. Collage Basketball! I love to watch all of the games, mens and women's. But the highlight so far has been our Husker men winning their first ever NCAA tournament game and then a second game that puts them into the Sweet 16. Nebraska fans traveled en masse to Oklahoma City so make that arena feel like a home game - it's been so exciting to watch them this weekend. 

Read: Claire Lombard's Same As It Ever Was. 

Made: Since I last wrote, we had company for about a week and while they were here I made coffee cake, cinnamon rolls, and lasagna. Yesterday I made Jeff Daniel's favorite sandwich, which has been all over social media. If you haven't seen it, it's a pita with a thick layer of peanut butter on one side, topped with crunched up cheddar and sour cream chips and bbq sauce. Sounds so weird, but I liked it. The Big Guy wasn't as big a fan. 

Enjoyed: Despite the fact that my sister and brother-in-law were here for his father's funeral, we had plenty of time with them to catch up. 

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This Week I’m:  

Planning: I think this will be a pretty quiet week so I'm hoping to get back to doing some decluttering. 

Thinking About: Meatloaf. I've been wanting meatloaf for a couple of weeks now - I think it's time to finally make it. What a strange thing to crave. 

Feeling: We've had a lazy weekend, putzing away on things to be done and taking naps. It's been wonderful! 

Looking forward to: Book club Tuesday to discuss Laura Prescott's The Secrets We Kept. 

Question of the week: Are you a March Madness fan? 

The Bookbinder's Secret by A.D. Bell

The Bookbinder's Secret by A.D. Bell

400 pages

Published January 2026 by St. Martin's Press

My copy courtesy of the publisher, through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review

Publisher's Summary: 

Lilian ("Lily") Delaney, apprentice to a master bookbinder in Oxford in 1901, chafes at the confines of her life. She is trapped between the oppressiveness of her father’s failing bookshop and still being an apprentice in a man’s profession. But when she’s given a burned book during a visit to a collector, she finds, hidden beneath the binding, a fifty-year-old letter speaking of love, fortune, and murder.

Lily is pulled into the mystery of the young lovers, a story of forbidden love, and discovers there are more books and more hidden pages telling their story. Lilian becomes obsessed with the story but she is not the only one looking for the remaining books and what began as a diverting intrigue quickly becomes a very dangerous pursuit.

Lily's search leads her from the eccentric booksellers of London to the private libraries of unscrupulous collectors and the dusty archives of society papers, deep into the heart of the mystery. But with sinister forces closing in, willing to do anything for the books, Lilian’s world begins to fall apart and she must decide if uncovering the truth is worth the risk to her own life.

My Thoughts: 

As you know, I often don't read the summary of books (although I must have at some point in order for me to choose this book for review); in this case, it meant it took me a while to figure out what time period in which the book was set. I kept thinking it was a century earlier, which made the fact that Lily was a bookbinder in training even more astounding. 

Even so, a woman in a trade in the first part of the 20th century was remarkable and I enjoyed learning about bookbinding through her. I think we can all recognize the difference between a well bound book and a cheaply bound one but knowing what steps make the difference was intriguing. In Lily's case, the books being individually bound meant that the bookbinder chose the design of the cover so it's conceivable that no two copies of any book remaining from that time period would have the same cover. 

The initial mystery of the first book Lily got pulled me into the story, but I will admit that I was a little confused about how Lily became so obsessed with that first book that she was willing to risk her life and her safety because of it. Because someone else wants that book and wants her to find the remaining five books related to it...in fact, they demand that she find them or they will come after her father, who is already fragile. Here's the next point I struggled with - why would the person who wanted the books assume that Lily would be better able to find them than that person would? Overlooking those points, this story takes readers along on Lily's race to find all six of the books while she also races to find out the reason they are so important and what because of the young lovers whose story is told in those hidden pages. Along the way, we learn that Lily is not the good girl so many heroines of books set in this time period are and it makes her a much more interesting person for it. We're also introduced to a cast of interesting characters, some not so savory, most with secrets of their own. 

I haven't been reading as much historical fiction lately as I used to and this one made me wonder why. I'm always fascinated to go back in time so that we can see how far we've come. Thanks to St. Martin's Press for giving me this history lesson. 

Where The Girls Were by Kate Schatz

Where The Girls Were by Kate Schatz

368 pages

Published March 2026 by The Dial Press

My copy courtesy of the publisher, through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review

Publisher's Summary: 

It’s 1968, and the future is bright for seventeen-year-old Elizabeth “Baker” Phillips: She’s the valedictorian of her high school, with a place at Stanford in the fall and big dreams of becoming a journalist. But the seductive free-spirited San Francisco atmosphere seeps into her carefully planned, strait-laced life in the form of a hippie named Wiley. At first, letting loose and letting herself fall in love for the first time feels incredible. But then, everything changes.

