Peter Byrne, Modern Quilter

My quilt guild had Peter Byrne do a trunk show and wow, what amazing quilts he has made--and quite varied. He was a hair stylist in Toronto for 30 years, retired and was looking for a new creative outlet. In 2017, he joined the Toronto Modern Quilting Guild and when he walked into his first guild meeting, he had never quilted a quilt. He has come a long way since then--and after seeing his work, I am considering taking one of his virtual weekend quilt workshops to do a deeper dive into his process.

Peter’s quilt Starring You won Best in Show at QuiltCan 2020. It is an amazing feat on so many levels. First, it is full of negative space. Composed of white and black fabric, the central eight-pointed star is machine appliqued onto an all-white background. Three of the star points were cut away and sliced further into 90 bits and pieces each, appliqued – again by machine – in a way that mimics an explosion. All of the quilting was done on a home machine, and the black lines you see? Those are quilted with black thread. Think about it: with that kind of contrast, you just can’t make a mistake.

American Mermaid by Julia Langbein

I found this through the Parnassus Bookstore Friday vlog "If You Haven't Read It It Is New To You"--which as an aside, I continue to love and often read books that are recommended that I both enjoy and would not have found another way. This is a story about a high school English teacher, Penelope, who writes a novel about a disabled woman, Sylvia, who discovers she is a mermaid. When Penelope’s book is optioned for a movie, she moves to LA to adapt her book with two seasoned male screenwriters. We get some of the backstory through sections of Penelope's book throughout--a book withini a book. As a baby mermaid, Sylvia, who washes up on shore and is taken in by two married billionaire scientists who can’t have children of their own. Through sketchy medical procedures they split her tail, which leaves her in near-constant pain and confined to a wheelchair. This decision comes back to haunt them when Sylvia grows up and discovers the painful truth about her origin story, and dedicates herself to taking down her father’s company. The story of Penelope is less enchanting, but her trip though some of the shallowest corners of Los Angeles’s vanity, power, and money-obsessed culture is what you would expect and some of the best moments come from her interactions with Murphy and Randy, the two screen writers. They desperately want to turn into a sexy teen romp complete with low-cut bikini tops and a waterlogged prom. Penelope’s attempts to fight back are usually fruitless, leading to the table read to end all table reads. But you know who else isn’t on board with Randy and Murphy’s writing plans? Sylvia. Or someone who seems to be Sylvia — mysterious events involving changes to the movie script, Penelope getting dragged underwater in a Malibu riptide, and luring another character into an accident with her siren song start happening. So a smidge of magical realism as well as an interesting read.

Sinners (2025)

This was the winner in the category of most Oscar nominees in 2026, and also for the most nominees ever. Even considering that one of them is in a new category, it is an impressive showing. I haven't watched every movie in every category as of yet, and I haven't seen what might have made it but didn't (although a number of them are in categories for which there is a short list, so we can see some of what are the "Also Rans"), but it is a good movie. Is is also A LOT. It has a lot of violence, a lot of murder, a fair amount of sex, a lot of music, some romance, and a lot of symbolism all turned up to the loudest level. It is about black people in the Jim Crow South, so it is set in a time where racism is also a lot. Set in 1932 Mississippi, Sinners follows two twin brothers known as Smoke and Stack as they return home after working for the bootleggers in Chicago. Both twins are played by Michael B. Jordan, who plays the brothers in such a way that it becomes easy to tell the two apart based on their subtle mannerisms. The costume department helps with the visual cues, with Smoke wearing blue and Stack red, but by the halfway point, you don’t need the visual cues to help know which twin is which. Huge testament to Jordan’s acting is that tell them apart. I am not going to go in to the horror aspects of the plot beyond saying I pretty much never watch horror movies and this was well done. Music plays much more of a key role than I was expecting. It’s not only there to set the tone and mood of the era, but it’s actually a plot device. This is a romping, stomping ode to the 30s era Southern Blues, and the composer, Ludwig Göransson, really tapped into its spirit both with his score and the compositions heard within the film itself. A lot of the music was recorded on-camera, giving it a raw and unfiltered feel. The highlight of this musical talent is for sure Preacher Boy, played by first-time actor Miles Caton. Wow, what a discovery. Not only can the man sing, but his character, cousin to the twins, was the heart of the film in a way as an ambitious youth who yearns to play music, something that his preacher father does not approve of. This is worth seeking out, it is very very good.

