A Nice Indian Boy (2025)

This is a nice boy meets boy love story. Naveen and Jay are perfect for each other. There are hiccups but it is a straight up romantic comedy other than the couple aren't straight. The movie opens with Naveen's sister's semi-arranged marriage--his parents, who are themselves in an arranged marriage are over hte moon--the groom is a doctor! All eyes are on Naveem--you are next is oft heard, and it is painful for him, because not only is he not dating, he is exceedingly awkward and he is gay, which his paretns know but are a bit prickly about. They don't quite get him. Then miracle of miracles he meets Jay. At temple no less. They are big fans of Ganesh. Yes, Jay is white, but he was raised by an Indian foster family who he adored, and he speaks Hindi. There are some ups and downs, as you would expect in a romantic comedy--one must have comedy, after all, and a lot of things are said out loud that are well worth hearing so if you have some gay averse family members this is a pretty G-rated way to normalize what is altogether normal for them. And there is some light weight Bollywood love at the end that is fun.

Run For The Hills by Kevin Wilson

I have only read one other book by this author but it shared characteristics with this one, making me think that it might be how this author rolls. It’s wacky and full of heart, but in between each laugh I felt the very sad back beat of who is family and why do they so often fail their children in the most basic of ways. It is also a story of family and the many shapes it can take, but it is also much more, asking why the ones who leave and the ones who lie are always the epicenter, always the focal point. The book opens with Mad, an organic farmer in her thirties, is resigned to her solitary lifestyle on her farm that her father left behind. One day her quiet and predictable life is interrupted by her newly discovered half brother, Rube, showing up at her farm. Rube is at once soft and jagged, desperate and pleading, reaching out a hand for Mad to reluctantly take. He shows up with stories of his father, same name as Mad’s dad but an entirely different man—a writer from Boston, whereas the only father Mad ever knew was a farmer in Tennessee. He convinces her to go on a road trip to find their other half siblings and their disappearing father, and what they learn along the way is a lesson for all of us. Really enjoyable and not nearly as light and fluffy as it appears.

Rhetoric On The Right: The Embracing of Opposite Day

Charlie Kirk was shot and killed at a speaking event on September 11th. Would he be okay with that? In 2023, following a mass shooting at the Christian Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee, Kirk stated, per Newsweek, “It’s worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment.” The trade off for gun access and gun deaths is that people will die--and it can't always be other people, can it? In the US about 50,000 people die by guns every year, so "some" is a pretty big number. He was not advocating for the shooting of children, who are more likely to die from gun violence than any other cause, so it seems he accepted the risk, maybe better than those who advocate for more controls on guns. In the aftermath of the shooting death of a man who was known as a spokesman for widespread gun ownership in this country, there is a focus on the politics of advocating violence. The right wants to advocate violence against anyone who disagrees with them, and to vilify those who speak out against them. The current President uses a lot of violent rhetoric when talking about his opponents, and the very same week that Mr. Kirk was killed at a public event, he was threatening war on the city of Chicago. That is violent speech and imagery. Then I hear GOP politicians calling out the left--without attribution of source--for inciting violence. "Some on the American left are undoubtedly well-meaning people, but their ideology is pure evil,” Representative Bob Onder, Republican of Missouri, said on Thursday in a speech on the House floor. “They hate the good, the truth, and the beautiful, and embrace the evil, the false, and the ugly.” Calling people well-meaning but evil none-the-less because they disagree with you is what is bad, false, and ugly. Half of America doesn't agree with you, afterall, and that alone does not make them evil. It is that rhetoric, which incites strong feelings, which can lead to violence. So who is it inciting violence in acutality? Seems like the right--look in the mirror if you want to see the problem, Congressman Onder.

A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood

This is another of the Parnassus Book recommendations that I have followed (spoiler alert--I have become fairly addicted to watching these, and have folded a number of their recommendations in to my reading rotation. The book is dedicated to Gore Vidal and is set in 1962, just after the Cuban missile crisis, and describes a day (with some flashing about in time) in the life of George Falconer, a 58-year-old expat Englishman who is living in Santa Monica and teaching at a university in LA, just as Isherwood did. The narrative is edgy, subtle, and controlled, with chasms of buried rage. George has recently lost his partner, Jim, in a car crash, and is struggling with bereavement. He tries to make a connection to the world around him, while denying his predicament as a widower. We see him go through the motions of everyday life: teaching a class, fighting with his neighbors, working out at the gym, shopping at a supermarket, drinking with an older woman friend, flirting intellectually with a young student – before fading out on the final page. As a study of grief and a portrait of the aftermath of a gay marriage, A Single Man is unique, brilliant, and deeply moving, with not a word wasted, saying so much with so little. There is an autobiographical component to this, and the editor of the author's diaries notes that there is a lot of material lifted almost word for word from them. Published in 1964, it was a window into a world that few straight readers would have been familiar with at the time.