Pregnancy hits Baker with the force of whiplash—in the blink of an eye, she goes from good girl to fallen woman, from her family’s shining star to their embarrassing secret. Without any other options, Baker is sent to a home for unwed mothers, and finds herself trapped in an old Victorian house packed with pregnant girls who share her shame and fear. As she grapples with her changing body, lack of choice, and uncertain future, Baker finds unexpected community and empowerment among the “girls who went away.”

Where the Girls Were is a timely unearthing of a little-known moment in American history, when the sexual revolution and feminist movement collided with the limits of reproductive rights—and society's expectations of women. As Baker finds her strength and her voice, she shows us how to step into your power, even when the world is determined to keep you silent.

My Thoughts: 

This one is timely, as more and more we appear headed back to the time where choice was taken away from women and women and girls were forced to have babies. We've all heard the stories about women and girls who died from botched abortions performed by unqualified people in unsanitary conditions. But what of the girls who chose, or were forced, to carry their babies to term? What were the places like where these girls disappeared to for months? 

Baker was a "good" girl. She knew what she wanted for her future. She knew what her parents expected of her; and, even though she didn't plan exactly the future they wanted, she knew she would make good. But even good girls want to have fun sometimes and even good girls make mistakes. Because she'd always been so focused on her education and reaching her goals, Baker doesn't have the kinds of friends most high school aged girls do. So when the worst happens, she's left without any support. Even her cousin, May, who introduced her to Wiley, can't help. 

When her mother finds out, she takes charge and Baker finds herself in a home for unwed mothers. Even there the girls are made to feel "less than," the leadership more concerned about making the home look good than in helping the girls. At first Baker is utterly detached from the baby growing inside of her, calling it "The Bun." She has is woefully naive about pregnancy and childbirth. But the home leads Baker to the kinds of friends she's never had and a determination to do help them in some way. 

While the book can be a little overly dramatic, and there's a storyline about a former resident that I felt was unnecessary, I enjoyed reading about how Baker navigated her reality and the stories of the other girls in the home. I appreciated what Schatz left out of the book, as much as I did what she included. And I really liked the way the book ended; we don't get all of the answers, but those answers aren't really important to the book. 

Life: It Goes On - March 8

Happy Sunday! I'm looking forward to a sunny, warm day here in Omaha - doors and windows will be thrown open! While it's going to be a one off and the temps will drop 20 degrees the rest of the week, days like this tell me spring is just around the corner. 

We were forecast to have severe storms on Friday evening but entirely dodged those so I completely relaxed...until Miss H sent me a photo of the t.v. screen showing that she was in a tornado warning in K.C. The funnel moved across town in a line that basically covered every place she's lived in that area. I can't believe my mama spidey sense didn't already have me paying attention to the weather down there. Am I losing my mama skills?! 

Last Week I: 

Listened To: I finished Kevin Wilson's Run For The Hills and started Matthew Quick's The Silver Linings Playbook, which I'm about half way through. Next up is Patrick Suskind's Perfume. 

Watched: We've started watching season 2 of Wednesday and I'm sorry to say that we're not enjoying it as much as we did season 1. It feels like there's just too much going on in this one. 

Read: I finished Kate Schatz's Where The Girls Were and started Melanie Benjamin's The Windsor Affair, which I will finish today. Next up is Claire Lombardo's Same As It Ever Was. 

Made: A "use everything in the refrigerator" pasta (asparagus, mushrooms, spinach, chicken off of three drumsticks) and Korean bbq and rice with asparagus. If two people buy a whole bundle of asparagus, it will be consumed over the span of a few days. 

Enjoyed: A friend and I went to hear Anna Quindlen speak on Tuesday and she was really terrific, clearly someone who has been doing this thing for a long time. Also, dinner last night with the Big Guy at one of our favorite places. 

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This Week I’m:  

Planning: It's going to be another week of paperwork and decluttering. 

Thinking About: Gardening and what changes we want to make in our gardens and outdoor living spaces this year. 

Feeling: Sad for my sister's family today; her father-in-law passed away this morning. Hard for them to lose both dad's in about four months. 

Looking forward to: Sunshine later into the days! I know some of you hate daylight savings time, but I live for it. 

Question of the week: We've been doing a lot of mattress research this week and every time I think we've settled on "the one," we read another site that says that one's not as good as another one. What do you have and would you recommend it? 