Born In Flames by Bench Ansfield

I was really surprised by the story that this book tells--which is really about my naivete and lack of education rather than that it is surprising. This is the first book by a historian who debuts with a riveting and meticulous chronicle of the wave of arsons-for-profit that burned through America’s cities in the 1970s. The book focuses on the Bronx, which notoriously lost around 20% of its housing stock, though they argue that the borough is more of an example of a lesser-known arson epidemic that devastated neighborhoods of color across the country. Dispelling the racist myth that residents set the fires themselves, the author traces the confluence of financial factors that motivated absentee landlords to burn their neglected, deteriorating properties. These factors included high-cost, low-coverage state-sponsored insurance policies that debuted following the racial uprisings of the 1960s (when insurance companies abandoned riot-affected areas); insurance companies’ newfound practice of investing customer premiums for profit, which further inflated premiums to astronomical heights; and city budget cuts that decimated the FDNY. They chronicle not just the landlords who profited but also the tenants who, as they tracked the conflagrations’ block-by-block progress, fearfully went to bed with their shoes on; some were even burned out of more than one apartment. The book also unearths the tenant-organized activism, in collaboration with local officials and even some of the insurance companies themselves, that finally ended the fires. The result is an outstanding exposé of the predatory capitalist machinations behind the “Bronx is burning” saga. This is not so much a page turner as a book that raises the level of awareness of exactly how bad slum lords treated their tenants and how they maximized profits.

Elio (2025)

Pixar's latest is classic animated material, sugary sweet and almost no surprises, and I was surprised to see it nominated in the Feature Length Animated Movie category--there were two other movies we saw, maybe three that I thought were better. Be that as it may, Elio Solis is an orphaned child cared for by his childless aunt, Major Olga Solis. At an air and space museum, a grieving Elio stumbles on a “coming soon” exhibition about the Voyager spacecrafts (the probes launched in 1977 carrying gold discs with messages from Earth) and begins to dream about finding solace beyond our solar system. Olga sets aside her dreams to care for her relative and Elio isn’t exactly grateful for that sacrifice. He begins cutting school, absconding to the beach to carve messages in the sand, and even begins accumulating the basic tech to contact potential aliens, partly it seems because he is having so much trouble relating to Earthlings. The more Olga sacrifices (including her desire to become an astronaut), the more Elio seems to resent her, believing he’s to blame for her dashed desires. Despite the odds, Elio manages to contact aliens, thereby opening the door to discovery. Ta dum! Turns out Olga is pretty excited about that discovery as well, and they both get to spend some time in outer space after all.

The Wilderness by Angela Flournoy

This was long listed for the National Book Award and while I do not 100% read that list, I do pay attention to it. I think if I had read this in one or two settings I would have rated it higher--it was a little confusing in the shifting between time periods if you read it over a longer time interval--I just kept being a little disoriented, but the writing is rock solid and the story is very well constructed. Over several decades, from the early 2000's to the near future, this book follows the lives and evolving friendships of four Black women in America—Desiree, Nakia, January and Monique. We meet the women in their early 20s as they kickstart careers and navigate romantic relationships; we see them through their late 20s and early 30s, reassessing and reconfiguring jobs, values and how to best support each other; we ease with them into midlife, which is at times calmer waters and at others heavy with unforeseen tragedy. Desiree’s sister, Danielle, steps in and out of the narrative as well. The strength of this novel is getting to experiencthe protagonists’ thoughts as they handle problems—social discomfort, jealousy, conflict avoidance—and the minor strains introduced to friendship due to differing sexual orientations, socioeconomic statuses and mental health conditions. The novel seems to espouse that friendship is about overcoming and about changing with individuals as they change. It has an ending that is very hard to read in 2026 America where American citizens are being gunned down by the government.

