Tag: reading-is-hot

More and New From Adam J. Kurtz


Back on October 14, I shared this book by Adam J. Kurtz and a page from it for circling some favorite things. Here’s another recent page, and clearly I don’t listen to any music from this century, but whatever (and also, this page made me listen to The Antlers’s “I Don’t Want Love” and it’s from 2011).

When I look at that list now, I’d add Gladys Knight singing, “Neither One Of Us (Wants To Be the First to Say Goodbye)” because it keeps running through my head while I’m writing. I wonder if other writers’ hearts break when their characters’ love stories don’t work out.

I digress.


I also mentioned in that post that Kurtz had a new book coming out, and I recently received my copy thanks to a very generous offer from him and his publisher, and I keep flipping through it and finding new things to make me smile or think or steel my determination to just be me and stop worrying about whatever it is that plays on a loop in my brain when I can’t sleep.

I appreciate that Kurtz has followed his creative vision his way. One thing I like about both books (and there are more things in his shop that I’ll be buying) is that I feel like a friend is talking to me, saying the things a friend needs to say, that I need to hear, and most of all, being vulnerable and so making me feel a little less vulnerable, if that makes sense. On the inside front cover is written: Even small changes help us transform as life unfolds, whether you’re chasing your dreams or trying to get out of bed. You are here but you’re not alone.

Also, my book came with some extras. Who doesn’t like free stuff?

You can find out more about Adam J. Kurtz at his website, and he’s also on Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, and YouTube.

The Drama and Desire of February Reading

There is still today, plus two more days, in February, but I’d rather do a lot of writing, so I’m calling it for this month’s reading activity. Here’s what I’ve read, and this post ends with something I promised to tell you.

First up, on the Kindle app, I read Bow Wow, the third (maybe last?) in Spencer Quinn’s Bowser and Birdie middle school mystery series with a dog as a narrator. I’m a fan of Quinn’s Chet and Bernie mysteries (written for adults), also narrated by a dog.


I bought Pattie Boyd’s memoir in late 2020 on my Kindle app. I don’t know if I started it then, or in 2021, but it fell victim to my pandemic inability to read. I finished it this month!


I downloaded these two short story collections by Helene Tursten to my Kindle app as soon as Princess Patti recommended them early this month. She said she smiled all the way through them, and she clearly knows me, because while I might not have picked them on my own, I found the “elderly lady,” Maud, wickedly amusing. The entire time I was reading, I knew these books were meant for Marika. When I suggested them to her, I found out she’d already read and loved them.

If you recall, I shared that I read the first two parts of Michael Cunningham’s Specimen Days in 2010 and made no promises about when I’d finish. This month, I reread those first two parts and completed the third part! They are strange tales, the first set during the Industrial Revolution in New York, the second also in New York just after 9/11/2001, and the third set 150 years in the future, starting in, then venturing away from, New York. I think I figured out why I stopped reading this book. Walt Whitman is a huge presence in the three stories (the person and his writing), and I remember a period when I decided to reread Whitman. I think Cunningham’s book is what motivated me. Then a whole lot of life events got in between me and going back to the Cunningham book. I’m so glad I finished it!

I have several unread Joan Didion books, and I started with this one. It’s a quick read, and its real-life vignettes take place in a part of the South with which I’m very familiar.

I blogged at length on Tuesday about this Stevie Ray Vaughan bio, and I have this to add. The reason I’m acutely aware of the dates of SRV’s death, meeting our late friend Steve, and getting our dachshund Stevie is because I have the “manager’s log” from my time at that bookstore. I was the last of several managers/assistant managers left from among its contributors, and I felt it was prudent for me to take the log when I resigned. It wasn’t an official store record, just personal conversations between managers about things that needed to be done or had been done, along with accounts of crazy things that happened at our store. I especially treasure the notes and conversations between Steve and me, and I’m glad I kept the “log.”


I’ve saved Eamon Dunphy’s biograpy Unforgettable Fire: Past, Present, and Future–The Definitive Biography of U2 for last because it’s related to the bookstore and also to the art work I shared last week with the promise of an explanation to come.

