Ramble

This is month three of the Ramble quilt block of the month club. I have really been enjoying Tara Faughnan's instructional videos that go along with this. She is a great teacher, and having taken an in person class with her, heard her key note lecture at QuiltCon, as well as doing this BOM, her personality comes through and that is a good thing. I love the design, and I also love that it is a gentle skill builder. I believe it is billed as an intermediate pattern, and it is I think confident beginner friendly. The end result is more pleasing to me than her quilt Transverse, which was her last sew along. She points out in the first video that a medallion quilt has some risks associated with it, the first of which is that it is a medallion quilt, so with each layer outward there is a risk that it won't fit. Then she shows you the differences that occur if you sew an exact 1/4" and a scant 1/4" seam, if you press the seams open or to the side, and how quickly those differences add up when you are building in ever increasing outward layers. So the design has some fudge built in to it to allow for that. What a great idea! Then there is the fabric--I find the need for so many colors to be over kill, but then that is what she is known for--the colors. So maybe all is forgiven except that it is hard to sort and tag them all, and I am positive that by the end there will be design modifications. Already by month three I have some adjustments that have occurred, and the truth be told, I am not that great at following directions, and her written directions are a bit on the sparse side, so that is a perfect storm waiting to happen. The fabric is from the Windham Artisan fabric line, which has different colored threads in the warp and the weft, which gives it a beautiful depth and feel for a "solid", mostly because it isn't quite that, but oh my goodness, the fraying. If that drives you crazy, pick a different facbric. I have been sewing with Art Gallery Fabric Solids and they are so much the opposite of that! In any case, this is a bright, fun, and not too hard quilt that I am enjoying putting together, and hanging out virtually and not in real time with Tara Faughnan is icing on the top.

The Girl Who Cried Pearls (2025)

Pearls are created by animals and are both precious and beautiful. They have been called mermaid's tears--the myths that surround them are the start of this short animated film from Canada that won the Academy Award in 2026 in that category. This story is told by an old man to his granddaughter, who has an eye for shiny things and who we suppose has pocketed a precious pearl herself. The story begins in his youth in Montreal, when he was a hungry orphan scavenging for food by the docks and sleeping in abandoned buildings. If one could find such a residence adjacent to one that was occupied, he explains, one might feel the heat of the fire through the wall. Naturally, sitting against the wall meant one might also hear what was going on in a house, and he talks about the time when he heard a stepmother repeatedly abusing a lonely girl. At night the girl would cry, and peering through a hole, he saw her tears, made of the purest sorrow, turn to pearls. Acquiring some of these, he took them to a pawnbroker and was paid better than he had ever been before. To get more, however, he was faced with a terrible dilemma--her unhappiness led to wealth for him, and what should he hope for? It is a classic tale of greed, the power of poverty to drive poor decisions, and a surprise ending.

Island Storm by Brian Floca and Sydney Smith

This is a picture book about a storm rolling in, building momentum to a maximum crescendo, and then gradually ebbing. The author was inspired by a storm that he experienced on one of the many islands off the coast of Maine, but it has the look and feel of a Midwest storm as well, where you can see it, feel it, and smell it brewing. The sky changes color in the blink of an eye, the atmosphere crackles with electricity, the rain tumbles down with ferocity, and the sky is black. And then just as suddenly it ebbs and within an hour the sun is out again. This is about two children who sense that beginning to happen and they purposely go out into it. The illustrations for this are spectacular, and while the author is a gifted illustrator himself, he opted for another, and these illustrations really hit the mark. It is a really well done picture book.

Diane Warren: Relentless (2025)

This documentary was nominated in the category of Best Song for the 2026 Academy Awards. It is about Diane Warren, who I had never heard of, but that is on me because she is a powerhouse in the musical world. She is sixteen-time Academy Award nominee songwriter--though never a winner, she has done quality work for movies. She’s written for more than four hundred and fifty recording artists--she started writing songs when she was a child and by adulthood she was pushing artists to consider singing her songs. She really was relentless in her pursuit of the perfect performer to showcase her work, and that persistence paid of for everyone. She’s penned nine number-one songs and had thirty-three songs on the Billboard Hot 100. Who is she? She is a loner and never married. She is stuck in her ways; for example, she writes in the same room she has from the beginning. She ownss her childhood home at least partly because it is where she started writing. SHe trusts the same people she has known for her whole life. She is set in her ways and it has served her well. Those hoping to walk away with a greater understanding of her prolific outputcommensurate with her success will do so empty-handed, though not without having been entertained.

Best Dressed by Dawn Yanagihara

I saw this at the house of a friend who was on the verge of expanding the dining options in their coffeeshop to include some sort of salad, and she chose this book as the point of inspiration. On top of that, I was about mid-way through reading Samin Nosrat's new cookbook, Good Things, which has some of the same principles, which is get a well balanced and interesting flavored dressing, and then you can use it for a number of different things--like salad greens of course, but also salads with beans, salads with grains, and also over variously cooked vegetables. I am not where I would love to be with my cooking and this concept, despite my advanced age, and I am going to try to make 2026 the year I take a noticable step forward making progress in this arena. I think this paired with Good Things may be the magic sause that makes that happen--and also maybe buying the specific ingredients for a few recipes so that I do not start off with making due.

Chasing Time (2025)

This short documentary was short listed for an Academy award in 2026, and while it did not make the final list, it is an excellent documentary all the same. Back in 2012, Jeff Orlowski documented famed photographer James Balog as he setup his Extreme Ice Survey, a series of remote cameras set to record the immediate effect of climate change on the world’s glaciers. With stunning visuals and pioneering use of time-elapsed photography, Chasing Ice served as direct evidence of the warming of the planet. Images showed millennia-old ice sheets radically transforming over just a few years, contributing to the rise of sea levels, and making manifest the way the world is undergoing fundamental transformation due to environmental changes. This film is slightly more philosophical and ruminative. Directed in collaboration with Sarah Keo, the film sees Jeff and James return to Jakobshavn Glacier to remove the camera and close a chapter in both their work and their relationship. It’s a touching film about mentor and mentee, and manages in its compact running time to provide a rich portrait of their collaboration, additional stunning views of their otherworldly locations, and an even more open-eyed look at the catastrophic changes that have occurred over the last decades in this majestic environ. It is all set in motion by James’ cancer diagnosis, which makes him aware of his own limited time frame. The story and the photography are both beautiful.