Weapons (2025)

I was able to watch this on a recent flight with an excellent in flight screen, and while I am not a fan of the horror genre, this was very well done and genuinely creepy. I may be in a decided majority, but I love watching movies in the air, especially when I score a seat with a large screen. It just makes travel so enjoyable. One thing is that it’s not overly difficult to read the inciting incident of the movie as a school shooting allegory. In this case, 17 children got out of bed at 2:17 a.m. and ran into the night, their arms slightly outstretched and look identical. They are captured on doorbell cams, which is a great way to see that they wer not led away by someone, but rather that they seem possessed. It’s a chilling image, one that tears a neighborhood apart, revealing the rage and horror behind the picket fences. So the teacher Justine Gandy, who is young and earnest, comes into school the next morning to find her entire classroom absent. Well, not entirely. One child, a quiet kid named Alex , didn’t leave his house that night. Why? Instead of going down that investigative avenue to its end, the town chooses to weaponize its hatred for Gandy herself, labeling her a witch. She must have done something. Or she must know something. The movie unfolds in a kind of controlled chaos, and comes to a surprisingly unexpected end. It is both terrifying and enjoyable simultaneously.

Boustany by Sammi Tamimi

This is a love letter to Palestinian food and the Palestinian people-- the author, who I first discovered when he co-authored a book with Yotam Ottolenghi called Jerusalem, lives in London, but his food is firmly rooted in the Middle East. This is a bit of a love letter as well as a book full of food--there are stories to go with every recipe, and also at the beginning of each section. This is a deeply personal book, laced with longing and a loving nostalgia. You can almost picture the author's grandparents’ boustan, or garden, and feel the joy he experienced spending time there as a child. He shares cherished family recipes, offers up dishes from the various ethnic communities in Palestine, and expresses enormous pride in his people’s culinary heritage. It is all vegetables all the time. There are a lot of dairy products used, but they can often be eliminated or replaced with plant based alternatives if that is how you roll.

Frankenstein (2025)

No matter how you feel about Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, this rendition of an all too familiar story is a triumph. Somehow Guillermo del Toro manages to make something that feels almost new, and definitely rich and strange, and yet it is crafted out of a story we all thought we knew well. I haven't read the original in quite some time, but my son who has both a photographic memory and a recent reading was very impressed with the adherence to what Shelley wrote. The 21st-century movie does veer off the 19th-century source however. Mary Shelley’s novel was complete as of 1818, and the movie is set in 1857, which, because the author died relatively young (brain tumor) is several years after the author’s own death. Placing the tale squarely in the Victorian era grounds it in period trappings more sumptuous and therefore consistent with the over-the-top tastes of the director, it also allows its visionary scientist Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac) to place electricity more fully at his disposal when animating his creature. This is a half hour too long, but otherwise amazing.

Seascraper by Benjamin Wood

This book, longlisted for the Booker Prize in 2025, is a quiet book looking at inner life. It is a compact story that depicts two days in the life of Thomas Flett, a young man who earns his living as a shanker –which I did not know what that was, but it is a man who rides a horse and cart up and down the beach netting for shrimp. It is a hard life, and it has taken its toll. At just twenty years of age, he looks and acts like a man who is considerably older. His bones ache, his mind aches, and he shambles. And while he more or less accepts his lot, there is more than a small part of him that yearns for something more, something better. He has dreams, small managable dreams that seem attainable to the reader and yet we lose hope that he will take the plunge. This is an insight into this sort of poverty and the toll it can take on your spirit. It doesn't make Thomas mean, but you could see where that would happen, and it is certainly happening in the 21st century, where there is no chance of a better life and the blame is sorely misplaced. This is a look inside a psyche and it is a quiet one at that.