In 2019, when I undertook to write what I’ve come to call the Neverending Saga, I thought I was writing one novel. Instead, I’m now somewhere around the middle of the fifth novel–written in less than three years. For a year of that time, I worked a 60-hour-a-week job. Once I was laid off and quarantined at home, I was able to devote full time to researching and writing. I’ve done more research than I ever imagined I would, because the stories so far have included relevant events from the 1940s to (at this point) the mid-1970s. It has been a laborious act of love, and it was bringing me a lot of peace of mind and happiness during the pandemic. In 2021, those feelings came to a screaming halt. I won’t belabor the reasons, but they were a shock to my system.

The good thing is I learned valuable lessons for moving forward. The bad thing is, I doubted myself and my work for a lot of months. Part of the hard-and-fast goals I set when I decided to undertake this project meant I’d be swimming against a current of conventional wisdom. I don’t have a publisher to answer to, but to meet my personal standards, I want what I’m writing to be plausible. Part of my research is the effort to find that my perspective is, in fact, plausible.

Very often, I search my blog for information or photos from the past 18 years. On one such search, I saw a post with a picture of the book above and text that said Tim had loaned me the book. When I decided to read it this month, I tried to find that post again and couldn’t, no matter what text I used. No problem. There was a photo of the book, so I searched my Flickr photos, my LiveJournal photos, and my Word Press Photos. My searches found nothing, which was impossible. The photo had to be stored somewhere for me to have used it. Without the post, I couldn’t find the code for where it was stored.

This is where my actions begin to show signs of my Aries compulsive need to FIND THE ANSWER. The answer doesn’t matter to anyone but me. I didn’t need the answer to read the U2 book. But how could I not find a post on my blog that I remembered seeing? When I couldn’t find it through photos, I began to review every year of my blog. Since I migrated my LJ to it, I’m talking about scrolling through more than 7000 public and 150 private posts.

Ultimately, there was no such post. I talked to Tim. He thinks he may have read the book, but he has no memory of loaning it to me. I can determine by the publication date and the sticker that the book was published before I began working at the bookstore, and became a bargain book while I was at the bookstore, or again, depending on the store (one store surviving when it was bought by Barnes & Noble), several years later. So perhaps I purchased it myself and just never read it.

When I started reading it this month, I was sure that I hadn’t read it before. A wonderful result of reading it now was that something that’s a fundamental part of how I’m writing one of my storylines, a part that I think readers might take issue with because it’s not the way this story is almost always told or written, validated that I need to stop worrying about it, trust myself, my instincts, and my characters, and keep writing. Neither my story, my characters, nor my plot has any connection at all to the band U2, its members, or their story (as of circa 1987/88). It’s just that what I see as possible is, in fact, possible.

The single explanation I have for the blog post is that it never existed, that I dreamed it. It isn’t impossible. I often have dreams that feel like pretty nondescript real-life events. But I’m skeptical. For what reason would I dream about a book I’ve owned for as many as 32 years and never read, and what are the chances it would turn out to be exactly what I needed to read?

Except…  Someone recently told me that when I wonder if something is true (“I dreamed what my imagination needed to feel authentic”), I should see if the Universe sends two confirmations. The first thing that happened was that the Photo Friday theme the week of my obsession was “Desire.” I was all, Aw crap, what kind of photograph am I going to have… And then it came into my head: U2’s song “Desire.” How was that in any way helpful? What did it have to do with my writing? Why was U2 hounding me?!?

With a sigh, I looked up the lyrics to “Desire.” And then… I laughed. Fine, okay. The doll who represents my musician, pictured here in November 2020…

And the U2 lyric: Gonna go where the bright lights
And the big city meet
With a red guitar, on fire
Desire

That red guitar is vitally important to the life and destiny of this character. I wrote it red for one reason, a funny reason that has nothing to do with any guitar anyone I’ve ever known owned. That would be a spoiler, so I’ll leave it there.

To create something tangible to try to express all this, I did the painting that I used on that Photo Friday post.

Still, I wanted some rational proof that Tim loaned me the book and I subsequently wove it into a dream “post.” I had one other way to test that. I began looking through my old photo albums (from when I shot on film, not digital). I take lots of pictures when family and friends visit our homes; I never know what one of them might catch. For example, the bookshelves in The Compound dining room in the background of a photo of some friends.

There’s the U2 book. That photo is timestamped 1/29/2000. More than a full year before Tim moved to Houston and could have found a Bookstop bargain book on sale anywhere. That settled the matter for me. Call it magical. Mystical. It definitely shows why I always turn back to music for inspiration and guidance. I don’t need to understand it. I just need to say thank you.

THANK YOU!