Mother Mary Comes To Me by Arundhati Roy

This is a very raw memoir written by an author who knows how to tell a story. She left home the moment she reached legal age and never went back. She is here to tell you why. She was born in Shillong in northeastern India to a Bengali Christian father who worked on the tea plantation, and a Malayali mother. Her father was a ne'er do well, and her mother moved to Kerala via Assam and Ooty with her and her older brother, Lalith, when her parents separated. It was a a precarious, nomadic life, living with relatives, and describes taking shelter in her maternal grandfather’s cottage in Tamil Nadu, only to be thrown out because of the property laws of the state, which did not afford daughters inheritance rights. Her mother was a teacher and she demanded even her own children call her Mrs. Roy. She starts a school that grows into a renowned institution where she models her own brand of feminism, unflinchingly confronting matters of gender and sexuality. Mrs Roy challenges the inheritance laws in the Syrian Christian community, suing her brother to obtain an equal share of her father’s estate, and wins the case Mary Roy Etc vs State of Kerala and Others, heard by the Supreme Court of India in 1986. She is sharp, restless and charismatic, a visionary ruling with an iron fist. But in her rage against the patriarchy, she also lashes out at her children. She berates her childrean for the tiniest of foibles and humiliates them in public. She was fearless in her public life but made life miserable for her children, which was confusing and damaging for them. This is unflinching in its subtle but persuasive rant against perpetuating a society that leaves women as second class citizens.

Kokuho (2025)

This film is nominated in the category of Make Up for the 2026 Academy Awards, and it was short listed for Best International Movie. It is set in and around the world of Kabuki, the 400-year-old theatrical form that lies near the heart of Japanese culture. Spanning half a century and running close to three hours, this quiet epic is the top-grossing Japanese live action film of all time. When we first meet the hero, Kikuo, he's 14 and playing a female role in an excerpt from a famous Kabuki play. (Men play all the roles in Kabuki.) His performance is seen by a Kabuki star, Hanai who's impressed by his talent. When Kikuo's yakuza father is murdered by a rival gang, Hanai takes him in as a protégé, teaching him to become an onnagata — a male actor who plays female roles. There is one snag. Hanai already has a son of the same age, Shunsuke, who is slated to be his artistic heir, and, in the Kabuki world, artistic status passes from father to son. The story of what transpires between Kikuo and Shunsuke a compelling story about friendship, the weight of history, the quest for perfection and the torturous road to becoming a living national treasure — which is what the word "kokuho" means. Spanning their lives, it also is a portrait of post WWII 20th century Japan, where ideas about birth and cultural inheritance, which seem quite dated. Then in Kikuo's struggle to become Japan's greatest Kabuki actor, we feel the chilly isolation of devoting yourself to an art form so demanding that it leaves little room for ordinary human connectionanything else--his connection with Shunsuke is the closest thing he has to an ordinary relationship. This is lush and gorgeous, all the while having a creepy undercurrent. Don't miss it.

Cursed Daughters by Oyinkan Braithwaite

The author's first book, which was long listed for the Booker prize, was more violent and grizzly than this one, which overall is a good thing I think. That is a sibling tale--one sister kills her abusive boyfriend, the other one cleans up the mess. In this one but there is still a family mess to mop up. This time, the problem is spiritual rather than forensic: a matrilineal curse. For generations, the women of the Falodun family have been unlucky in matters of sustained love. They find love alright– but it curdles. Marriages disintegrate; husbands cheat, or die, or disappear. And so the women return home to Lagos, rejoin their spinster kin and teach their fatherless daughters to brace themselves for betrayal. We follow the intertwined fates of three curse-bearers. There is Monife, who dies by her own hand in the novel’s opening pages, but lingers in otherworldly ways; her cousin Ebun, who becomes a mother on the day Monife is buried; and Eniiyi, Ebun’s daughter, whose resemblance to Monife is so uncanny there is talk of reincarnation. Skipping back and forth in time, the novel zones in on each young woman as she grapples with the family jinx. It is a well told tale of what amounts to generational trauma.

Classroom 4 (2025)

This short documentary was short listed in that category for the 2026 Academy awards--it did not make the final cut, but it is open source and available to for viewing by all. The documentary takes place inside the Columbia River Correctional Institution (CRCI) in Portland, where incarcerated students and Lewis & Clark undergraduates meet weekly over the course of a semester to study the history of crime and punishment in the United States. The Inside-Out course—which is part of the nationwide Inside-Out Prison Exchange program—meets in Classroom 4 at the facility. There, students explore ideas of justice, mercy, and the evolution of the carceral state. What emerges is not only a study of history but a shared experience of humanity. The course is taught by Reiko Hillyer, professor of history and department chair. Hillyer began teaching Inside-Out courses in 2012, a year after completing training through the Philadelphia-based program. Since then, she has taught the CRCI class every other year, guiding mixed cohorts of “inside” (incarcerated) and “outside” (college) students through lively weekly discussions and shared assignments. Each class usually includes 30 students—15 from CRCI and 15 from the college—who meet behind prison walls to learn, debate, and reflect as equals. It is a very good watch.

Quilt By Night

Becky Halvorsen, family medicine doctor by day and quilter by night. I first came to know her because she issued an FPP design for the Rebel Loon at the height of the violence in Minneapolis, and being a member of the Minneapolis Modern Quilt Guild, one of our sew on Zoom sessions had one member finishing hers, one talk about the one she had made and put on a bag to take to QuiltCon and another member piecing one that day. She was a quilt hero to us. And she make the pattern available without charge. The same is true for her rainbow heart and same with this FPP for the classic VOTE logo. She also has a lot of fun whimsical patterns on her website and in her Etsy shop, including letters, which you can use to make a VACCINES MAKE ADULTS and other things that seem obvious but are now seen as political. Here is the thing. Basic decency is now seen as radical. Lying about absolutely everything is happening on our governmental web sites. It is incumbent on all of us to speak up. And some of what is coming out of the fiber art world is absolutely amazing, so check her out, download a free pattern (she has one with stars that I am eying a scrap friendly and not too hard as FPP goes, so right up my alley), buy a pattern (I am a true amateur when it comes to FPP so I am building a library of alphabets and hers is a great one), and support democracy.