Last Christmas (2022)

In the genre of classic Christmas movies, this fails miserably--however it is still worth watching if you need a line up of slightly quirky romantic comedies with the holiday aura about them. I was lured in by Emma Thompson and Michele Yeoh being in it to think it might be elevated above that but it was not. It was appealing in the cookie cutter British light fare sort of way. Based on the song by Wham! the movie tells the story of George Michael-obsessed, former Yugoslavian 26-year-old Kate, a a screw up whose foibles are more annoying than catastrophic. She works in an an all-year-round Christmas store in Covent Garden dressed as an elf, even when she is off the clock sometimes. This minimum wage job is not her dream--she really wants to be a professional singer, without training and while she is sort of homeless and lives on whatever couch she can find. She avoids her concerned mother, exhausts her beleaguered boss, frustrates her ever-decreasing circle of friends and drifts about while struggling to make anything substantial last. We do find out why that might be in the gradual reveal. But then while dusting Christmas decorations, she spots a handsome stranger (Henry Golding) staring at a bird. After the pair start to fall for each other and go on a number of saunters around the city, Kate is feeling a bit hooked but he is giving off a differenct vibe.Why? An why does he keep disappearing on her? All will be revealed.

Audition by Katie Kitamura

I put this on my library hold list because it was longlisted for the Booker Prize, but I also would have been intrigued because the other book by her that I have read is Intimacies, which tells the story of an interpreter at the Hague who comes to feel that she is the mouth piece for a war criminal that she is interpreting for. in this one, an aging an actress is confronted by a young man who claims to be her son, and though this cannot possibly be the case or can it, we never quite can figure it out. She invites him to live with her and her husband in their apartment as their child, which is bit shocking. If it were my child I would help them with the rend some place, not put them under my roof. But then we wouldn't have the crucial irritant to work with in the story. What could go wrong? Just about everything. These narrators take the most dramatic events in stride and devote most of their attention to minute observation of the people around them, noting the smallest gestures and contemplating their possible meanings. They are not given to outbursts of emotion, and in conversation they tend to listen more than talk. This leaves room for the reader to internally reflect as well, and the result for me was intense and a little startling.

Puerto 511, Baltimore, Maryland

This is a restaurant that you would not find if you were not looking for it. There is almost no curbside appeal and less signage--but it is a special place rather than something deserving of it's hiding spot. We were introduced to it by my SIL who picked it for our son's birthday dinner. It turns out that Little Donna's the night before was a better fit for him, but the rest of us loved this.

It is a fixed price menu of Peruvian food. They do not have a liquor license, so it is BYOB and they will open your wine and give you glasses for a corkage fee per person, but even better, bring your own pisco and they will make you excellent pisco sours. The food is surf and turf--but if you on;y eat seafood, they will sub that in for you. My spouse rhapsodized on the merits of the veal heart dish, but I was just as happy to skip that in favor of a tuna dish. I would definitely recommend this and go back on a return trip to Baltmore.

So We Read On by Maureen Corrigan

I picked this up because it was a Friday "If You Haven't Read This It Is New To You" series recommendation from Parnassus Books (if you are unfamiliar with these short format videos about books that are worthy, not current but in print, and that you might have missed but shouldn't have, they are well worth watching--try not to get overwhelmed though because I am a pretty intense reader and I can not keep up with these and I have not read most of them). Ann Patchett encourages everyone to read The Great Gatsby again if you have not read it since high school, and then read this as a companion. The author teaches a class at the college level about Gatsby, and this is a great reflection on both Fitzgerald as well as his classic novel and I would definitely recommend this, especially if you are interested in how we look at our country and our history.