Now I have writing to do in the library next to the fire with a little company on the table next to me.

Hope you all find the magic, the mystery, the means, and the music to keep yourself going and loving life during turbulent, confusing times. Peace.

Tiny Tuesday!

I keep promising a post at the end of February having to do with books I’ve read this month. Those include a biography of Stevie Ray Vaughan. I’ll jump ahead of myself for this post: The story will be long, and at the end will be the tiny part.

After Tom and I moved to Texas in 1989, we were able to go to a lot of concerts that would have been harder to attend in the deep South. In my years in Alabama, I was lucky enough to go to a musically significant concert with my brother, and Lynne and I were fortunate to see a few great bands in Birmingham and Atlanta (and even Huntsville once, with my sister). I knew one advantage of living in a large city like Houston was greater accessibility to all the arts, including music.

When Joe Cocker and Stevie Ray Vaughan toured together in 1990, this was a must-see for me. My 8-track tape of Joe Cocker’s I Can Stand a Little Rain got me through bleak nights as I adjusted to the changes of being a college freshman–leaving home, being further from my family and closest friends, and making new friends. A time like that is exciting but also challenging. So absolutely yes to seeing Joe Cocker live.

Probably because of Tom and his appreciation for the blues, I came to Texas with awareness of Stevie Ray Vaughan, and I remember sitting with Lynne one day in that first Houston apartment and playing whatever cassette Tom and I had of SRV, and she said, “I LOVE this kind of music!” So the three of us were all in for that June concert to kick off our summer.

The venue at the Woodlands Pavilion is outdoors, with limited covered seating; otherwise, everyone sits on the grassy hill behind the seating. I’ve enjoyed both choices there, but I was particularly grateful to be in the covered seating that day because I had the GRANDMOTHER of migraine headaches. Not the best condition for any concert, and Stevie Ray was famous for playing LOUD. I steeled myself to enjoy the music despite the headache. At least I wasn’t sitting in the bright sun while we waited for the show to begin.

Every concert has a vibe, and on that day, at that venue, the vibe was a sense of anticipation, of fun, and a kind of laid-back chill despite being a summer day (at the beginning of Houston’s ovenlike season). To take my mind off the headache, I people-watched. One man and woman in particular, in the row in front of us, were like a commercial starring young, photogenic people in love. While I don’t usually appreciate public displays of affection, they had a sweet innocence–they were living in the moment, sharing a happy occasion with someone they loved, glad to be there, young and alive.

Later, I began to watch three men a few rows ahead of us. I don’t know if it was the popped collars… pause for photo:

Popped collars: What transgender writer, activist, and Southerner Basil Soper calls “one of history’s six worst gay trends.”

…or their rigid ability to sit side-by-side, never letting their shoulders touch despite the close seats, sharing only brief glances between them as they talked and laughed, that clued me in that they were gay and being careful not to signal that in any way (beyond the popped collars).

The June 1990 Becky didn’t know any gay people. Does that sound incredible? It’s because I was one of those straight people who undoubtedly had known lots of gay people, but other than one woman who came out to me as a lesbian in college, no one else I knew was ever openly LGBT or had shared that information with me.

As I sat there watching them, I had an epiphany. They were enjoying the day just as much as the man/woman couple in front of me, but they believed they were not in a place where they could be fully themselves. My head hurt so badly, and then my heart hurt, because of the injustice that three people felt they had to hide gestures of happiness–simple happiness–on the dangerous chance that any of the people around them would react badly, might say or do things that would hurt them emotionally, even to the point of escalating to hurt them physically, because of their perceived sexual orientation.

That day changed something inside me. I loved the company I was in, was thrilled with the performances of Joe Cocker and Stevie Ray with his band Double Trouble, and treasured every minute of the music, but images of those three men stayed with me after I left that night.

At the bookstore where I worked, I found a few works of fiction and nonfiction that would provide me stories and educate me about issues and concerns specific to LGBT people. At the end of that summer, on August 27, Stevie Ray Vaughan would die in a helicopter crash while leaving a Wisconsin concert venue, further locking my own concert experience in my consciousness. Four days later, our store hired another assistant manager whose name was Steve. Four days after that, Tom and I got another dachshund as a companion to our dachshund Pete. We named her Stevie for Stevie Ray Vaughan and Stevie Nicks.