The Voice of Hind Rajab (2025)

This is a docudrama that is nominated in the Best International Film category for the 2026 Academy Awards. It is a re-enactment of events that happened. On January 29th, 2024, the Israeli Army ordered the evacuation of the Tel Al-Hawa neighborhood in the Gaza Strip. On that day, six members of the Hamadeh family, along with their six-year-old niece, Hind Rajab, were trapped in their car after the Israeli Army opened fire on them, killing five occupants of the vehicle immediately. Miraculously, a fifteen-year-old girl named Layan was able to call the Palestinian Red Crescent Society and ask for help before she too succumbed to her wounds. That left six-year-old Hind alone in the car, surrounded by the corpses of her slain family members, possessing a cellphone with shoddy reception as her only hope. The conversations that members of the PRCS had with her while they are trying to coordinate an ambulance safe passage to come get her to safety use actual recordings of Hind and the movie quite dramatically takes the audience into the day to day stresses of being helpless at the end of a phone while people are in danger and at the mercy of what seems like a merciless war. This was very painful to watch.

Tie Dip Dye by Pepa Martin & Karen Davis

This is the year that I do a deep dive into dying. I haven't done this since I lived in Central California and was in a fiber guild with Jean Ray Laury. I did some dying and some silk screening and I really enjoyed it--as well as enjoying the creative expression it afforded. So I am taking all the books out of my local library that are available and learning what I can before I can take some classes. I started by going to the National Shibori Museum when I was in Kyoto and taking a class there. Then there are two things are happening to assist with expanging my coloring experience into the 21st century. My guild is doing an indigo dye vat in August, and the in person workshops that I take not at QuiltCon are at Minnesota Quilters and this year I am taking three classes where I do dying. This book has several techniques that I will be doing immersion in--ombre, shibori--specifically folding and tying or sewing to get resist dying features, ice dying and ombre dying. The book is a bit scant on exact details, but does have good pictures, if you are a visual learner, and it has a brief narrative about each technique. I think it would be hard to use this book alone to do it on your own, but it would be a good book to use in combination with a book that discusses more about the dyes themselves.

All The Empty Rooms (2025)

This short documentary was seven years in the making. Media correspondent Steve Hartman used to work on finding something positive to report after mass school shootings, basically the silver lining after children have been killed in their classrooms. You could see how that would wear on you over time. Much like all the “thoughts and prayers” rather than real outrage and an effort to make change. So along with long-time friend and photographer Lou Bopp they visit families across the US who have been affected by school shootings and document all of their ‘empty rooms.’ We’re so used to seeing the media side of stories that this is where it gets very real in a way that puts us into the long term effects of the loss, the hole that dead children leave behind. Directed by Joshua Seftel and distributed by Netflix, the emotionally poignant untold stories have been nominated for ‘Best Documentary Short’ at this year’s Academy Awards. We step into the families lives. From keeping the lights on to hearing their voice recordings through teddies and keeping their rooms exactly how they left them. Alongside this we see Lou talking through the process of photographing his daughter every day to see her progression. This freedom of growing up serves as a reminder for the importance of life.

The Henna Artist by Alka Joshi

I have a slow roll on this, but I am reading all the Reese Witherspoon book club picks and have overall found them to be good and a bit lighter than books that are longlisted for the Booker Prize. This is not my favorite of these--I found the writing to be just okay. This story is about Lakshmi, and takes place in 1955, the early years of Indian independence. Fifteen years before, she was married to a man by force who abused her and depended on her to support him. One day, she had the courage to flee her home and her village. Even though it means she had to leave her saas (mother-in-law) behind. She was close to her saas and she learned a lot of herbal medicine remedies. It turns out she has quite a talent for it, and after a rough journey Lakshmi ends up in Jaipur where she settles and establishes a life for herself as henna artist with an herbal medicine practice on the side. Lakshmi has worked hard, starting with nothing and slowly making a name for herself as a henna artist. Her business is taking off, new plans are about to come to fruition, and everything she’s ever wanted is within reach. Then the abusive husband she fled turns up on her doorstep with a sister she never knew about. With her parents dead and an outcast in her village, Radha has no one else to turn to except her sister. Introducing Radha, a 13 year old girl who has only ever known village life to wealthy castes of Jaipur society proves to be increasingly more challenging and Lakshmi can feel her dreams slipping through her fingers. She does manage to find her way, not without help and not without difficulty. The book is strongest when it is describing the sights and sounds of post-colonial India.

Arco (2025)

First of all, this animated French film, which was nominated for a 2026 Academy award, sees rainbows not just as a reflection of sunlight through water in the air, but rather as time travelers from the future. Arco is oe such traveler. He is a 10 year old who travels from the distant future back in time to 2075, when robots have taken over human tasks, suburbs evolved into fireproof domes, with the ecological crisis worsening—all of which have left humanity about as isolated as one might anticipate. Crash-landing in a forest, young Arco has the good fortune to encounter Iris, a girl his age, who takes him in. There’s an immediate joy and curiosity to their initial meeting, something warm beyond words. Iris lives with a nanny bot named Mikki, programmed by her parents—only accessible via video hologram—to help raise her and her baby brother, and she leaps at the chance to make a real friend, especially one who looks at her world so curiously. Iris works towards helping Arco get back to his time and his family. It is an overly optimistic but very pleasant tale.

The Other Bennet Sister by Janice Hadlow

This falls into the genre of fan fiction--It is not the retelling of Pride and Prejudice but rather an extention of that story. The novel explores the predicament of Mary, the overlooked middle daughter of the Bennet household. Mary doesn’t have a story of her own in Austen’s novel – she’s there to serve as a foil to her sisters’ charm, and a temporary obstacle to their happiness. Bookish and gauche, Mary is the one who can be relied on to give an ill-judged performance on the pianoforte or deliver a sententious comment at exactly the wrong moment. By the end of the novel her circumstances have changed, but she has not; she’s still just as plain and awkward as she ever was, but with her sisters variously settled elsewhere, she is at least not compared to them daily but she is not a woman of note either. In this version of the story Mary begins very much as Austen depicted her – plain, awkward, overlooked – but she is now our protagonist, the one we are supposed to be rooting for. As the great majority of us are not beautiful to look at or glittering company, we are predisposed to hope that her studiousness and loyalty will somehow eventually pay off. We come to understand what has made her the way she is. From girlhood, she has been mortified by her mother, who constantly evaluates her five daughters’ looks, and finds only Mary’s wanting. Her father, too, is a source of grief; she is desperate to be close to him, but he makes a pet of Lizzie, and only seems to speak to Mary – Hadlow is quoting Austen here – in put-downs. Her sisters exist in fixed pair-bonds: Jane-and-Lizzie, Kitty-and-Lydia; Mary is left to drift alone. Teased, belittled and criticised, it is no wonder she is so ill at ease; no wonder she blunders. I cringed a few times at Mary's missteps but mostly was rooting for her, and very much enjoyed once again being plunged into the world of Austen.

