Contramar, Mexico City, Mexico

It was our first night in Mexico City, and even though there wasn't much of a time change from home, we had to get up early to get there, so an early dinner was in order. Thank goodness we had a reservation because the place was completely packed at 4:40 in the afternoon--perhaps aided by a World Cup game, which could be seen (and heard) from every corner of the large restaurant with closely packed seating. This is not a quiet place at the best of times, but if you like a lively festive environment and do not need to hear yourself think, this is a great place to eat seafood. My favorite dish was the shrimp tostada and the signature dish of the restaurant is the whole fish, grilled and then served half with salsa verde and half with salsa rojo. The whole meal was excellent and I would recommend it. The chef Gabriela Cámara has served as a culinary advisor to a former Mexican president, so not like we discovered this place!

Lázár by Nelio Biedermann

vThis has been dubbed a saga, and it has received much attention in Europe for its quirky and confident take on 20th-century Hungarian history, written by a Gen Z author who didn't live through any of it. The opening pages introduce us to a world straight out of gothic fable. In an isolated manor house by a forbiddingly dark forest, a strange-looking baby is born. This unearthly child, Lajos, is fated to carry forward the family name of the Lázárs, a noble dynasty with an alarming tendency to go mad, die violently, or both. Meanwhile, in another wing of the house lurks the baron’s older brother, Imre, who is barred from the baronetcy by reason of insanity. Maybe fortunate given the genetics, Lajos von Lázár’s parentage isn’t quite what it appears. We soon learn that he is the product of an illicit liaison between Maria, the lady of the manor, and one of the grooms. Lázár gradually reveals itself to be a book about the way the fortunes of a single family are entwined with the historic upheaval of the 20th century. The family seat, where the novel opens, stands close to the town of Pécs, on the southern border of present-day Hungary. On the chilly January day when Lajos draws his first breath, his homeland is still part of the Habsburg empire – the union of Austria and Hungary that also included the Balkan states and parts of northern Italy. As the story develops, enormous changes break up the empire and turn Hungary first into a fascist autocracy and then a satellite state of the Soviet Union. As the privileged former elite, the Lázárs will become a special target for the class warriors of Soviet Hungary. Successive generations of the Lázár family live through all this turmoil over the course of the book, up to the moment of the failed Hungarian uprising in 1956.

Wrecking Crew (2026)

My spouse and I have a penchant for watching extremely llght movies when we are on our way to a vacation. We have leaned toward action movies that lack much in the way of depth or message, and then on the way home we might dip our toes into more meaningful and message driven fare. This is definitely of the going on vacation genre. The two stars of this are quite likable actors playing at odds siblings. Dave Bautista plays the rock-solid family man, James Hale, a former Navy SEAL turned drill instructor who has a house near Honolulu, a beautiful and charming child psychologist wife, Leila (Roimata Fox), and two adorable kids. Jason Momoa plays the loose cannon partner, James’ half-brother Jonny, a long-haired, hard-drinking, impetuous cop on an Oklahoma reservation. hey’ve been estranged for more than 20 years. But when their father, Walter, a sleazy private eye, gets killed in a hit-and-run accident while working a case in Honolulu, Jonny swallows his pride and flies to Hawaii for the funeral, setting up the inevitable reconciliation, plus lots of skillfully choreographed, sometimes slyly funny action sequences. They untangle the demise of their parents as well as some rampant corruption, all the while looking like they spend way more time in the gym than their characters spend throwing their weight around.

Hollow Spaces by Victor Suthammonat

This is a jumped up murder mystery dressed up like literature. Not quite at the Tana French or John Banville level of great literature, and not at the plot devlopment over many volumes level of Louise Penny, but very good, nonetheless. The story centers on John Lo, who was a groundbreaking Asian American partner at a prestigious New York law firm until he has an extramarital affair with a coworker who is subordinant to him, and then she ends up dead. He is the first one they suspect, and he does very little to defend himself--which seem uncharacteristic of a lawyer, especially since there is a lot of circumastantial evidence against him. Although despite all, he escapes a guilty verdict, the trial destroys his professional and personal life, shattering his marriage.Thirty years later, the story jumps to the present. John's estranged adult children—Brennan, a lawyer following in her father's footsteps, and Hunter, a disgruntled war correspondent—reunite while caring for their ailing mother. Because they were separated by their conflicting beliefs about their father's guilt, the siblings decide to reinvestigate the old murder case in hopes of uncovering the truth and finally healing their fractured family.

The English Garden by Ursula Buchan

I am doing a Botanical Block of the Month through Quiltfolk this year--the reason is that there are interviews each month with Kaffe Fawsett that take place in his home and studio and while he is not completely my cup of tea as a designer, he is a well deserved icon and I couldn't pass up the chance to spend nine months hearing what he has to say and seeing where he works and what his process is. So while he is American, he lives and works in England and since we are doing botanicals one of the people in the group suggested looking at English gardens as a source of inspiration for the quilt that we produce for this project, and that resonated with me. It has been 30 years since we did a pass for the National Trust and toured houses with large English gardens but I was impressed with them then and this book is a great visual walk through the various styles of English gardens, from traditional to contemporary, those with water features and those with ornamental sculpture. I would recommend this--it is both visually beautiful and informative. This book, along with The English Gardener's Garden, are excellent visual displays of what is a centuries old practice.