Our little Stevie would live eight years longer than the assistant manager Steve, who became one of my most beloved friends. Steve was gay and had AIDS. When he became too ill to work, I became his caregiver and was with him when he died in June of 1992. His friends had become my friends, his family greatly loved by Tom and me. Some of my friends–namely Lynne and Princess Patti–spent time with and appreciated Steve. My mother loved him, too, and Lynne’s son Jess, young as he was, met Steve in the hospital, understood his illness, and had compassion for him. At Steve’s memorial service in 1992, some of my friends who’d never met him came because they knew what a loss his death meant not only to me, but to humanity. He should have had decades left, like so many other people taken by AIDS.

And like Stevie Ray Vaughan.

By the time I got to the end of reading Texas Flood: The Inside Story of Stevie Ray Vaughan, I couldn’t stop crying. The book is formatted in stories and quotes from friends, family, musicians, and other people who knew SRV. Their feelings of loss and regret that someone so special was taken too soon certainly resonates. My friend Steve and Stevie Ray shared musical talent, a love of music, and a belief in its power to communicate and to heal. Like Steve, Stevie Ray had a goodness, a purity, and a love for others that was returned many times over. The day I saw him in concert, I’ll always believe there was something about Stevie Ray the person, along with his music, that changed something inside me.

So much of what I became, the purpose I found, the focus I had, and the work I did as a writer, can all be traced back to that concert in 1990. Because I saw. I understood. I wanted to find some way to make a good change. In the novel I was working on back then, I wrote my first gay character, a musician. It was my fledgling attempt to find words for that epiphany.

After I closed the book last week, I checked my online miniature instrument source, and they do have replicas of three of Stevie Ray’s guitars, including the one he named Number One, but they are 1/4-scale models instead of the 1/6-scale I prefer. So I thought, maybe I should look for a guitar pick. I found one, using a picture of Stevie’s head bowed as he holds Number One, as shown in this photo.

I ordered it. The woman at the online shop emailed me and said that she felt bad about the amount of postage I had to pay for such a small item, but that’s a post office rule, not hers, so she was including a bonus gift for me.

The day her package came in the mail, Tom brought it to me and waited while I opened it. The pick is perfect.

The bonus gift is a dog tag using a different SRV picture, still with Number One.

And when I turned it over, as if she knows me, this generous woman had put this dog tag on the back.


Tom Petty. Who I also saw at The Woodlands on a magical night with Tom. Whose music has been part of my soundtrack since the year I graduated from college. Who is forever connected to Princess Patti for me.

There is so much wonder in our lives, so many gifts from others, tangible and intangible, tiny and tremendous, so much magic in the Universe for us to cherish. I embrace it all.

More Reorg

Last night, Tom and I did some major moving and shifting of books to make these bookcases in the living room work better for us. Most of his stuff stays put once he’s read it, but a lot of my books that I frequently consult were behind the TV, which I was always having to move to find them. Now, his rarely consulted or reread books are behind the TV.


From left to right, these are divided by LGBTQ non-fiction and fiction by author; music, whether memoir, biographies, or other nonfiction by artist then subject, and the many oversized programs and promotional materials that are shelved together away from the related artist just because of their tallness; mystery by author; political/history/sociology; metaphysical by topic; health; religion, spirituality, and philosophy; and finally, science fiction.

Another reason we did this is because we were running out of shelf space. The bookshelves in the library (almost all fiction, drama, poetry, and art, but also children’s and humor) are full, too, but for this living room set, there was one way we could make more space: by removing most of the boxes that were on them. Only two or three remain, and the others, along with boxes that were on shelves in our bedroom, have been moved to the office on top of the two larger dog crates, which serve well as tabletops.

By the way, in the top photo, second bookcase from the left, in front of the bottom shelf, Anime’s tail is visible. Today, we had a CRAZY morning of dog chaos because we had both the cable guy and the exterminator on the property. The dogs and I had to take a nap afterward.

Below is the whole dog Anime, generally the sweetest of the BatPack, who was just as vocal as the rest of them this morning. Despite their lunacy (it was a full moon, after all), we love them all, and they had a great romp of squirrel chasing later.

Button Sunday


This button from my personal collection I first shared on here in 2012. I don’t know where I got it.

I might have said before that though “Dr. Seuss” began publishing children’s books in my lifetime, I never read any of them that I recall until I was a young teenager and Lynne introduced me to them. It’s funny, because The Cat in the Hat was written by Theodor Seuss Geisel at the request of a publisher after there was public grumbling about how the Dick and Jane books children were reading in school didn’t encourage them to want to keep reading more books.