Retirement Plan (2025)

This short animated film is nominated for a 2026 Oscar, and maybe it is because I am actively thinking about my own retirement (I am aiming for 3 years from now) that it seemed so poignant. This is a devastating yet optimistic piece of storytelling. It’s funny, endearing, relatable and playful but it also has a fierce undercurrent of melancholy. In the throes of his overstimulated, energy poor midlife, Ray fantasizes about everything he'd love to do in retirement, once he finally has the time. It plays with the idea that we’re taught to postpone living until retirement, until we have more time but in reality, that day may never arrive. Retirement Plan reminds us to live in the now, to stop living through lists and start embracing each day as it comes. Twice things happened to teach me that you should not put off today the things you really want to do—the first is when my youngest son had a brain tumor and the second is when I was diagnosed with a poor prognosis cancer myself. I am blessed with a job that has a lot of vacation as well as a fair amount of work related travel, and I have been active about doing things now rather than putting them off. Even still, I can relate to this. Aside from the thought provoking, personal narrative. Retirement Plan is also a beautifully animated feature that showcases the simplicity and power of animation. Stripping back the shots, playing with minimal movements and relying on the impact of the storytelling made the sentiment all the more beautiful. Finally, if you take anything away from this tender-hearted story, remember to embrace every day of life, don’t wait.

Jane Austen's Bookshelf by Rebecca Romney

I, like the author, love Jane Austen. Unlike her, I know nothing about the world of rare books, and while I know only slightly more now than before I read this book, I have a better understanding of what draws people not just ot the book itself, but to those who read this exact volume before one picks it up. She asks the question about who might have influenced Austen and the answer is that there were quite a few women authors who wrote in the late 18th and early 19th century and who clearly Austen read because she mentions them by name in her letters to her siblings and in some cases because she has lifted things out of their books to make her own. It is a wonder someone hasn’t thought before to do a little detective work into the authors that influenced her: Ann Radcliffe, whose 1794 gothic thriller The Mysteries of Udolpho peppers every other conversation in Northanger Abbey; Elizabeth Inchbald, whose 1798 play Lovers’ Vows is rehearsed by the characters in Mansfield Park; and Frances Burney, whose third novel, Camilla (1796), originated the phrase “pride and prejudice”. The interesting thing is not that they exist but more that they have been largely forgotten. I was able to find their hallmark works through the Guttenberg project and in the Kindle library, and will uspdate later as I read through some of them, but this author thinks that they are worthy. In addition to the above, she found Fanny Burney’s Evelina to be bold and witty, Charlotte Lennox, whose The Female Quixote" is witty and smart, to Elizabeth Inchbald, whose concise and ironic style may have influenced Austen as well. It is great fun to read this.

It Was Just An Accident (2025)

This was submitted to the Academy for consideration for ‘Best International Feature Film’ by Tunisia, it is a film by an Iranian filmmaker about the repressive and violent Iranian regime. The movie opens with a couple and their child travelling home. They run over a dog, and while the child is very sorrowful about it, the parents shrug and say, “It was just an accident.” Several miles after the impact, their car breaks down outside a modest factory. An employee offers to fix their car while his co-worker Vahid (Vahid Mobasseri) talks on the phone in a backroom. Before he sees the driver, Vahid hears the shuffle and squeak of a prosthetic leg. His genial visage fades, and he sneaks around the corner to get a better look. From his vantage point, we only see the driver’s legs as he looks for a toolbox. When he asks for help, Vahid, hiding in another room, hooks his finger into his cheek to change his voice. Vahid believes this man is Eghbal, a former intelligence officer who tortured him years ago in prison. Vahid decides to act. He tracks the driver to a repair shop, hits him with his car, abducts him from the street, and drives out to the desert, where he digs a hole with the intent of burying him alive. When the man protests that he can’t be Peg Leg because his scars are recent, doubt creeps into Vahid’s mind. Does he actually have the right man? So, with Peg Leg in tow, he seeks out the opinions of others who he was imprisoned with, and that is the gist of the movie—the psychological damage inflicted cruelly and permanently by the torturer is explored in a surprisingly light hearted manner. I was dreading watching this, but very much enjoyed it.

The English Understand Wool by Helen Dewitt

Here is another recommendation from the Parnassus Friday vlog "If You Haven't Read It It Is New To You", where they veer off the usual bookseller path of selling you the latest and greatest and dig back into time past to highlight gems that were not much lauded or have been too soon forgotten. It is a novella, maybe even better described as a short story, about a young woman whom the world calls Marguerite. She thinks of herself by a different name, the name she was raised with, which she never tells us. In the novel’s opening pages, she describes a recent trip she took with her “Maman” to buy fabric for a suit, or, rather, a tailleur. The pair travelled from Marrakesh to the Outer Hebrides, then on to London, where they remained for six weeks (staying at Claridge’s) while the tailor made the garments. Since no one can be expected to go that long without practising an instrument, they had the television removed from their suite and an electronic piano install Marguerite’s story is immediately destabilizing; her existence sounds like the fantastic confection of someone with no real experience of everyday life. And it is, sort of, but not in ways the reader may initially think. This is a treatise on many things and a funny comment on them all. Don't miss it, it only takes a moment to read and it will leave you happy that you did.

Armed Only With A Camera (2025)

There is so much to care about in this documentary and so much tragedy to go along with it. Brent Renaud is a photo journalist who was purposely targeted and killed by the Russians in Ukraine. There is so much to dislike about Putin, Russia, and the soldiers fighting for things that do not belong to them, but that is not what this is about. This short documentary, which is nominated in that category for the 2026 Academy Awards, is more of a celebration of a photo journalist's life. The span of where he went, what he filmed, and how important the brave work that he accomplished in his too short life is what the film is about.We meet Brent Renaud as he trudges through a shallow, fast-moving river on the border of Guatemala and Mexico. He films a 16-year-old boy as he makes the arduous trek from his former home of Honduras to what he hopes is his future home, the United States. The boy says he has no parents and no future in Honduras, but believes the U.S. will be a place where he can build a new family and find some hope. That is another tragedy best left untalked about right now but the camera and the man behind it are so sympathetic to the underdog you can feel him routing for the boy when he has to part ways with him, and it is more than what he says. He survived many scary situations before he met his death, and I was left bereft when he was shot down. Much like Tim Featherington, who's full length documentary Restrepo, filmed when he was embedded with a U.S. platoon in Afghanistan, took us into one war before another war left him dead, it seems that the very best of them are heroes who show us what we are missing about the world and violence, but they too are so slow to it that more than a few of them get burned. This is worth every minute of time watching it.