An Offer From A Gentleman by Julia Quinn

This is the third of four books that I have read in this series, and it is pretty much a Cinderella story. Sophia "Sophie" Beckett, the illegitimate daughter of the late Richard Gunningworth, Earl of Penwood. He did not claim her as his own but he did bring her home as his ward, educated her. He provided for her in his estate, but his wife ignored his wishes so she is serving as a maid in the home of her step-mother, Araminta Gunningworth, Countess of Penwood, and two step-sisters, Rosamund and Posy Reiling. Sound familiar? In 1815, Sophie is 20 and assists her stepmother and stepsisters as they prepare for the Bridgerton family's masquerade ball. After they leave, the other servants help Sophie dress up to go to the ball, as long as she leaves by midnight. She dresses in a gown that belonged to her grandmother and she captures the imagination of the second Bridgerton son. He searched high and low for her, but comes up empty handed--because he isn't looking in any of the right places. He encounters Sophie years later and is again quite taken by her--only this time he does not see her as an option for marriage--this is a failing on his part of course, but this is a romance novel afterall. The step-mother gets her comeuppance and Sophie finds a way.

Maison de Vicor Hugo, Paris, France

I read both Les Miserable and The Hunchback of Notre Dame when I was a teenager, my era of doing deep and thorough dives into the classics, and love Victor Hugo as a result. When I was looking for a museum that was small and hopefully not too crowded and not too far from our hotel for a recent Paris trip (I was trying very hard, maybe too hard, to avoid being jousled as I was less than two months past a shoulder replacement--I did not want to give up the trip, but also didn't wan an unforced error), this one was suggested. This intimate museum is located in the southeast corner of beautiful Place des Vosges. Stroll around the square to number 6 and look up to the second floor to see the windows where Hugo once lived. The buildings surrounding the Place des Vosges were inaugurated in 1612 in honor of Louis XIII’s wedding to Anne of Austria, and they’ve always been a fashionable address in Paris. Victor Hugo moved into an enormous 3,000 square foot apartment in October 1832 with his wife Adele, and it is here that Hugo wrote much of his most famous work Les Misérables and many other important works. The entire building was converted into a museum dedicated to Hugo’s life and works, and is now managed by the City of Paris. Inside the museum, visitors can explore a reception hall with family portraits, a salon (my favorite room) with an impressive collection of Chinoiserie, or Chinese style art and design, a family dining room, and Hugo’s bedroom with his original writing desk. Hugo’s creativity and passion extended well beyond writing, and the museum displays some of his drawings and the Gothic-style furniture he designed. It’s such an unique experience to be so close to where Hugo lived and to see the moments of daily life frozen in time. Hugo had the unusual preference to write standing up, and you can see how high his writing desk was compared to a nearby chair--ahead of his time. I very much enjoyed this and it takes very little time to see thoroughly and completely.

American Han by Lisa Lee

This book is really good and a little bit hard going. It is the author's debut novel and it has a rawness to it that she might lose with time, but has a certain wisdom to it. The Korean word “han” is difficult to translate precisely into English, but the concept revolves around a profound sadness, regret, resentment and a loss of a collective identity that arises from historical injustice, such as occupation, war, and separation. It is, in other words, a generational trauma with Korean characteristics. It is set during the time of the first tech boom, and is anchored in the despair and rancor that defines the Kim family of the San Francisco Bay. Jane Kim is a third year law student at a second tier law school in San Francisco, when her mother leaves her father and her brother gets into big trouble for police brutality. It is a story of change, and change at a time when it is unusual. All four of them are unhappy in the life they have thus far forged, and so they step out into the less secure unknown in search of happiness.

Lorraine Woodruff-Long: Quilting Through Fog

My quilt guild hosted this quilter last month and I have been thinking about her work ever since. On the 4th of July she announced her new portest project, which is related to the 27 Grievances in the Declaration of Independence that the colonists leveled at King George III. They sound eerily familiar to the fascism of today's GOP, which has allowed for the stripping away of many basic human rights protected in hte Constiturion. She is a clever quilter when it comes to protest and she has a foot firmly in the traditional quilting camp, which I very much like. The quilt pictured behind her here is a great example, where her commentary on climate change and the melting of the polar ice caps is dramatic and subtle at the same time. I look forward to continuing to be inspired but the ideas of others and nurturing a more creative me.

The Spinach King by John Seabrook

This is a memoir that chronicles three generations of the author’s family and their South Jersey-based agricultural empire, Seabrook Farms. At the heart of the narrative is the author's great-grandfather, C.F. Seabrook, an autocratic, driven patriarch who revolutionized the frozen-food industry. Often hailed as the "Henry Ford of agriculture," C.F. built the company into the biggest vegetable factory on earth. This is a story of improbable success followed by implosion through his paranoia, greed, and abusive treatment of family members. The emotional core of the book lies in the author's complex relationship with his father, Jack—a stylish, patrician figure and playboy who desperately sought his father's approval. Jack had a lavish life style and hobnobbed with movie stars but further squandered the financial resources of the business. Beyond the family drama, the book does not shy away from the darker history of Seabrook Farms. Seabrook made a fortune during World War II by employing interned Japanese Americans and, later, displaced persons from Europe to staff his massive fields. The book uncovers the company’s controversial labor practices, including a violent 1934 labor strike involving armed vigilantes and the Ku Klux Klan. These events paint a complex picture of ingenuity coexisting with labor exploitation.