I was one of those children who read Dick and Jane books in school even after the Dr. Seuss books appeared, and while maybe they weren’t riveting characters or stories, I was thrilled any time I could read anything. Everyone in my family read, and it was frustrating for me that I couldn’t. I think I didn’t realize that everyone has to learn to read. I wanted to be able to do what David (eight years older) and Debby (five years older) did.


In 2013, I first posted about this mug gifted with hot chocolate from Debby and commented on how it made me think of The Cat in the Hat. It still does, but the other day when I pulled it down, it also made me think of Eddie Van Halen backstage at a 1981 concert (especially because of the green shoes).


But hey, Elton John sported the look in 1972, which predated my own socks, seen below, hanging behind our Charlie Brown tree in the Tuscaloosa house on Twelfth Avenue when I was a college sophomore.

Not to be overlooked are these sock dresses I made for my Top Models.

Our lives are full of recurring themes and patterns, and apparently in my case, the appeal of red and white stripes.

Waves…waves…waves…

You can, if you wish, go back and revisit this post from October in which I went off on a little rant about one of my favorite artists Bruce Springsteen (honestly, VERY high on my list, higher even than maybe a Beatle or two) and how I once taught his song “Thunder Road” to my college freshmen as a fine example of the carpe diem theme, wherein I told them “Mary’s dress waves,” then years later, I was faced with what I was told was hard evidence that “Mary’s dress sways.” I apologized to my students all these decades later if I had misled them.


Wait. Let me pause here for a photo that recently landed in my social media feed. Taken in 1970… this lovely Irish/Italian/Dutch boy, name of Bruce… What? He was twenty-one and legal!

I, however, was not. I’ll enter the Bruce plea: Not guilty of inappropriate thoughts because it IS hard to be a saint in the city.


Moving on from all that, a couple of weeks back, Tim told me about a new used bookstore in the Heights that’s pretty cool, KABOOM. Since our two closest Half Price Books shuttered during This Pandemic™, a new used bookstore was good news to me. On my weekly outing, I went browsing.


I took several photos inside and out, and bought several books, and sooner or later, you’ll probably see a lot of that one way or another on the blog. Here is one of the books I bought, and it’s not quite as elaborate or detailed as the Paul McCartney books I recently featured here.


Then again, it’s 24 years old. Bruce has released a lot more material since then. But it is authored by the Boss himself. So….


Here it is, that song that remains forever lodged in either the first or second spot of my all-time favorite songs.


Wait, do I need to zoom in on “Thunder Road?” Her dress is WAVING? You don’t say.

I rest my case. (ETA: But y’all should read my answer to Marika in the comments.)

A few shots featuring Bruce and more of my favorite things.

I wore the album The River out when I got it. It still blows me away. Saw him on tour for that one.


Lovely, hand-scribbled lyrics for “Glory Days.”


Song “Born in the U.S.A.” misunderstood and misappropriated by political candidates. Because their teams don’t read the lyrics. Or ask Bruce.


Bruuuuuce! One of my two favorite Jersey-born boys.

Getting a read on things

On my Goodreads account, I have two books on my “currently reading” shelf. Specimen Days by Michael Cunningham has been there since 2010, when I put it down and have yet to pick it back up. Volume II of Marcel Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past has been there since I began reading it in 2017.

The last time I counted, I had more than 60 books in my TBR pile, including print copies of books and many eBooks. I’ve added I don’t know how many to the pile since then. It’s a LOT of unread books, and many of them are by some of my favorite writers, so it’s not THEM, it’s me. I’ve always been a voracious reader, and I believe I was through 2019. In late 2019, I got this book:

Written by an educator and encompassing perspectives on racial justice, sociology, psychology, politics, and education, this was right up my alley and in early 2020, I began a slow read so I could take it all in.

Then the world went batshit crazy on so many levels, and suddenly I found myself unable to read. I’m not sure what I read in all of 2020. It seems like I just stopped. Then came 2021, and I managed to read five memoirs, one biography, and two romance eBooks, so things weren’t quite as bleak. (Unless three of those memoirs and the biography were in 2020. Those two all run together as one long year.)