Persuation (2022)

Ok, there are so many interpretations of this book specifically and Jane Austen in general that it is hard to know which I like best--the Regency steeped ones or the modern versions. This one is kind of a mash up of the two. Set in the original times period, but with decidedly modern asides. This is a thoroughly charming portrayal of Anne Elliot.She drinks red wine straight from the bottle, is seen crying in the tub and lying around in bed, narrating her romantic woes with a familiar, self-effacing wit. She also repeatedly breaks the fourth wall with an amusingly dry aside or a well-timed eye roll. Anne jokes that she’s “thriving,” and clearly she is anything but, but she’s so winning in her state of loss that we can’t help but root for her. Her plight is that the love of her life, Frederick Wentworth, was penniless when they first met, about to set sail on a Navy ship, and Ann's up tight, society obsessed family convinced her that she should give him up--which she did and eight years later she regrets that choice every single day. Then, as luck would have it, they meet up again, and now he is a rich man, all while her own family's fortune is waning--but does she tell him how she feels? Does he tell her he carries a torch for her? No, of course not, so we all have to watch them miss each other time and time again. Not terribly satisfying, but Ann is great and so in the end, I recommend this.

Julie Chan Is Dead by Liann Zhang

I started this because it is a debut novel, and to get my Goodreads ribbon in this category, I chose this one. This book is a somewhat jaded look at what it is to be an influencer--I think it is well written and insightful--my rating is more related to my profound lack of interest in that dimension of the modern world rather than a reflection on the writing or story telling. The story follows Julie Chan, a supermarket cashier, as she assumes the influencer lifestyle of her deceased identical twin sister, Chloe Van Huusen. Though twins, the two were separated at a young age as their birth parents died in a car crash; Chloe was adopted by wealthy white parents from New York City, leaving Julie to be raised by her aunt who is straight out of Grimm's Fairy Tales. Since their parents’ death, the twins have only met once in person. Given Chloe’s soaring popularity online, it is unsurprising that their reunion was completely staged for a YouTube video, earning Chloe tens of thousands of dollars. For Julie, who comes from more modest circumstances, this day was more about being used than loved and did not serve to make them friends much less siblings. Then Julie cannot reach Chloe for quite some time and ends up going to her apartment and finding her dead. Julie sees an opportunity to ditch her hum drum and financially unrewarding life to assume Chloe's and she gets to see how the influencer lives--which is not as glamorous as it might first appear.

Little Donnas, Baltimore, Maryland

I heard about this in a somewhat round about way. The New York Times did a review of "50 Restaurants We Are Excited About" in 2023 and a favorite restaurant in my home town, The Webster, was on that list. When it came out we went to another restaurant on the same list in Minneapolis that we loved and while I was looking it up to recommend it, and I saw this one. We were headed to Baltimore a few days later, and I looked to see if they had a reservation for five, and lo and behold, they did.

It was a lucky break because we all loved it. They have a tavern pizza, which won my son over, but for us the seafood was the key. They are famous for their pierogis, which were good, but we had a tuna crudo that was out of this world, a couple of vegetable forward dishes that were delicious and a chrimp dish that I loved as well. The atmosphere is very funky, as it the neighborhood, and it is reasonably priced as well. I would definitely go here again.

Opus: The Cult of Dark Money, Human Trafficking, and Right-Wing Conspiracy inside the Catholic Church

Spoiler alert--if you have been paying attention at all, there is nothing in here that is ground breaking. Shocking, yes. The depth of the corruption and how it has infiltrated our government and the governments of Europe is well laid out but on reflection, not surprising. The first thing to note about Opus is the tremendous amount of research that went into the project. This involved serious attention to many published works on the prelature, personal interviews with present and former members of Opus Dei (including significant leadership figures), and archival research materials. The resources are fully a quarter of the pages of the book. Some things I didn't know were that Opus Dei was founded in 1928 to be an association of mostly lay Catholics who would seek holiness through their daily activities and secular jobs. Most members are supernumeraries, which means they can be married and live independently, in their own homes; others are numeraries, making a promise of celibacy and living in Opus Dei centers in the community. The author started to investigate them because he was interested in the collapse of a Spanish bank in 2027--but it turned out that was literally the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the influence the group wields, and how Pope Francis was not under their sway being the sole bright light within. The author structures his book around three complementary narratives: one financial, one political and one ecclesial. He is on the strongest ground with following the money, and then where that leads in terms of political influence. It is pretty awful and demonstrates that we are very far from a separation of church and state.