Qui Plume La Lune, Paris, France

Our last meal in France! We made it a good one, walking the mile or so from our hotel right outside Le Gard Notre train station, so we got a chance to experience the city a bit, even though I was still a bit under the weather from my shoulder replacement surgery, and not up to the usual marching about we do. Paris is a beautiful walking city and so well worth doing at least a bit of that. This is a wonderful place, with great atmosphere as well as food. Here is what they say on the Michelin website: Qui plume la Lune boasts two very different interiors: one with bare stone walls and natural materials and the other a riot of colour and dried flower compositions. The chef executes a creative score that showcases the season’s finest ingredients: fillet of croaker, risotto of tapioca pearls; tender beef fillet with mash and roast celery; poached pear and muscovado sorbet. The dishes are artfully plated and indulgently served, the cooking is spot on and the flavours and seasonings exquisitely balanced: just the ticket for a good meal in a warm, elegant setting. We were seated in the more formal half of the restaurant, pictured above, and very much enjoyed the meal.

The Alice Network by Kate Quinn

Kate Quinn is the master of historical fiction when it comes to under appreciated stories about the valor of women. Igenerally prefer a story that captures an era in history rather than the specific details of that event or time period as told in nonfictional works and the story of the women who ran networks during Resistance in France is no exception. I read Madame Fourcade's Secret War by Lynne Olson after reading about it in The Economist, and while it was factually correct and told about a a young French mother who led the "Alliance," the largest and most effective intelligence network in occupied France, this book, which is essentially a parallel story in an earlier war, was more riveting and in many ways more memorable that that. This tells two stories, that of women who spied in WWI and that of women who spied in WWII,and we swing back and forth between their stories. Underlying them is the bleak outlook for talented women in the first half of the twentieth century. In any case,while I wouldn't hold this up as great literature, I very much enjoyed it and it is great story telling.

Forbidden Words Quilt Project

I just heard Lorraine Woodruff-Long speak about this project, which has been completed and is a quilt that is going on tour. Quilters have always been political and in the current climate, we are starting to feel like screaming is appropriate. Here is the background for this project from their website: A growing list of words and materials is being scrubbed from government websites and documents and flagged for review by federal agencies in an attempt by the Trump administration to remove all references not only to diversity, equity and inclusion, but also to climate change, vaccines, and a host of other topics. PEN America initially compiled a list of more than 250 words and phrases reportedly no longer considered acceptable by the Trump administration, from “abortion,” to “women,” and including “disability,” “elderly,” “Native American”and, unsurprisingly, the “Gulf of Mexico.” The list has now expanded to 384+ words and phrases, encompassing even desirable goals like “safe drinking water,” the mention of which can now result in research grants or other agreements with the federal government getting nixed. Some agencies ordered the removal of specific words from public-facing websites or the elimination of other materials (including school curricula) in which they might be included. In other cases, federal agencies used key words to flag materials for further review or asked staff to limit or avoid their usage. FORBIDDEN WORDS QUILT PROJECT Throughout the Fall 2025, they reached out to quilters, creators and makers to create blocks that will be sewn into a quilt featuring the words/phrases compiled by PEN America that are being flagged by the U.S. federal agencies to ban, limit, or avoid. Text will be created using fabric, letter templates and fusible, and cut out by hand and ironed onto a fabric block. Blocks will be cut from repurposed shirting, ideally from thrift and reclamation outlets or from your own home. THree quilters in my own guild (that I know of) participated in this amazing project. More to come.

The Viscount Who Loved Me by Julia Quinn

This is straight ahead romance novel stuff, made more pervasively known because of the Netflix mini-series that now has four seasons, and likely more to come. The book hews close to the series, with some more believable progression of the relationship between Kate and Anthony. The advantage of the book is that there is a view into the character's inner thoughts and that is missing when it comes to the big screen. The one interesting given in this time period compared to 200 years later, which is where we are, this is set in the time of Jane Austen, a hundred years before the onset of WWI, is that the expectation that one would marry for love is very low. Women marry for financial security, for them and their families, and men have dalliances and marry for duty (and maybe keep up with the dalliances). The idea that there would be joy or love involved is secondary, and when that is the baseline, it is no wonder there is little in the way of happiness to be found. The Bridgertons break that mold and are better for it (of course, they are also rich).

La Grand Cerf, Villers-Allerand, France

We wended our way back towards Paris after a week in Alsace, and this part of the Champagne region is much more charming than staying in Reims proper. I had wanted to stay there, to see the famous church that Monet painted, but did not need to go back, and this restaurant was spectacular, well worth finding if you are in the neighborhood. Here is what they have to say on the Michelin web site: At the foot of the Montagne de Reims and on the road to Épernay, this imposing inn unabashedly brandishes its opulent style. Come evening, the elegant dining space done out in pale wood takes on a romantic air – the perfect setting for fine classic French cuisine delivered by chefs Dominique Giraudeau (who shone for many years in the kitchens of Gérard Boyer at Les Crayères) and his associate, Pascal Champion. On the menu, top-notch produce, from John Dory to free-range milk-fed veal, as well as game, lobster and truffles. We opted for the mid-sized menu--not the plat du jour, but one step up from that, and it was really lovely. The table ware was particularly nice, not fussy but quite pretty.