Scrap Quilt Sensation by Katharine Guerriere

I really liked this book, which is focused on traditional quilt blocks that are done in a less traditional manner, and also very scrappy. She does a really nice job of describing and demonstrating he approach to design, and her quilts have a consistency between them and are decidedly different from another designers. The author has quilts that are dense in not just scraps but also using batiks rather than solids--which is often one color, different hues but not strictly reading like prints would. She does do a discussion of trying to figure out color, value, and hue, how to think about or deal with prints, and how she thinks about it when in the design phase. For reasons that I cannot quite put my finger on, this style of quilt is one that I both find quite appealing and am not a natural with, so while I first encountered the book by getting it out of the library, I did decide to buy it. It is an older publication, so it was possible to get from a used book seller of your choice for a very modest price.

Snuggly Monkey

This happens every year. I come home from QuiltCon inspired to organize my creative fiber life, and as I inch closer to retirement (yes, I am picking a date, and yes, it is looming within sight) I feel like I need to get geared up and organized in order to launch immediately into a productive post-work life. It needs to have handwork and machine work. I need to have my supplies and I need to be able to find them (this is a story for another day). This year, in the ugly war that my own government launched against it's own people in Minneapolis, where I work, I am also quite commited to buying from people who side with decency. I used to think it was more common than it turns out to be. Last year I bought from Snuggly Monkey because the site had a wonderful and reasonably priced array of Sashiko products and while I have a lot of embroidery supplies, not many of them came from Japan, and I rectified that because Sashiko is something I want to do more of. This year, Snuggly Monkey was outspoken about doing the right thing, which is resist resist resist this ugly facist regime that is disappearing and murdering people because of the color of their skin, and so this year I spend my creative dollars with them because they are with me philosophically as well as artisitcally. And the bonus is that they have an even better array of things that inspire me than they did last year.

Death Takes Me by Cristina Rivera Garza

I am not entirely sure I got this book. It is a New York Times Notable Book from 2025, and I try to read at least a number of them, and while I think this is well written and literary, it is also allegorical and that is not my superpower. It does have elements that remind me of Latin American novels I have loved, and that is a genre I have read deeply in. The story is on the disturbing end, especially if you are not reading murder mysteries routinely, and examines the intrusion of crime into the lives of witnesses and detectives. A wave of men are being discovered, dead and castrated, their corpses accompanied by mysterious poetic allusions and all the marks of a serial killer to-be. The Detective, at a loss, starts enlisting the services of a local professor and writer, Cristina, who found the first body. The violence of the crimes starts a wave of impact that hits the professor, the Detective, her partner, and everyone else in its wake. The murderer appears to be a woman, castrating men, leaving behind poetry using ‘women’s objects,’ such as nail polish or lipstick. This troubles the professor and the detective both. Men start feeling that they have to protect their genitals in public and long for the days when basically women were subjugated to men so they could feel both safer and more powerful. So in the era of the Epstein files, where it it very clear that rich and powerful men like having their way with young women and children, we can see where the rage comes from. Read with caution, the material is gruesome but the emotions are understandable.

Lost In Starlight (2025)

This Korean animated feature length film is the one not nominated for an Oscar in 2026, and while I am almost certainly in the minority, maybe even alone, I liked this much more than the ever so populare K-Pop Demon Hunters. Would be astronaut Nan-young (Kim Tae-ri) has dedicated her life to being selected as a member of the next expedition to Mars, following in the footsteps of her mother who tragically died there in a natural disaster. But when she meets retro tech guru Jay (Hong Kyung) by chance, she discovers a whole new side of life, that will lead to a connection that traverses the solar system. A big aspect of the film’s visual look is clearly anime-style but which captures the kind of positive glimpse of a future world that science-fiction appears to have discarded wholesale in recent years. It’s something akin to more of the same but with changes: it’s a world of holographic displays and garish advertising, people overusing their phones (or equivalents) and using the best that scientists can create to set up a habitat on Mars, but it’s also a world of rainy streets, familiar cityscapes, people going gaga for retro tech in a trendy fashion and good ol’ fashioned communications through aerials dug into the ground. In fact, Lost In Starlight feels like a love-letter to analog in a lot of ways, to old forms of tech that cyclically come back into fashion, with a late-in-the-game hallucinogenic sequence really making the point about the longevity of vinyl. It’s use of tightly cut montage techniques are also stellar, giving the film a needed sense of vibrancy even when it might otherwise not seem like it has such a thing. Speaking as a lover of things that are mechanical, it was fun for me, and better than the plot that runs through it, which was fine, and for an animated movie good even, but nothing to write home about.

Heart The Lover by Lily King

First of all, I loved this book. It is the familiar genre of young love and decisions made that lead to regret later in life. Truely, it does feel like a miracle that the person you love at 20 is the same person you love at 70, and these deeply passionat love stories that harken back to college are part of a classic genre that I enjoy. This one involves a triangle--also a classic. The book opens in the 1980's with three friends, Casey, Yash, and Sam. Casey dates Sam in college and it ends badly, he leaving her and it being the 80's, there is no way to keep in touch. Then Casey and Yash get together, even though it causes issues for Sam and Yash--the whole I don't want her but you can't have her issue that can be so destructive. Suffice it to say that Yash is communication impaired, and Casey is in a bind, and so their relationship, which is full of strong feelings that certainly feel like love to both of them, ruptures. Casey is unable to forgive Yash, but goes on the find love and family and all that is good in middle age. The book ends years later around Yash's hospice bed where all the old secrets and resentments get sorted through if not completely resolved, and there is so much to love about how it all gets sorted, and so many cautionary tales about what not to do in your own love life, but do we ever really heed that advice? Not as often as would be ideal would be my assessment. Well, read this and enjoy. It feels very real to me.

The Singers (2025)

This film is nominated for a 2026 Academy Award in the Live Action Short category, which is filled with interesting nominations this year. What is notable about this is that it is a modern and updated version of an Ivan Turgenev short story of the same name. It was published in a collection of short stories and dates to 1850. In the text, a group of gruff men at a bar finds connection by baring their souls in an impromptu singing competition. In an interesting twist, the filmmaker was inspired to adapt the old work when juxtaposing it with a modern medium. The only thing that I have read by Turgenev is Fathers and Sons, which is a reflection on that relationship and is very good--I read it a decade ago when I was headed to Russia as a tourist destination, something not to be repeated and not a good idea at this point--which is a shame on many levels, but Russia has a deep and interesting history and is home to many beautiful treasures. In any case, I digress. Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev was a Russian novelist, short story writer, poet, playwright, translator and popularizer of Russian literature in the West. His first major publication, a short story collection titled A Sportsman's Sketches, was a milestone of Russian realism. He is now dwarfed by Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy--rightly so--but he was a master at what he did, especially when exploring male relationships. This modern take on that mid-nineteenth century story is one that is as moving as it is bizarre. Men who are into a world unto themselves come together with the group activity of a singing competition and become a little bit less alone as a result.