I also began this book in late 2021:

It was a bit of a struggle getting through all the science up front, but I’m really glad I finally finished it THIS MONTH! It has enabled me to take some small steps toward feeling healthier mentally, physically, and emotionally. I also finished Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? THIS MONTH!

And yay, me, I didn’t stop at those two. In January, I’ve also read these:

So unless I read something else over the next couple of days, I am at finishing two nonfiction books in January 2022 and reading five novels.

In February, maybe I’ll finish a memoir and a biography I began in 2021, and then read more fiction from the TBR pile. Hopefully, I am getting my reading equilibrium back. (Making no promises about the Cunningham and Proust books, though.)

Were I in England right now…

…I’d go to the free Paul McCartney: The Lyrics exhibition in London at the entrance hall to the British Library on Euston Road. It’ll be there until March 13 and features photographs, archive material including handwritten lyrics, and previously unpublished comments from Sir Paul about the songwriting process. The exhibit spans his career from 1956 to the present.

I am not in England, or London, or the British Library. I am in Houston, as I was on December 4, Dennis Wilson’s birthday, when Tom and I went to Brazos Bookstore for a few gift ideas. It was there I sent him an apologetic look and said, “I don’t know what you’ve gotten me yet, and I know this is pricey, but I think I must have it.” He had already bought some gifts (at least one of which Debby later generously paid for and took from him to give me), and what I wanted was indeed pricey (but certainly nowhere near the amount many, many times it that the autographed copy sold for in their store, so there’s that).

I’ve barely begun to explore it yet, because I’m going to savor it for a long time, delving into it, and feeling grateful that I’ve been alive in the world at the same time as the Beatles and Wings and Paul McCartney. I’ll try not to write too much when I share the following photos, but I’m so grateful for this muse, this artist, this man, this musician, who is a constant source of inspiration and to whom one of my own characters frequently pays homage.

I am not so far away in time, after all, from the little girl who once put a ball under her shirt, embraced the bulge with her hands, and announced to the world she was having Paul McCartney’s baby.


Only yesterday, I wrote a scene in which my musician plays “Maybe I’m Amazed” on piano for the woman he loves. It was so unexpected that this was the song, among so many, that made me start crying when I saw Paul McCartney perform in 2019. It’s just… everything it should be, in his writing, his history, and in the things I imagine.


My first husband (SDG) gave me this little dog, who I named “First,” on the first anniversary of our “going steady” in high school. Often when we’d drive between Tuscaloosa and our hometown when we were in college, First would ride along, and when we listened to the 8-track of Band on the Run in SDG’s little orange Volkswagen, every time “Let Me Roll It” played, I’d pick up First and make him play air guitar. I don’t know if SDG laughed because of First or because I laughed so hard at First when I made him play, but this is a memory that never fails to make me happy. Some things are right for their time, and then we change and go somewhere else in our lives. That doesn’t take a single thing away from what we cherished.

I suppose that’s also one lesson of the Beatles.

Riley, I never forget that you left on January 16 in 2008. I thank you again for all the times you played and sang Paul McCartney songs for me on your guitar and piano, even though you reminded me that John was your Beatle and George was mine, and could I just please request them now and then? I didn’t have to. You always knew who I needed to hear from among them, as well as when my spirit required Bob Dylan or any of the other music that lit up my world. I will love you and miss you forever, my friend.

Happy New Year

I’m taking it as an auspicious beginning to 2022 that my inability to read a novel and sometimes even finish non-fiction that persisted throughout 2020 and 2021 has possibly ended.

I think I must have found author Cherise Wolas on Instagram through another literary writer, Paul Lisicky. Her “Little Stories” she publishes on her posts are third-person vignettes to accompany the works of photographers and artists she shares there. I highly enjoy them, and they make me think of when I wrote Pet Prose stories on this blog in 2017 (except dogs and cats wrote those stories, right?).

I bought this novel and her other one at Brazos Bookstore in late 2020. Even though I wasn’t reading anything–in fact, it may have been the month I poured a full range of emotions into a short story I was writing–I knew that when I could read again, I wanted the books at hand.

I don’t do book reviews, but The Family Tabor checked off all the right boxes (good writing; smart, layered characters from multiple generations; tension; compelling backstory; complicated family dynamics) to keep me reading. In fact, after I finished the novel, I reread the last three chapters, not because I didn’t understand them, but because I didn’t want to let the story or its characters go.

Looking forward to reading The Resurrection of Joan Ashby sooner rather than later–a promising development in my reading habits.