The Rarest Fruit by Gaëlle Bélem

This book, almost a novella, chronicles strange-but-true history of vanilla and its introduction to the West.The aromatic flavor was introduced to explorer Hernán Cortés by the Aztecs, whose civilization he would famously destroy. And that when cuttings of the vanilla planifolia orchid were brought back to Spain in 1529, European horticulturalists were unable to figure out how to get it to produce the beans they assumed would make them a fortune. And also that the plant then proceeded to languish in royal gardens for nearly three centuries until a gardener shipped it to the French colony of Bourbon (now Réunion), where an illiterate slave named Edmond Albius — a 12-year-old Creole boy — developed the method for hand pollination still used in its cultivation today. Edmond’s discovery had widespread economic and culinary impacts, but it’s his relationship with Ferréol Bellier-Beaumont, the white botanist who raised him, that lies at the heart of the story. He was Edmond’s adopted father, but he is also his owner. He dotes on his adopted son, teaching him the Latin names of flowers but not how to read the books in his library. He spares Edmond from toiling in the sugarcane fields, assigning him instead to the garden, but indignantly dismisses the boy’s aspirations of becoming a botanist and he does not free him. In fact, he steals credit from him, which was later restored to Albius by history.

You People (2023)

I hesitate to admit that I watched this moive because it was so atrociously bad, but watch it I did. There are a lot of good quality actors in this, which is why I kept trying it--on three seperate occasions before I could get all the way through it. I just kept thinking it might get better, but it didn't. The set up is kind of a modern Guess Who's Coming To Dinner, with Jonas Hill as the love interest and Eddie Murphy the Black Muslim dad. The twist is that his wife had a white grandfather, who Murphy thinks poisoned the well--so race and religion are a bit more nuanced in portrayal but that is where it stops. Full stop. This has nearly every stereotype about black people and Jewish people that you can imagine, and maybe it is supposed to be funny or make you think, but all it did was make me cringe, and I hope I save you from having to watch it.

Slow Birding: The Art and Science of Enjoying the Birds in Your Own Backyard Book by Joan E. Strassmann

I very much enjoyed this book and it comes as a reminder about how important it is to keep in mind the things that are literally right outside your door. And the slow in the title is not a reflection on the intelligence of the birder, but rather that you are slowing down and taking your time rather than marching from house to car and back again, but rather taking your time to see what is on offer in your own neighborhood. It is a push back against the relentless drive to incessantly add to birding life lists; the book advocates for deep study in one area rather than spotting a bird and moving on to the next one. The commoner can be just as fascinating as the exotic. The book covers 16 birds, from Blue Jays to Snow Geese, that can be seen in her part of St. Louis. What makes her book particularly compelling is the research she shares on each of these so-called common birds--they are so much more varied and interesting than at first glance. The book also breaks down the sections based on location, covering her home as well as sites which are within a 20-mile radius of home. She gives examples of the differences that motivate different birds when they are competing for resources and what the outcomes might be between everything from interspecies competition to competition between siblings in the nest and what factors might dictate the outcome. This is maybe not a book for an experienced birder, or a competitive life list birder, but rather for someone who wants to experience more of the world right around them.

Yumiko Higuchi: Embroidery and Applique Artist and Her Books

Wow, wow, wow. This book and this artist are both equal parts amazing! Yumiko Higuchi is a world-acclaimed Japanese embroidery artist renowned for her exquisite needlework masterpieces. Her unique work balances modern and traditional aspects of the art form. Most of her books delve into designs from the natural world, which is true of this one as well, but here in addition to embroidery, she is adding felt and applique as well and the effect is beautiful.

She was initially a handbag designer, and her designs translate well to garments, tea towels, and various flavors of bags. In the past I have made bags, but only in the context of a class, and it would be really cool to pre-embroider and applique material that would then be cut out and sewn into a bag. I got this book out of the library but knew immediately that I had to add it to my own library, and she has quite a few additional books published that I suspect are worthy of hunting down.

The Duke and I by Julia Quinn

It surprised me how much I enjoy the Bridgerton televion series. My family is not surprised--I loved Downton Abbey and watched it on my own. We usually watch this sort of light television fare together and therefore it is unusual for me to soldier through a multi-season series without them, so it is notable, but these period drama/soap opera series do have a tendency to hook me in. This is the starting book of the series that the series is based on, and I did a combination of reading and listening to it. I was somewhat hampered by having seen it already, and being pretty sure it had a different ending, at the very least, because it is not the stuff of romance novels, to put it mildly. The series has otherwise stayed pretty close to the novel, albeit with a larger cast of characters and more fleshed out personalities. The inner thoughts in both Daphne and Simon's heads are nice to hear--that doesn't happen much when the book goes to the big screen, and while I would do it in the reverse order as a rule (book first, screen version second), I enjoyed this, and have already started the second book in the series.

The Last Letter From Your Lover (2021)

This is unabashedly romantic and more of a rmoantic drama than a comedy. It is based on a book of the same title by Jo Jo Moyes, and while I do not read much of her work, this seems more sentimental than even she usually goes. There are two times here--which is easier to see than it is to write about, at least here it is. There are also two different love stories here. In the present day, Ellie, a journalist who has no interest in romance, is assigned to write about an editor who has recently died. She has to get past a rather frosty and formal archivist named Rory to get access to the editor’s archive, and there she finds a swooningly That part of the story is set in 1965 London: there’s the wealthy and gorgeous young couple, Jennifer and Lawrence Stirling--he's a bit distant and she's a bit young. Through a series of flashbacks we learn of her passionate affair with a journalist that her husband introduced her to, and the series of near misses that they have at happiness. In the present day Ellie is busy unraveling the story in the present day, hunting down who they were and what happened to them, and then it all comes together in the end. This was surprisingly tense to watch and surprisingly sweet in the end.