Bog Queen by Anna North

I very much enjoyed this book--there are several layers of things going on, and it is beautifully packaged with a gorgeous cover. This is first the story of Agnes, a gifted American forensic anthropologist working in England, who’s early career, unsure of where she is going in life, and not getting the support from her family and friends to figure it all out. She is called to investigate a bog body pulled from the peat. At first it’s believed to be the corpse of a 20th-century murder victim, but Agnes quickly discovers that this remarkably well-preserved woman has lain below the murky surface for millennia, waiting for someone to uncover her secrets. In alternating chapters, the novel flashes back, telling the story of a young druid living in the earliest days of Roman-occupied Britain. She’s new to her role, and still discovering how best to use her power within her community. Though separated by time, these two women embark on parallel journeys, each discovering a world beyond their imagination. The book moves back and forth between who the bog woman was and what is happening in the present to figure her out. Agnes is most comfortable with what her role is vis-a-vis the dead and representing them in the present. There is a subtext of conservation, protecting bogs and their flora and fauna, and how understanding th past helps us to move forward in the present. All well told and a great read.

The Art of Protest

QuiltCon 2026 was full of quilts that expressed opinions about human rights, the erosion of democracy is the United States, the disappearance of people of color, and as a member of the Minneapolis Modern Quilt Guild, the terrorism being rained on us by our own government is very real. Quilting has always been about expressing yourself, and there has always been an a strong element of standing up for human rights and human dignity. The current administration has tried to make that seem political, but it is really about morals and values. I completely identify with the meme "Radicalized by Common Decency", which it turns out, is not all that common these days. Here is what the internet says about the meaning of that: "Decency is behavior that conforms to accepted standards of morality, respectability, and modesty. It acts as a foundational, everyday moral baseline for social interaction, fostering dignity through kindness, empathy, and respect. It is often described as the "common decency" required for proper, polite, or ethical, respectful behavior." Not happening in the White House these days, and no one, not my elected officials at least, are saying boo about it. I call or write regularly and not once have they advocated the decent thing. Our schools are gutted and we have successfully made Iowa an unsafe place for women of reproductive age to live, we are sealing our own fate by our lack of common decency, and we are now gutting our workforce by being unwelcoming of immigrants who do the labor that our citizens shun. In the meantime, we protest. I bought this quilt at QuiltCon because I know the woman who made it. She was an exchange student in Germany many years ago, and she was impressed by how strongly they teach their hisotry to avoid repeating it. We in the US are trying to bury ours, and instead it will bury us.

Radium Girls by Kate Moore

This is a book of pain--chronicling the horrors of what happened to young women who worked with radium and very painful to read the account of it. Almost every page contains an example of suffering: a disintegrating lower jaw that falls from its owner’s mouth onto the breakfast table; a sarcoma the size of a grapefruit growing on a chin; skin rendered so thin that it splits open at the touch of a fingernail. Those afflicted were almost exclusively young women who had, in the two decades after 1917, been employed by two separate companies (in New Jersey and Illinois) painting watches, clocks and military instruments with a luminous mixture containing a tiny amount of radium. They were paid well for what was regarded as glamorous and exciting work; some would find themselves earning more even than their fathers. What they did not know then was that they were also ingesting a substance that, once it had infiltrated their bones, would work slowly but surely to destroy them from the inside. The second half of the book is about the physicians who finally figured out that while a small amount of targeted radiation could cure a patient, the amount the women ingested was poisoning them and once that was discovered, the lengths that the company went to to avoid compensating them, as well as not preventing it from happening to others. Their eventual success in court led to reforms in the work place that made it possible to work more safely on the Manhattan Project, and with radioactive material in the future. It is a harrowing tale and a difficult read.

Perfectly A Strangeness (2024)

This quiet and strangely beautiful short documentary is nominated for a 2026 Academy Award. The film maker has done this before, or something like it. In her 2017 feature length documentary Cielo, which was also shot in Chile’s Atacama Desert, her cameras follow the simple, sauntering gait of the donkeys to allow audiences to take in vast mountainous terrains by day and by night the marvels of the Milky Way filling the Atacama Desert sky. She is aware that light pollution that keeps most people from seeing starlit galaxies at night, recalled the first time she saw the cosmic movements in the Atacama Desert nighttime sky. This time around we follow the donkey trio, where they come upon a building--no people, no vehicles, just the building. Her cameras did interior shots at the Paranal Observatory run by a consortium of European astronomers at around 2,635 meters above sea level. The whole experience of watching these eerily calm animals saunter in and around the observatory, never seeing anything--no food, no water, where do they get sustenance? It left me with more questions than answers, but also at peace.

Myers + Chang At Home by Joanne Chang

This cookbook, which came out in 2017, but my Facebook Cookbook Group featured it as the cookbook of the month in November, 2025, at which point I found it. Joanne Change has written several baking books, of which Pastry Love is the one we have cooked out of most, but this one is full of recipes from the upscale Chinese restaurant she and her husband have in Boston. She grew up eating only Chinese food and was well into elementary school before she had more typically American food, so she comes from a different food tradition than many of us do--she met her spouse when she was cooking in a restaurant after college, and this is a blend of what they like. So if you are looking for a more traditional approach this is not it--Kenji's The Wok is the book for you, or give Fuchsia Dunlop's oeuvre a whirl--Every Grain of Rice is a good starting place. What I very much appreciate about this book is the non-traditional dipping sauces they have because they are unlike others, and we as a family really love a good dipping sauce. We often buy frozen dumplings at the nearby Asian market, and are satisfied with the quality when we steam then fry them up, but then have to cobble together an acceptable sauce, and having another place to start to do that is a big plus to our cookbook collection. I was able to buy this used for under $10, which is another plus.