Penguin Lessons (2025)

The director of this movie was also the director of The Full Monty, and if you are looking for something similar, you will be disappointed--but if you are looking for a quiet indie film that has some really awful things going on in hte background but that does not deal with that ugliness head on, you might enjoy this--I did. The movie features a mentally checked-out teacher named Michell at a boys’ private school in Buenos Aires, Argentina--we do not find out until much later what it was that happened to him that left him so damaged, but it is there. It all starts to shift a bit for him when he finds a Magellanic penguin on the beach in Uruguay, cleans him up, and the penguin is quite imprinted on him, and he reluctantly brings it home with him. The penguin helps him to segue back into the land of empathy and compassion, a place he has been disconnected from for an untold amount of time. Unfortunately, he is working in Argentina in the time when a right-wing military dictatorship takes over the country and is kidnapping people on the street and disappearing them. Sounds impossible but that is also happening right now in the United States, so never forget. This does not dealve too deeply into those waters, but does end with the sobering statistics on how widespread the kidnapping, torture and murder was and how many people suffered. I was in Buenos Aires earlier this year, and there are many doorsteps throughout the city marking homes where people disappeared and who they were--never foget.

The Rachel Incident by Caroline O'Donoghue

I learned about this book from a Friday episode of :If You Haven't Read This It Is New To You" from Parnassus Books--this weekly video clip recommends books that you might have missed when they came out that you should have read and why. The description of this is that it is messy, and I would certainly agree with that assessment! There are shades of Sally Rooney to be sure--less graphic sex but the same kinds of people who struggle with what to do and why to do it in their twenties, as well as the more fluid definitions of social support that extend beyond family. the author author who comes to mind in Anne Tyler, with her evocative portrayals of her character's inner lives. I liked this a lot. The book opens with Rachel Murray as a happily married, pregnant journalist based in present-day London, where she’s written extensively about the legalization of abortion in her native Republic of Ireland. Flashback to 2010, when she is an undergraduate, struggling to figure out a path for herself, and finding herself in a friendship with James, a young gay man that is her absolute best support. Ireland is in the midst of recovering from an economic setback, the social landscape in Ireland is shifting rapidly, and while she doesn't quite know what to do with her life or how she fits in, she does know who she can rely upon in times of crisis. She and James share a mutual infatuation with an older married man, and while James wins out in that situation, there are quite a few downstream complications that add an element of humor and fun to Rachel's figuring it all out and getting on with it in her thirties.

Dim Sum Palace, Catonsville, Maryland

Dim sum is a cuisine that we all really like, so when we went to Baltimore for our son's birthday weekend this was on the list of places to make time to have a lunch at. My nephew, who lived in China for several years, gave a thumbs up from a previous visit, so it had a seal of approval as well. The restaurant opens at 11AM and the rule of thumb is that you need to be there before it opens or soon thereafter. We were not so on top of it, but a luck would have it, we were a party of 5 and the large tables had yet to fill up, and we were seated immediately. There is a menu that you can order off, but we chose to eat off the roving trolleys, and the food was delicious--the crowd favorite was the Chinese broccoli, which was cooked perfectly with some tooth feel left but cooked through and with a delicious sauce. My next up was the shrimp and scallop shi mei, which we had one left over of and I wish we had gotten more to go. The scallion pancake around a shrimp was the next favorite for some, and I did enjoy the salt and pepper calamari, but wouldn't get it unless there are at least 4 diners, as it is both a large portion and filling. We would 100% make a effort to go back, and when we left 45 mintures after arriving there were dozens of people waiting for tables.

Broken Country by Claire Leslie Hall

Well, the country is quite broken right now, so the title stands out for it's accuracy, and the stories told within are of people who are also struggling mightily. Beth had big dreams as a teenager. She was in love with Gabriel, who encouraged her to reach for the stars, and she was on course to go to Oxford and fulfill her dreams of writing. It was all set off course by Gabriel, a misunderstanding, and his mother, who did and didn't do her part, and Beth decided to marry someone else from her class, a man who had loved her for years. Beth and Frank lead a fulfilling life. They love each other and work alongside each other, along with Frank’s volatile brother Jimmy, on the Blakely family farm in Dorset. They had a son soon after they were married, and he died in a tragic accident that both Frank and Beth blame on Frank. Enter Gabriel, returned from years away, on the verge of a divorce, with a son about the age that Beth's would have been, and it is all over for Beth. A love triangle develops for all to see, and it ends tragically. As with all tragedy's, you can see this one coming from a mile away, but there is no stopping it and no telling how it will end.