Bellman and Black by Diane Setterfield

Bellman and Black by Diane Setterfield

336 pages

Published November 2013 by Atria/Emily Bestler Books

Publisher’s Summary: 

Caught up in a moment of boyhood competition, William Bellman recklessly aims his slingshot at a rook resting on a branch, killing the bird instantly. It is a small but cruel act, and is soon forgotten. By the time he is grown, with a wife and children of his own, William seems to have put the whole incident behind him. It was as if he never killed the thing at all. But rooks don’t forget…

Years later, when a stranger mysteriously enters William’s life, his fortunes begin to turn—and the terrible and unforeseen consequences of his past indiscretion take root. In a desperate bid to save the only precious thing he has left, he enters into a rather strange bargain, with an even stranger partner. Together, they found a decidedly macabre business.

And Bellman & Black is born.

My Thoughts: 

This one has been sitting in my virtual TBR pile since before it was published. For some reason, it just never managed to rise up to the top of the pile. But, since I had gotten it originally through NetGalley and never written a review, I decided it was time to remedy that. 

This was my third book by Setterfield (I previously read The Thirteenth Tale and Once Upon a River. Going back over my reviews of those two books, I find that I feel very much the same about this one as I did those two. There are parts that are very intriguing and drew me in; but, overall, I felt that it was uneven. In this one, I also felt that I never quite "got" what Setterfield was trying to tell me. Why would a man, who as a young boy had done something that so many young boys do, be punished for the rest of his life for it? Why does the source of his misery also allow him to become so very successful in his career? Why does it kill off the people his was with that fateful morning - why do they deserve to die to punish him? And why spread their deaths out so far as to appear as though they were not related at all? And why take so long to punish him at all? Why wait until he is a grown man, happily married, with a family he adores and a career he excels at? 

Far more questions than answers for me. I'm not opposed to having a book raise questions that stick with me after finishing the book. But this doesn't strike me as the type of book that's aiming to do that, nor the types of questions that an author would typically raise to cause a reader to think more deeply. 

So I'm sorry to say that this isn't a book I'd recommend, although I did enjoy much of the writing and a great deal of the story. 

More Than Enough by Anna Quindlen

More Than Enough by Anna Quindlen

256 pages

Published February 2026 by Random House 

My copy courtesy of the publisher, through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review

Publisher's Summary: 

No one knows you like your book club.

High school English teacher Polly Goodman can talk about everything and anything with the women in her book club, which is why they’ve become her closest friends and, along with her veterinarian husband, the bedrock of her life. Her students, her fraught relationship with her mother, her struggles with IVF—Polly’s book club friends have heard about it all.

But when they give Polly an ancestry test kit as a joke, the results match her with a stranger. It is clear to Polly that this match is a mistake, but still she cannot help but comb through her family history for answers. Then, when it seems that the book club circle of four will become three, Polly learns how friendships can change your life in the most profound ways.

Written with Anna Quindlen’s trademark warmth, humor, and insight into the power of love and hope, More Than Enough explores how we find ourselves again and again through the relationships that define us.

My Thoughts: 

I'm pretty sure I say this every time I read one of Quinlen's books, but it's true that she's one of my go-to authors. I haven't always loved one of her books; but they always given me plenty to think about and depth and there is always so much truth to them. This one falls into the category of not being one of Quindlen's books I loved, but also a book that I would recommend because there is so much to think about (and talk about, making it a good book club choice). 

While there is a lot going on in this one (infertility, mental health, friendship, death grief, dementia, family dynamics, and family secrets), there also isn't much of a plot, It's absolutely centered on its characters.  Some things feel a bit forced and some characters are a bit stereotyped (could Mark be any more perfect?). But most of those characters? I really liked them, even the ones that had sharper edges and the relationships between them. There's a gentleness to this story that I really enjoyed and an easy flow that pulled me along. 

Despite what I perceived as its flaws, this is a book I can easily recommend for those who enjoy character-driven novels and novels about relationships and what makes a family. 

Life: It Goes On - March 1

Well, hey there! Happy Sunday! I definitely did not intend to go radio silent for two weeks, but I'm so frustrated with my inability to figure out how to get photos uploaded the way I want them that I'm disinclined to sit down to the blog at all. And then suddenly this morning, I tried something different and it seems to have worked! 

I knocked out a ton of cleaning yesterday so I'm hoping to have time today to get some reviews written - I'm so far behind! Lately, though, I'm trying to allow myself to work on whatever suits my fancy in any given day - so it may just be reorganizing the kitchen or working on genealogy. 

Last Week I: 

Listened To: Kevin Wilson's Run For The Hills, which I'm really enjoying. 

Watched: A friend and I went to watch a one-woman play called All Things Equal: The Life and Trials of Ruth Bader Ginsberg. It was funny and touching and we would both highly commend it.