Marty Supreme (2025)

On the surface this film, nominated in 9 categories for an Academy Award in 2026, including best casting, tells the story of a gifted but impoverished table tennis hustler in 1950s New York, who wants nothing more than to leave his parent’s shoe shop behind to showcase his ping-pong skills on the world stage. Played at full throttle by Timothée Chalamet, Marty Mauser is a motormouth, sharp in both wits and tongue. He’s selfish, manipulative, and not particularly nice to women, but boy can he smack a ball over a netted table. In fact, there are really no likable characters in this movie--while I can tolerate that for the greater good of the message, that too is lacking here. So, Marty goes to London for the British championship after cobbling together enough cash, where he ends up playing the world’s best, Koto Endo (played by the real-life player Koto Kawaguchi) from Japan. It goes badly, so Marty returns to America, determined to have another stab at glory, all the while shunning anything that looks like real work or responsibility. To do that, he just needs to raise more money. In the meantime, he impregnates his former flame, who happens to also be married to another man, seduces and exploits a sad, faded movie star, and lets down his best friend as he begs, borrows and steals his way back to the Big Leagues. The antics that he goes through to get to Japan for another chance are the core of the movie, and only at the end do we see where he begins to have a chance to make it big. The character Marty Mauser is loosely based on the real-life ping-pong hustler Marty Reisman—a fascinating, colorful and complex man. He died in 2012 at 82 years old of lung and heart complications and at one point was the champion of the world. Chalomee as Marty is believable if unlikable and stands a shot at Best Actor, but really, he should have won last year for the way he completely inhabited the character of Bob Dylan, and not for this.

West With Giraffes by Lynda Rutledge

This was recommended to me, and somehow I didn't manage to find the magic in it. One hundred and five-year-old WWII vet Woodrow Wilson Nickel realizes his days are numbered and urgently begins writing down his memories of traveling from New York City to San Diego with a pair of young giraffes. They are headed to the San Diego Zoo, which is starting to build it's animal collection to what becomes a world renowned zoo. Most of the book takes place in October 1938. America is still reeling from the effects of the Great Depression and the dust bowl that devastated the heartland. Woody was then a 17-year-old orphan from the Texas panhandle who has fled the dust to live with his uncle in NYC. A powerful hurricane leaves him orphaned once again. That same hurricane hit the ship the giraffes were traveling on and left the female giraffe with a wounded leg. Really, it’s a miracle the giraffes survived at all and that just added to their mystique. The giraffes are celebrities, a bright spot in a grim world, and the press adoringly chronicles their cross-country journey. There are a surprising number of hurdles to overcome when transporting very large animals over a very large distance, and you can imagine some of the regional challenges that might come up, all of which are not surprisingly overcome, but are heart stopping at times. Lots of people loved this book and I liked it well enough.

A Friend Of Dorothy (2025)

I loved this. There is a lot going on here, and it is packed into a short film. After losing his football in her yard, black teenager JJ finds a friend in Dorothy, an elderly white and middle-class widow who lives by herself and needs aid in opening a stubborn can of prunes. Their platonic bond is strengthened as Dorothy—who owns a wide library of plays and once funded the education of aspiring drama students along with her late husband—fosters JJ’s inner theatre kid by requesting him to read out a play to her whenever he visits. It is a no-brainer that Dorothy acts as a maternal figure and looking out for JJ’s best interests. Simultaneously, the movie serves as a love letter to the arts. Dorothy helps the young, budding actor out of his shell and gain confidence in his true passion—encouraging him to consider theatre as a serious career rather than merely pursuing it as a hobby. And this is the part I missed until I read a review of the movie--the colloquial term ‘A friend of Dorothy’ which initially was used as a code within the community during an era when homosexuality was deemed illegal, also takes on a renewed meaning here. Due to their friendship, open-minded Dorothy introduces her new friend to n historic play which challenges homophobic persecution and celebrates queerness or being ‘different’, further allowing JJ to be comfortable in his own skin. Then there is the way Dorothy's family treats her, which is as a doddering old woman to be placed in supervised living so they can worry about her even less than they do now--no wonder she fostered her friendship with JJ--not only did he open her prune can for her, the one thing she can't do that she needs to stay in her own home--but he also sees her as a teacher and a person worthy of his attention. This is nominated for the 2026 Academy Awards in the Short Live Action film category and is well worth your time.

Stitched Shibori by Jane Callendar

Shibori is a traditional Japanese resist-dyeing technique that creates beautiful patterns on fabric by binding, stitching, folding, twisting, or clamping cloth before dyeing, usually with indigo. The bound areas resist the dye, leaving white patterns, with methods like itajime (clamping), kumo (spider), and arashi (pole-wrapping) producing unique effects. The unpredictability and integration of imperfections are key to the art, making each piece unique, and it's used on natural fibers like cotton and silk. This book is a fantastic How To book. The following comes directly from her website, with lots of information. Resists can be created by pulling up the threads of prepared hand stitched fabric. Any number of looks can be achieved and floral, organic, geometric patterns and textures are all within the realms of hand stitching. On a single layer of fabric hira-nui shibori can produce shibori ‘drawings’, designs or linear patterns and can be used to create sugi-nui stripes. Working on folded fabric with hishaki-nui stitching which drifts away from and then back to the fold, differing symmetrical shapes occur to form linear patterns. A more considered approach results in many variations of Hinode, the Sunrise pattern. Compositions can be created with ori-nui shibori which is also traditionally used to create the marvellous Tatewaku pattern of undulating lines. ADVANCED STITCHED TECHNIQUES Advanced stitched shibori techniques include a range of miru shibori shapes and the circle is used in various placements for Karamatsu, the Japanese larch pattern. The ori-nui technique is further developed to produce elliptical awase nui shibori and another development which brightens the resist is kamiate shibori. Both approaches can be used for the complex shippō-tsunagi pattern of linked circles. Any number of renditions can bring about exciting new motifs.