Holiday in the Vineyards (2025)

Yes, this is a romantic comedy aimed at the holiday viewing set, and no it is not a great film. I watchd it when my spouse unexpectedly tested positive for COVID and all of our weekend plans got canceled or put on hold because of it. He was ill, not just infected, and so our whole household lived separate lives for several days and I watched this movie. I enjoy the occasional movie in this genre. There are predictable things that happen and there are some real stretches to believe, more so than in movies of this genre, which is saying something. The situation is that Carter Baldwyn is the screw-up son of Margo Baldwyn (Eileen Davidson), the wealthy head of a huge bargain basement wine brand. In an effort to prove to his mom that he’s not a total good-for-nothing, he agrees to visit a small winery called Huckabee Vineyard in the fictional wine country town of Los Santos, CA, that’s just gone on the market and which his mother wants to acquire for their company. The catch – Carter has to be a run of the mill guy while he’s scoping out the vineyard so no one catches wind that it’s a Baldwyn that’s buying. No one likes the Baldwyns or their brand, becausethey are predators who not only make bad wine, but have a scorched earth approach to doing so. Carter lucks out when the real estate agent selling Huckabee, Valentina Espin offers him a place to stay if he finishes the remodel on her guest house. She is a widowed mom of two adorable boys, and Carter is no more suited to renovation than he is to anything else, but he manages to get the local hardware store owner to help him. It turns out that the locals are making some very good wine in their garages, and Carter comes to see things from their point of view. The scenery is gorgeous, and this is a quiet unassuming movie.

The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones

Ok, first of all, I made a mistake here. I added this to my library holds, I cannot remember why, but it happened in the flurry of articles about "The Best Books of 2025 So Far". Somehow in the rush to capture things I thought I would like but had not discovered, I missed that this book is categorized under "Horror", which is a genre that I most definitely do not read. Consider that as you read forward! I thought this was a non-fiction book, and I have a stack of them to read out from the library, so I brought it on a plane trip, and even though I recognized my mistake, I felt committed at that point, and read it. This isn't a fun read or even necessarily an enjoyable one, and the subject matter is dark and difficult to stomach at times. It is however is an unforgettable novel about a Pikuni vampire seeking revenge related to all that happened to both the buffalo and the Blackfoot in the mid-nineteenth century. So if horror is your jam, you might enjoy this.

La Mexicana, Coralville, Iowa

We had a family dinner here recently to celebrate my son's birthday. It is definitely our favorite Mexican restaurant in the Iowa City area--we literally drive by 6 or 7 other Mexican restaurants to get to it, we feel that strongly. My son has three small children and it has several advantages to recommend it for this occasion. One is that it is continually open, so that we don't have to get there before the lunch service ands or wait for the dinner service to begin--that is not an issue, and the added bonus is that if you are eating at an odd hour it is likely that you can get a table for 8 or more without difficulty. Truely, we never have an issue with it--there is a lot of flexible seating, and the service is fast, so turnover happens quickly. Second is that it is a bit loud and raucous while being kid friendly, so perfect table manners are not absolutely required. Then there is the food--all three of the aforementioned small children could find multiple things on the menu that appealed to them, and in actuality the chips with a salsa and a bean dip were most popular and they took a bulk of their ordered food home. There are several options that are popular and good for the adults--the chili relleno and the choripollo to name two. On this occasion there were a lot of tacos, but the rice and beans are very solid and we all leave happy every time. Finally, there is a grocery store connected to the restaurant and that was a fun stop for candy and cookies on the way out.

There Is No Place For Us by Brian Goldstone

There is one common thread when reading about homelessness in America--it is always gut wrenching and unfair. This is no exception. The twist is that the five families that the author follows in Atlanta are all working. The people in this book work a lot, and earn very little. Sleeping in cars, crashing with friends or paying for a decrepit room in an extended-stay hotel, they are trapped in an endless circle of poverty and uncertainty. Politicians have been incentivized to define homelessness narrowly, including only people living in shelters or on the street. A true measure of homelessness in America would be six times the official figure, pushing the number up to more than four million. It always leaves me wondering how you can feel exceptional when as a country you step on the most impoverished amongst us. The allowance for wages that do not add up to being able to feed, cloth, and house one's family is what underlies this tragedy. That things like food stamps and Medicaid serve to make people depend on government subsidies when the companies that employ people should be shouldering that burden.