The Heir Apparent by Rebecca Armitage

This Reese's Book Club pick is on the lighter side. It is a bit of a mash up of The Princess Diaries with a dash of Hamlet on the side. Princess Alexandrina Villiers is a 29-year-old living in self-imposed exile in Tasmania, working hard as a medical resident. he thought she was free of palace constraints, as her twin brother and father stood ahead of her in the line of succession. She had renounced royal duties to forge a life on her own outside the spotlight that is honed on all things royal, and thought she was out of woods, with a brother to follow in her father's footsteps and a plan for her twin to sire an offspring or two. However, after a tragic avalanche claims the lives of her brother and father, Lexi is suddenly thrust to the front of the line of succession and there is her uncle vying for the crown--much like Princess Margaret, he thinks he is better suited to the job and with Lexi taking herself out of contention, that he will have control of the royal reigns when his mother dies. Lexi has other plans--she comes back for a year into palace life and shifts all the pieces about on the royal chess board, leaving the royal succession looking a bit tossed up in her wake.

Cheryl Arkison: Improv Is My Love Language

I very much enjoyed this talk by a Canadian quilter who spoke to the Sew Squad that is hosted by the incompable Libs Elliot. She talked about the kind of quilter that she is and then went on to explain what it is about Improvisation that really speaks to her. Improv is definitely not my love language, but as she went through the various sorts of quilters it gave me some time to reflect on what kind of quilter I am. The list is as such: 1. Quality Control 2. Replication 3. Artisanal 4. Expressive 5. Improvisational The quality control quilted is all about the control. The seam ripper is always at hand because this quilter is acutely aware of the mistakes and is obsessive about fixing them. They are pinners. They have great pride in the craft of precision quilting. This is decidedly not me--I am attracted to gluing and I do occasionally pin. I also seam rip with more frequency than I would like to admit, but it is needs must, not fixing something that is a tich off. The replication quilter finds kits very appealing. They cannot imporvise even if they run out of fabric. They look for the exact fabric that is pictured in the pattern. While I am a big fan of a pattern, this is decidedly NOT me. I love doing a different color way, and if I run our, or as happened recently, the kit didn't have enough fabric, I just winged it and the other kit I bought I am already planning substitutions for my next one. I am surprised to find that Artisanal is my jam--handwork gets me excited! I love hand dyed and woven fabrics. They warm me. I do have a comfort with wonkiness that is part of improv, and I want more access to that, but I am not there yet, and I am also working on expressive, where I am getting to a point of view and how to tell the story. So her lecture taught me a lot about myself as a quilter.

The Calamity Club by Kathryn Stockett

This may be unpopular but I really enjoyed The Help, both the book and the movie that followed. I say that as a white woman from the North, so basically I have no lived experience with the people and events that are depicted in the book, so given that handicap, the depiction of deeply embedded racism in the American South rings true with my experience of traveling there and observing the culture rather than being part of it. This book depicts Mississippi in 1933, and revolves more around poverty, although racism is alive and well in the Depression-era South. There are two narrators: Birdy is a single woman moving past marriagable age (early 20's) and Meg, who is an 11 year old consigned to an orphanage even though both her parents are living. Birdy has a good head on her shoulders, but is under employed with her talents wasted, as many women of the era were. She goes to Oxford to ask her sister's in laws for money, only to discover a slowly unfolding disaster there. The characters in this book are vividly drawn and for the most part sympathetic--there are some notable exceptions to that, and while good and evil are maybe a little too characteristically drawn in places, overall the players are nuanced and human. The novel does a great job capturing the plight of women and the many ways they had to adapt, endure, and fight for their space in a societal model designed to limit them. In light of the present unraveling of civil rights, morality and decency, as well as democracy in the United States, there are some important lessons on how to navigate our way back to a functioning community. There’s also thoughtful attention to racial divisions and social hierarchies, and how those systems shaped everyday life.

Hoppers (2026)

This is a good one--maybe even nomination worthy. It is a story with warmth, humor, exciting action, endearing characters, and a reassuringly expansive notion of community. It has charm and a touch of magic, but it is grounded—literally. The conflict at the center of the story is between Mabel Tanaka, who loves a stretch of pristine land populated by wildlife, and Jerry Generazzo, the town’s energetic and glad-handing mayor, who wants to build a Beaverton Beltway through the property. There is an equally compelling conflict within Mabel. This is where Pixar’s signature compassion for our most human vulnerabilities really shines. They understand that anger tries to fool us into thinking it comes from a place of strength and will help get us what we want. But more often, it comes from fear, and it doesn’t help at all, this time at Mayor Jerry and the planned destruction of the glade. He says he can proceed because it is no longer an animal habitat. All the animals are gone. Which is true--Mabel needs a bewver to return to the glade to make a healthy water source and a place for the animals to come back to--through a series of events Mabel herself becomes that beaver--literally--and fights the good fight against cheating politicians. Heart warming eco-animation for the whole family .