Read: I'm currently reading Karen Schatz's Where The Girls Were. Next up is probably Melanie Benjamin's latest, The Windsor Affair. 

Made: Pork roast and smashed potatoes and pasta with bolognese sauce. Otherwise, we somehow ended up eating out a lot this week. 

Enjoyed: It was 70 degrees and sunny here on Friday afternoon so the Big Guy and I joined friends for happy hour on a local brew pub's patio. It was lovely and just the thing I need to make it through the rest of winter. 

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This Week I’m:  

Planning: It's going to be a paperwork kind of week this week, as I'm still working on closing up my dad's estate. It's also time to get back to Go Simplified's decluttering plan for the year - February got away from me so I'm going to be trying to get through both February's and March's assignments this month. 

Thinking About: I keep thinking I need to take a break from the news for my own sanity, but then something new comes up and I don't want to be uninformed. Working on trying to find a balance so my brain doesn't burn out. 

Feeling: Wistful. Today is Miss H's and Ms. S's birthday and I'm missing the days when that meant celebrating with them, making a cake and watching them open their gifts. 

Looking forward to: A friend and I are going to hear Anna Quindlen speak on Tuesday. 

Question of the week: Are any of you planning on being The Bride? The cast is terrific, but it's not the kind of movie I usually see in the theater. I'm on the fence about it. Any other movies you'd recommend? 

Truth and Beauty: a friendship by Ann Patchett

Read by Ann Patchett

8 hours 6 minutes

Published 2004 by HarperCollins

Publisher’s Summary: 

What happens when the person who is your family is someone you aren't bound to by blood? What happens when that person is not your lover, but your best friend? In her frank and startlingly intimate first work of nonfiction, Truth & Beauty, Ann Patchett shines light on the little-explored world of women's friendships and shows us what it means to stand together.

Ann Patchett and Lucy Grealy met in college in 1981, and after enrolling in the Iowa Writer's Workshop began a friendship that would be as defining to both of their lives as their work. In her critically acclaimed memoir, Autobiography of a Face, Lucy Grealy wrote about the first half of her life. In Truth & Beauty, the story isn't Lucy's life or Ann's life but the parts of their lives they shared together. This is a portrait of unwavering commitment that spans 20 years, from the long cold winters of the Midwest to surgical wards to book parties in New York. Through love, fame, drugs and despair, this is what it means to be part of two lives that are intertwined.

This is a tender, brutal book about loving the person we cannot save. It is about loyalty and about being lifted up by the sheer effervescence of someone who knew how to live life to the fullest.

My Thoughts: 

As you’re well aware, I’m a huge fan of Ann Patchett’s fiction writing and I loved her essay collection This Is The Story Of A Happy Marriage. But I might like her even better as a human being. Not that I actually know her, but I do watch her every posts every week. Did you know that when Nashville was hit with the ice storm last week, Patchett paid for the hotel bills of every employee who had to leave their home due to lack of power and paid employees even if they couldn’t get into the store. The store remained open every day as a place people could come to warm up. That’s a good human. 

She was also an incredible friend to Lucy Grealy, a woman who, in my opinion, often made it difficult. Lucy could be very self-centered and was terrible roommate. She took out loans she had no intention of ever paying back, wouldn’t do any work that wasn’t writing, fretted incessantly about never finding love or not getting the grants or positions she wanted. To be fair, Lucy’s life was tough – she was diagnosed with Ewing’s sarcoma which led to the removal of part of her jawbone; in an effort to repair the damage caused by that and chemotherapy, Lucy underwent dozens of surgeries. She suffered from the cruelty of children while in school and adults when she was older. 

Patchett and Grealy were only slightly familiar with each other when they became roommates at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, but Patchett had admired Grealy in college. Grealy had that “it” factor that seemed to draw people to her and Patchett was no exception. As roommate the two agreed that Patchett would do all of the cooking and cleaning while Grealy would leave plates of food on the floor and borrow Patchett’s clothes without asking. But Lucy was fun and Patchett needed someone to pull her off of her straight and narrow path and into the fun. Lucy loved Ann and it’s hard not to love someone back who loves you so much they jump into your arms regularly. 

Over the next nearly two decades the two stayed incredibly close and Patchett traveled regularly to spend time with Grealy. But Grealy began to check in less and less often as her depression deepened and then her addition to oxycontin and heroin consumed her. Patchett began more and more to have to mother Grealy, to be the voice of reason. In those final years, loving her became more and more difficult. Still, two years after losing Lucy, when this book was published, Patchett was clearly still grieving and feeling that Grealy was worth the hard times. 

This is an incredible story of love and friendship, written beautifully. Read by Patchett, it becomes all the more heartfelt and heartbreaking.