Books

TO READ list

~ MaryG ~ 7 Comments
Daily writing prompt
You get to build your perfect space for reading and writing. What’s it like?
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I’ve read some nice posts from other bloggers this morning referencing famous writers. Their posts reminded me how Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own once affected me. It encouraged me to move into my own studio apartment, when I was just out of college. Living without roommates was a little scary, but somehow Woolf’s words from 1928 helped give me courage to live all by myself. I need to re-read that. I liked I.V. Greco’s post, which mentions Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast, a book I’ve been meaning to read since my friend Kathy recommended it while I was in Paris. I was never a Hemingway fan, but I’m going to give his Paris memoir a shot. Also, Rebuilding Rob wrote about Henry David Thoreau’s cabin on Walden Pond in his response to this prompt. Another book I need to read.

Now that I’m unemployed/retired, I need to read more books. Perhaps that will be my New Year’s resolution. In addition to Walden, A Moveable Feast, and A Room of One’s Own, I’ve got a lovely book of poetry waiting for me to pick it up. I can tell by the poems that she’s shared in her blog that Ever So Gently by Lauren Scott will be a treat.

Here are a few photos from my most recent trip to Walden Pond in Concord, MA. It was an unusually warm day in very late October. I wonder if Thoreau ever could’ve imagined his Walden would become such a popular, though still pristine, destination for people from around the world. Less than 20 miles from Boston, Walden is an especially popular spot for city residents who just want to get out in nature for the day. I saw several folks perched in quiet spots along the pond reading books, all by themselves. 

Book group 🩷

~ MaryG ~ 3 Comments

What book are you reading right now?

I’m about to start reading my book group’s selection for this month: Such Kindness by Andre Dubus III, a local author. He wrote the award-winning 1999 novel House of Sand and Fog, which I read for book group years ago.

One of the HUGE benefits of both Covid and Facebook is that I reconnected with my old wonderful book group from when I lived in my prior home in a different Massachusetts town. We were there from 1995 – 2004 and my book club was one of the absolute highlights of that time period in my life. I love these women.

We started meeting again, via Zoom, last year and I’m thrilled. We have one member who lives abroad so we typically meet at noon on Zoom (6pm her time).

My motivation to read is back, because I know I’m going to have a great discussion with a group of smart, thoughtful, insightful, amazing women.

The first line of Such Kindness is:

“OUR GOOD SAMARITAN DRIVES US THROUGH SOFTLY FALLING snow under streetlamps that have come on early.”

Hmmm…sounds interesting. I’m already picturing New England. The author lives about 30 minutes away from me and teaches at our local university, so I’m assuming some of the New England characters will resonate.

Four out of five members of my book group reunited at The ICA in Boston in July 2022. We decided we should pose with a reader 📚😄

Book Magic

~ MaryG ~ 3 Comments

What does it mean to be a kid at heart?

As kids, my neighborhood friends and I would play elaborate games of pretend. One game was “Little House on the Prairie,” based on the books by Laura Ingalls Wilder. We would turn my friend Carolyn’s bed into a pioneer wagon and pretend we were heading west. Calamities would befall us, especially stagecoach robbers. We were always getting attacked.

Here’s a Halloween photo from that time period that I happened to pull out yesterday. I was a cowboy that year. Thinking back, that would certainly fit with my “Little House on the Prairie” obsession.

Halloween, 1973

The magic of books that transported you to a world that you wanted to recreate and inhabit is something that “kid at heart” conjures.

“Little Women” is another book that we liked to act out. We would pretend we were playwrights and write & perform mini-plays.

I remember being so excited when my son built himself a tree perch in which to read “The Swiss Family Robinson.” I knew he was feeling that book magic.

My son reading “The Swiss Family Robinson” in a tree, with the remnants of a brilliant sunset in the background, November 2010

Summer reading

~ MaryG ~ 1 Comment

How do you relax?

I like to lay on the beach with a good book. It’s usually a hassle to get to the beach in New England (driving, parking, etc), but once I’m there, I find it relaxing.

We had a discussion about “summer reads” in my book group. I was reluctant to read anything too traumatic or depressing in August. Other people made no distinction between summer reading and regular reading.

Here’s the book I read at the beach in August. It certainly looked the part. Very beachy!

REVIEW: It liked it. It was a little darker than the cover would have you think. It was a good complement to the “Summer of Barbie.” The main character is a woman (a scientist) severely hampered by the boxes American society forced women into in the 1950s and 60s. There is one central tragedy, but it has a key “summer read” element: a happy ending.