Latinísimo by Sandra Gutierrez

My on line cookbook group is cooking out of this book this month, and I am surprised by a number of things about it. The first is that I did not know this book had been published--it is a relatively comprehensive cookbook covering all 21 Latin countries in the Americas. That is both its strength and its weakness. Do you need to own it? I would say yes--I have been going to Central and South America since I was a child, and I have been an avid home cook for almost 50 years and there were many things that I learned about the region and the cuisine from reading this book. There is a lot of information about the differences in cuisine across the region, including the kinds of peppers and what you can do with them that are worth the price of admission. The downside is that while it is almost unliftable in weight, it lacks depth into any particular cuisine--that it unsurprising, but this is not the be all and end all of Latin American cooking--rather it is an excellent starting point and one that should be explored. It is available on used book sites for under $10 and well worth it.

Libs Elliott and Rebel Tech Quilting

What an amazing quilter, and I recently heard her speak about her process for design. Libs Elliott is a quilt artist renowned for blending computer algorithms with traditional crafts. Her random generator design uses Processing—an open-source coding language—to algorithmically randomize geometric shapes, block rotations, and color palettes.

The Generative Process that she uses, which is open source code, is something that she took our guild behind the curtain and showed how it could work for us. First there are Algorithmic Layouts: The code randomizes variables like block orientation, color distribution, and scale. It outputs endless unique compositions, which she then filters and selects for her designs. Each design is unique--it can be saved as a PDF (which she does, thousands of times over), but once you click on it again, it is not coming back. You can add a lot of elements, like how much of each color you want represented, and and what elements to add, and how much rotation you want, but then it is randome. Then comes the Human Element: Once a digital pattern is finalized, she uses it as a precise map to cut and sew fabric, introducing beautiful "human" imperfections into the mathematically driven design. She may use only a small portion of the pattern to make a quilt, and she may change things, it is really more of a starting place than the destination, but it is so cool. Now I have to get this pattern and see for myself.

Say You'll Remember Me by Abby Jimenez

I have read several of this author's romance novels and have very much enjoyed them. This one less so. It is not because of the serious content, which is family members dealing with early dementia. It is more the 'love at second sight' aspect that seems off. Samantha meets Xavier when she takes her rescue kitten in for veterinary care. is bedside manner puts her off, but when she raises an impossible amount of money for the surgery her kitten requires, she does warm to him. Unfortunately, even though they shared a perfect first date, it’s obvious to Samantha that she can’t pursue a relationship as she’s bound for home to help take care of her ailing mother. Xavier refuses to let any obstacles get in the way of their happiness, try as he might. He isn’t ready to let go of her just yet. The thing that seems off is that he has had a childhood that lacks support and affection, and yet he dives into the relationship with Samantha with both feet. The build up to change and a traditional romance ending was enough to convince me to try the second book in the series, so I would give this a one thumb up.

A Private Life (2026)

I watched this on a plane en rout home from a very restful vacation. I had just had a joint replacement in my dominant arm, which was boring and painful and a little scary because there was so much I could not do that is important to me. I could not cook, write, or sew, and it was hard to type. While I love to read and watch movies, when that is all you can do it quickly wears thin. So the trip was as much about getting out of my house as it was about exploring a new place, and it was very successful indeed. This is is a 2025 French mystery thriller Jodie Foster in her first French-language acting role. She plays renowned and vaguely arrogant psychiatrist Lilian Steiner, who has an old school psychoanalytic approach to the profession, complete with the couch. When she is informed that her patient Paula has taken her own life, she refuses to accept the official ruling. Convinced that foul play is involved, Lilian launches her own quirky, private investigation into the circumstances of Paula's death. Along the way, she enlists the reluctant help of her affectionate ex-husband, Gabriel (Daniel Auteuil), and navigates the absurdities of her own unraveling personal and professional life. It is odd, slightly bizarre and completely out of step with modern psychiatry but in the end, I enjoyed it.

Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy

This is a Reese Witherspoon Book Club selection, and I am slowly but surely reading quite a few of them--she has a penchant for thrillers, which I do not share, but this one is sort of borderline in that category. It is set in the near future in a remote place that is largely uninhabited. As a result the characters only interact with each other, because there is no one else there. Dominic Salt and his three children live at Shearwater, a tiny island not far from Antarctica that is disappearing because of climate change and rising oceans. Here is the world’s largest seed bank, and while Shearwater was once full of researchers, it’s now just the Salts. And soon they will be leaving as well--largely abandoing the seeds they put there to preserve them for the future. But everything changes when, after a terrible storm, a woman mysteriously washes ashore. The Salts help nurse the woman, Rowan, back to health. And while the family is used to being on their own, they start to form a connection with Rowen. They all have secrets that gradually reveal themselves, and while this sort of literary thriller is not my usual fare, I enjoyed this.

La Relais de la Poste, La Wantzenau, France

We ate on the patio at this one star Michelin restaurant for my birthday-- the nice thing about it, besides that it was a beautiful day and the patio is spacious, is that we were the only North Americans in the place and all the tables were occupied. They say that the chef and his team offer precise cuisine, elegant presentation, a discerning selection of locally sourced ingredients, and creative, flavorful dishes.

We couldn't agree more. I love the spring foods--aspagagus, spring peas, rhubarb, strawberries are all some of my favorites, and in this land locked region, the fish is from the river or the lake. I never quite got it before, but the terroir is finally something that I can taste--took years, decades really--before I really felt I knew the difference. We in the US have come to that party late, which left us with no sense of it, but as tariffs in the US rise, gas prices rise, and the availability of food that travels becomes less affordable, maybe the silver lining is that we develop the ability to grow and appreciate our own. This is a restaurant well worth going to celebrate, and they will talk about where they source their food, some of it from across the street.