Wish (2023)

This movie got a lot of very bad reviews, and where the story goes, this is a sub par addition to the Disney ouevre. The best rap of it is that it is all about emphasizing Disney's 100th anniversary, and that wishing upon a star is one of the oldest Disney tropes out there. From my point of view, that is 100% okay, that making a movie that harkens to their past once every 100 years is excusable. The downside is that the story does not drive the plot, the foundational concept does. So here is the story. Asha is a 17-year-old about to interview for an apprenticeship with the beloved King Magnifico of Rosas. The King is the keeper of magic in Rosas, a man who can extract the wishes of his flock, keeping them in a chamber high above the city, and choosing one wish in a ceremony to allow to come true. Asha hopes that her 100-year-old grandfather Sabino will finally have his wish granted, but she discovers that Magnifico isn’t well named. He’s more of a hoarder of wishes than a granter, and someone who doesn't keep his promises. Of course this is Disney, so Asha isn’t just an ordinary girl who learns about the absolute corruption of absolute power—she becomes a magical figure herself when a wishing star grants her abilities that turn her into a leader for her people. Asha literally wishes on a Star, and said Star comes down to cause chaos and help Asha start a revolution.

A High Wind In Jamaica by Richard Hughes (1929)

I have recently gotten hooked on the Friday videos by Ann Patchett that she does from her bookstore in Nashville, Parnassus Books, and this book was recommended in the series that they do on important books from the past that have been forgotten and shouldn't be. In thinking about the book and preparing to write this review, I found a review by someone who read it as a teenager and then again as a middle aged man. He found it full of adventure and strange and unknown things that enthralled him--that was definitely not my experience, nor was it his the second time around. This is an odd story, creepy even, told from both adult and child points of view and takes place sometime before 1860. The Thornton children and 2 mixed race children are placed on a ship to get them to England, where their parents are waiting for them. Their ship is boarded by pirates pirates, a profession that is no longer profitable but they haven't cross trained to do something else, but neither are they completely blood thirsty villains either. They are unable to wrench any valuables from the ship they have boarded, and they take the children to their ship in an effort to convince the Clorinda captain to hand over his money. He does so, probably more to save his own skin, but, about the children, he gets confused and thinks the pirates have murdered them, and, so, he sails away in the dark. The pirates awaken to find they have the children now as unwanted passengers. You will have to read to see what happens--it is in some ways worse than you think and in other ways better. Richard Percival Graves, in his biography of Hughes, placed this novel between RM Ballantyne’s optimistic adventure story The Coral Island, published in 1858, which shows a group of children cast away on a deserted atoll “to be naturally good, decent and self-reliant,” and William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, published almost 100 years later, in which the civilized values of adult society are soon jettisoned by the schoolboys who turn to savagery on their island. A High Wind in Jamaica takes no sides as it patrols the eccentric, sometimes amoral borders between a child’s and an adult’s natural territory.

Restaurante Lurrak, Arbonne, France

We spent almost a week in Basque country and one day of it was spent in French Basque ountry. We did not get to a memorable bakery, and we did not get any cheese, so that was disappointing to the point of needing to go back when time is less of an issue, but the restaurant we ate at was perfect.

The emphasis on seasonal food, and the fact that we were there when it was white asparagus, artichoke, and strawberry season was exceptional, and we were able to have these delicacies almost every day. The top picture is of a lightly pickle and thinly sliced kohlrabi that was absolutely the best version of this spring vegetable that I have ever had. The kitchen was small, as was the restaurant, but it was a memorable and delicious lunch!