Train Dreams (2025)

Paraphrasing one of my family members, nothing much happens in this movie but it is beautiful to watch. It is nominated in several categories for the 2026 Oscars, including Best Picture (no chance) and Best Cinematography (also no chance I think, but it has a way better shot at it because the film is gorgeous to watch in a lush outdoor kind of way). This is a film of echoes--across years, across place and across time. It generation-spanning, which means that there is a lot of change afoot and so as one gets older, one feels left behind, from a time and place that no longer exitsts. It takes place in the Pacific Northwest in the early 20th century, and life & death intertwine in the duality of the symbol of the train, something that represents both progress and destruction. The railroad tracks that expanded their way across the United States in the 20th century both made the world smaller by connecting people and altered the landscape by cutting down trees that had been there for centuries to do so. Working from a novella by Denis Johnson, the film telsl a story of an ordinary life in an extraordinary way, a man who believed his existence was shackled by guilt and trauma. A birth-to-death character study, it is a meditation on the beauty of everyone and everything, how we are connected to both the earth and those who walked it before us. Joel Edgerton does a remarkable job playing Robert Grainier, a stoic man who marvels at the changing landscape in his work as a train laborer, someone who cuts down trees, pounds tracks into the ground, and even helps build bridges, often away from home for months at a time. Much of his story is told via a narrator, whose voice is something both soothing and powerful at the same time. It has A River Runs Through It vibe. He speaks for the often-silent Robert, telling us about formative encounters on the job, including a key moment when a Chinese immigrant was murdered. Robert considers for the rest of his life if his inaction at that moment led to the tragedies that would befall him. Though it is set about 100 years ago it is barely recognizable, and in the subtext drives home the fact that violence and racism are embedded into the fabric of the country and what is happening in 2026 America is a slippage back to that time and place.

Good Things by Samin Nosrat

Wow, this is everything that you would expect from Samin Nosrat and more. Her first book, Salt Fat Acid Heat, is a game changer for how to think about cooking and food preparation. The unique thing about that book is that there are not so much recipes as there are ingredients that go together and how to balance the dishes that you make. So this cookbook is a bit different because there are traditional recipes, especially for sauces and dressings, but also other dishes--but what makes this different is that once you make the back bone recipe that are a myriad of things to do with it. So it is a combination of traditional and what I think of that is unique and special about this chef's approach to food. This is a book that should be read before you dive into it--she has a style that is well worth immersing yourself in before you take a stab at replicating what she has on offer. I highly recommend this, especially if you want to experience this fun way of approaching and thinking about feeding yourself, your family, and your friends.

Butterfly (2025)

This short animated film is nominated for the 2026 Academy Award in that category. It depicts the life of Jewish French swimmer Alfred Nakache, who competed in the 1936 Berlin Olympics in Nazi Germany. It begins peacefully enough. In the sea, a man swims. It is quite beautiful at first. But as he continues, memories come to the surface. From his early childhood to his life as a man, all his memories are linked to water. Some are happy, some glorious, some traumatic. This story will be that of his last swim. It will take us from the source to the river — from the waters of childhood pools to those of swimming pools — from a North African country to the shores of the Mediterranean in France — from Olympic stadiums to water retention basins — from concentration camp to the dream beaches of Reunion. He experiences glory and humiliation. The joy is from his love of swimming--the butterfly stroke--and he is denigrated for his religion and the color of his skin. It could not come at a better time, when the United States government is killing people based on the color of their skin. Again.

The Personal Librarian by Maie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray

This is an ordinary fictional biodrama about a truly extraordinary woman. So it is well worth reading even though it is not spectacular literature. This tells the life of Belle da Costa Greene, born Belle Marion Greener, who was a Princeton-educated librarian who lands a high-profile job with steel magnate J.P. Morgan. She had an illustrious career that was all the more remarkable because she was a woman. She successfully out maneuvered everyone to build a world class and widely renowned collection that went from private to publicly available after the death of J.P. Morgan. Even more remarkable is that what J.P. and the elite New Yorkers she encounters do not know is that Belle is a Black woman passing as white. Belle quickly learns that being white will not allow her to overcome prejudices against women working in the male-dominated field of art and rare book collecting. She also learns at a party at the Vanderbilt mansion that women in this world are bold and use flirtation as social currency, an approach that runs counter to the modesty and invisibility Genevieve, Belle’s mother, has always advised. In several flashbacks, the reader learns more about Belle’s history. Belle’s parents, Richard and Genevieve, had a promising start in life. They were free blacks before the Civil War, and in the brief but heady time of Reconstruction, they had great opportunities. Richard, the first Black man to graduate from Harvard, married Genevieve, the beautiful and ambitious daughter of the elite Fleet family of Washington, D.C., and moved his family to South Carolina so he could work as a philosophy professor at an integrated state university. The family later left under threat of lynching when Reconstruction ended in the South and the school became segregated. Genevieve never forgot the precariousness of that time. Once the family moved to New York, she listed the family as white to avoid ejection from their fine New York apartment. When Richard discovered this lie, he abandoned the family. From that moment, Belle became the focus of Genevieve’s ambitions to secure the family’s financial future—by passing them as white. It decribes the ins and outs of why this was both painful and profitable to do.

Bugonia (2025)

This movie is bizarre and in the end, unexpected. It is a casually black comedy in the vein of the Scandanavians. The driving forces are a paranoid beekeeper and a stereotypically amoral biomedical CEO. The apiarist, a sweaty, dirty, and smutty Teddy (Jesse Plemons), teams with his impressionable cousin Donny (Aidan Delbis) to kidnap Michelle Fuller (Emma Stone), believing she’s an alien from the Andromeda species intent on destroying humanity. Their theory comes from conspiracy podcasts, crackpot online sources, and Teddy’s own experimentation. The pair’s plan will require them, in the words of Teddy, to cleanse themselves of their “psychic compulsions.” The success of the film requires the audience to make a similar suspension of belief. I did not love this, and I am also pretty sure I didn't quite get it, and so far it is in last place for me in the Best Film category. I even liked F1 a lot more than this, and I am no Formula One racing fan. It is an unusual movie in a year where there are quite a few unusual movies contending for awards, and Emma Stone is incredible, as per usual.

Sankofa by Chibundu Onuzo

The book, a Reese Witherspoon pick, is about a fiftysomething mixed race protagonist, Anna Bain. She is a Welsh-Bamanian (Bamana is Onuzo’s fictional west African state) who lives in London, and has a life time of belonging nowhere--she is constantly confronting notions of difference and belonging. After Anna's mother, who raised her, dies, Anna uncovers a diary in her mother's belongings that was written in the late 1960s and belonged to Francis Aggrey. Aggrey was a student from the fictional Diamond Coast; while studying in London, he became part of a set of young African scholars agitating for their native countries’ freedom from colonial rule. Through excerpts from these diaries, the plot rapidly delivers us to Anna’s discovery that Aggrey is her father. After his studies, Aggrey returned to his homeland. There he transformed himself into a revolutionary who became the first president of the newly independent Bamana – a country that bears more than a passing resemblance to Ghana. The novel briskly tracks Anna’s wrestling with feelings of abandonment and loss, and follows her literal and figurative journey to try to connect with her father. It is quietly thought provoking, which for me is a hallmark of the Reese picks. I continue to enjoy her picks and working my way toward 100% completion.