Five-Star Weekend by Elin Hilderbrand

I read this for two reasons--one is that it fullfills a Goodreads challenge, and while I do not knock myself out getting these badges, I have found that I have enjoyed the pursuit of them. I chose this particular book because I have never read anything by this author, and she is a favorite of a number of my friends on Goodreads, especially those who read in this genre more regularly than I do, and I have to say that while I won't be pursuing this authors whole catalogue, I did enjoy it. Here is the story--Lifestyle blogger Hollis Shaw is struggling a bit. She has become a social media phenomenon, but at the expense of her family--both her husband and her teenaged daughter see her prioritizing her number of clicks over either of them, and while she protests this is not a fair characterization of her priorities, where she puts both her time and effort would be contrary to that. She really is pretty impressed with herself. When she tragically loses her husband in a car accident, she finds herself struggling to move forward. He daughter pulls back further, and she has trouble connecting with her friends to get support--she does have a connection with one of her on-line followers, who she pours her heart out to, feels better for it, then gets ghosted by her. Seeking comfort and a fresh start, she decides to host a "Five-Star Weekend" at her Nantucket home--this is defined as a weekend with people from four different periods of your life and yourself--the hook being that no one necessarily knows anyone but you. She invites a diverse group of women representing different eras of her life: her childhood best friend, her college roommate, a close friend from her thirties, and a mysterious blog follower who ghosted her. It is a weekend full of surprises and it ends up someplace very different than wheree it started.

The Choral (2026)

My spouse and I watched this on a transatlantic flight because he is very fond of Ralph Fiennes and we both enjoyed this quiet yet thoughtful movie. It focuses on a choral society that attempts to perform The Dream of Gerontius (which I did not love) for their community against the backdrop of World War I, hits its notes with aplomb. However, it might have benefited from a creative vibrato that would have added more layers to its boilerplate narrative. Still, it’s a tune about the impotence of art making in the midst of crisis that bears repeating, as the world that’s all too eager to sacrifice the arts on the altar of productivity and progress. Sound familiar? Well, while there are echoes of that in our life today, the movie is grounded in thr setting of a different era. Set in the fictional town of Ramsden, Yorkshire, in 1916, the era is brought to life with meticulous detail: schoolboys ride their bikes recklessly throughout the town, aristocrats cover their balding scalps with top hats, while steam from the nearby industrial mills wafts through the cobblestone streets. There’s a veneer of normalcy, although the regularity pokes at a more somber truth: the town is in mourning at the toll of the war, which has taken many of their men and left behind grieving families. The young men of the town wait with bated breath to see whether they’ll receive the call to conscription, leaving the rest of the citizens caught in a sort of limbo. It’s hard to go about one’s daily life when the people you’re in community with can be taken at any moment--it is also easy to see the differences in class at this time, something that WWI took a big bite out of in England.

More Than Enough by Anna Quindlen

Well I have to say that this is more about the people within than the story it tells, which is not to say that there isn't a story here, there is, and the people are largely likeable and good. Polly Goodman is the center of this story. She is an English teacher at a private high school, a job she loves, and she has a group of close friends she has known a long time. After a brief marriage to a charismatic bad man, she’s found love with a good one: a large-animal veterinarian who makes adorable cameos on the Bronx Zoo’s social media platforms. She wants to have a baby but it is not happening for her. Her father is getting more cognitively impaired and her mother, a judge who takes that job quite seriously, is brusque and difficult. Then, added in to the mix she takes a DNA test and finds that she has a match with a relative unknown to her. This starts a slow but interesting thread about who in her nuclear family has a secret, and how to handle it. The best part of this book is the character development. There is a lot going on in a relatively short novel and I really enjoyed wending my way to the end.

Restaurant A L'Etoile, Boersch, France

This is a Michelin noted restaurant, and here is what they have to say about it: Tucked away in a small Alsace village on the Mont Sainte Odile road, this traditional hostelry, opened in 1920, is today run by the fourth generation. A warm welcome and honest, homely recipes, starring market-fresh produce and a slate menu.

The menu changes daily and is written on a slate board--so it is short and fresh. I am not a fan of offal, but if you are, about 1/3 of the menu consists of that, and but all of it is more French leaning than the traditional Alsatian food we had in some places we ate on this trip. I had a whole trout, very simply prepared by poaching it whole and then serving with browned butter with slivered almonds. My spouse had veal tonnato that was possibly the best version of that dish we have ever had. Overall it was very reasonably priced and deliciously prepared food--the menu is limited but varied, and I would recommend it.

We Are Green and Trembling by Gabriela Cabezón Cámara

There is so much going on in this short novel that was long-listed for the International Booker Prize in 2026. The Argentinian author has written a tale that is based on a true story and contains a healthy amount of magical realism that is a good if somewhat disorienting at times read. The book reconstructs the wild, surreal life of Antonio de Erauso, a 17th-century Basque nun who escaped the convent, lived as a man, and became a soldier, conquistador, and outlaw. It opens as Antonio, hiding deep in the rainforest of the New World, writes letters to his aunt, the prioress of the Basque convent he once escaped. Having rescued two young Guaraní girls from enslavement and facing pursuit from the colonial army he deserted, Antonio reflects on his monumental metamorphosis. The setting sharply contrasts the stagnant, rigid conventions of the Spanish Empire with the vibrant, magical "seething" life of the South American jungle. All told, it is a queer positive satire and a powerful subversion of Latin American history as told by Spain. It serves as an understated critique of colonialism, religious tyranny, and the brutal subjugation of Indigenous people. As an example, Antonio goes to Potosí, where historical estimates suggest that up to 8 million indigenous people and enslaved Africans died working in the mines there in Bolivia during the colonial era but that horror is understated at best in this recounting.

The Lost Bus (2025)

I have good news and I have bad news. The good news is that this movie was nominated in the area of special effects for the 2026 Academy Awards and it certainly fits that bill. It is a "telling the story of a disaster" movie, which adheres largely to the facts even if some of the people and their circumstances are changed. This is about the Camp Fire in Paradise, California, which went from a small fire to a devestating fire in no time at all, aided and abetted by dry conditions and very high wind. Kevin McKay (Matthew McConaughey) is a relatively new school bus driver, back in Paradise for a number of reasons and struggling. He answers a call from his dispatcher to pick up 23 kids at an elementary school and get them to safety. At first, it doesn’t seem that difficult, but everyone in the area of Paradise, California, underestimated how quickly this blaze would move and how hard it would be to evacuate as it did. Stuck in traffic with enough smoke in the air to block the sun, Kevin and a teacher named Mary Ludwig (America Ferrera) do their best to keep the kids calm, even as their own panic rises. Cutting through traffic, trying shortcuts, and blocking the children from seeing people literally on fire. The actual action of is white-knuckle riveting. It’s powerfully immersive stuff, so much so that while there isn’t a bus of children actually avoiding a deadly blaze, the viewer gets so caught up in the immediacy of what they are facing that it is hard to watch and hard to look away. There’s a scene where Mary actually gets off the bus to find water that will had me wanting to yell at her to get back to the bus--NOW. THe bad news is that the beginning of the movie is completely unnecessary and clunky. We do not need to know Kevin's backstory to care about whether he gets these kids, himslef and the teacher to safety. Instead of glossing over that we spend quite a bit of time learning Kevin recently underwent a bitter divorce, his teenage son hates him, his mother is cognitively declining, and icing on the life stressor cake, his dog died. Ugh, really? Maybe it even describes the real story but wow, not needed. Overall this was a good edge of your seat action movie, and if you haven't seen it, you should watch the short documentary, Campfire, which shows actual footage of the Camp Fire and how it unfolded in real life to see just hoe true to form this rendition is.

Birds and Us by Tim Birkhead

This is an expansive look at man's interactions with birds, written by an academic ornithologist. It opens with a visit to Cueva del Tajo de las Figuras, located in Andalusia, Spain and the Neolithic bird paintings on its walls. This is an 8,000-year old depiction of flamingos, herons, raptors, avocets and many other species. Birkhead recounts the story of how the cave was discovered in the early 20th-century and then Abbé Henri Breuilsummarizes academics’ efforts to identify the 208 birds on the cave wall--I really enjoy these ancient cave paintings, and it was a good place to start from my perspective. Each chapters focuses on a chronological era and sometimes a place, through the details within often jump around in time and space. There’s the Neolithic era; Ancient Egypt; Ancient Greece and Rome (Aristotle liked birds, as did Pliny and Plutarch); Medieval times (mostly falconry); the Renaissance; the groundbreaking classification work of Francis Willughby and John Ray in the late Renaissance; the seabirds of the Faroe Islands (an essay on the interaction between puffins, murres, fulmars and the people who kill and eat them, a delicate balance first observed by a Danish priest in the mid-17th-century); the 19th-century ideological explosion that followed the publication of Darwin’s Origin of Species ; the Victorian Era’s obsession with the collecting of bird skins and eggs ; the development of field-based ornithological research in Europe and Great Britain; a quick step back through the history to look at bird protection, conservation, and our precarious future, with a focus on Birkhead’s long-term Common Guillemot research at Skomer Island, Wales (which he has written about a number of times before). It is scattershot but interesting, and he is a reasonable storyteller, so it is a good way to learn more about birds if you are so inclined.

Au Table du Gourmet, Riquewihr, Alsace, France

This was one of the most intensely herbal meals I have ever had and I loved it. They have a massive garden and they are not afraid to use it. The chef, Jean-Luc Brendel, describes himself as a chef, a gardiner, and a poet. All of this is evident in the food on offer at this gorgeous restaurant. From their own website: A chef's total commitment to sustainable and responsible gastronomy, in homage to nature and to his land of Alsace. Because the expression "cultivating one’s own garden" could have taken root here, Jean-Luc Brendel does a lot of the gardening, composts, selects, raises chickens and produces honey. He is the author of a spontaneous, fresh and free cuisine, a cuisine of the essential, of cultivated or wild products, of emotions and travels, and he signs his plates in green. Emotional upheaval and eco-responsibility.

The town itself if worth exploring and there are places to try the regional wines just around the corner from the restaurant. Riquewihr is a picturesque medieval village in the Alsace region of northeastern France, famous for its well-preserved 16th-century architecture, colorful half-timbered houses. So very cute, if also remarkably crowded with tourists, at least the older part of the town is pedestrian only. Really lovely, despite not having been discovered by us