A Blissful Feast by Teresa Lust

The trouble with going to the less traveled spots is that sometimes it is hard to find books that cover said regions. I have an acquaintance who travels extensively and often who swears by travel blogs as a source from which to plan your trips. She travels off the beaten path, and I am seeing the wisdom of her way. So I picked this up because it starts in Piedmont, a region that I am traveling to very soon. The author's maternal grandparents came from the Italian Piedmont, and it's there that she begins her what is part memoir, part recollection of culinary lessons and cultural insights in three parts of the country. The book contains more than 35 recipes for the likes of braised rabbit with white wine and rosemary, breakfast biscotti, and tagliatelle made with fresh eggs, the real instruction comes through the stories Lust tells about the cooks who fed her and whom she worked alongside to learn how to cook regionally in Italy. Ancient and contemporary Italy overlap in her stories of cooks and marketplaces, restaurants and holiday feasts, regional rivalries and evocations of Dante. She went to Piedmont to learn Italian at a language school, and she recounts her struggles when the limitation of her language skills led to challenges in her understanding the conversations she had with the cooks, bakers, and butchers but as her skill improved her stories have more depth and interest. It really stuck with her, because she is now a professor in Italian language study at Dartmouth, and some of the stories towards the end of her book are about trying to take the cuisine of Italy home to New England. I especially appreciated her story of harvesting hops shoots and how perplexing it was for the farms caretaker to understand what she was about. There is a hazard that you're likely to want to make your own trip to Italy, and luckily I had that in hand before I started the book.

Nonnas (2025)

One of my kids and I watch movies together when my spouse is on call or out of town. We watch things that are not clear winners, and also things that might not hit the spot for him--in this case I think he would have been ok with this (we watched Kung Fu Panda 4 this way, and that was a clear win-win. We found it modestly entrertaining and he would not have agreed I predict). This is inspired by the life of Jody Scaravella, who moved into the attic bedroom of his childhood home to care for his mother. When she died he was bereft, set afloat and asea, not knowing quite what to do next. In the midst of his grief, and maybe not thinking as clearly as would be ideal, he opened Enoteca Maria on Staten Island in 2007. Still thriving two decades later, the restaurant became famous for the grandmothers or nonnas in the kitchen. Each of them cooking dishes from different Italian regions. His concept was that the restaurant and the food would remind you of home, that the kitchen would be populated not by prodessional chefs but by people who were cooking food they had made for their families for decades. There is also a thread here of hanging on to your culture, and that the recipes that our grandmother's made being made now is a way to hang on to that history. It’s about holding onto tradition—conjuring our ancestors through the things they pass down to us—whether it’s culture, inheritance, or food. I just saw a recipe for Molasses Cookies in my grandmother's handwriting in my recipe book this past week and it made me think of so much more than her or those cookies. Even though I did not find the recipe that I was looking for, it was quite lovely to peak in to my past.

Confessions by Catherine Airey

This is a complicated novel that shifts between the past and present, between narrators, and also between truths--there are a lot of secrets herein. It opens opens in New York on 9/11. Sixteen-year-old Cora, who is playing truant, watches the news from her apartment, and knows that her father is dead. Michael was an accountant who worked on the 104th floor of the North Tower. Cora’s mother Máire died seven years earlier, so she is now an orphan. From here, the story cuts back to 1974, to rural Ireland, and a narrative told by Cora’s aunt Róisín. We see Cora’s parents, Máire (Róisín’s sister) and Michael (who lives next door) growing up in Burtonport, Donegal. Máire travels to the USA to study at NYU. She is a born artist, but troubled, and people prey on her. Michael joins her, trying to help. The second half of the novel stitches to and fro across the decades, ending in 2023. Passages are narrated by Róisín, Michael, and Cora’s daughter Lyca, who uncovers half a century’s worth of family stories and secrets, and must decide what to do with them. They shape shift in all sorts of ways besides who is narrating and this complex task is handled well--the story comes out surprisingly seamless despite a myriad of ways the story is told. The secrets Lyca uncovers are borne by the women of the family, and involve addiction, adoption, rape, mental illness, gay rights, abortion rights and intergenerational trauma: it takes on big subjects and as debut novels go, this one is impressive.

Restaurante Alameda, Hondarribia, Spain

This was a fancy restaurant in a bustling seaside town in Northern Spain, the most atmosperically fancy place we ate on this trip. There were gorgeous sculptures made from large pieces of wood that towered over table in the dining room, while we ate outside on the reiver's side. The food was all from the region, and it was seasonal. We started off with Fois gras truffles and several fish dishes, and finished with some fruit forward desserts. The one pictured here, a green apple and green pea sorbet, was unusual, refreshing and unexpectedly delicious. The food here was notable for unexpected pops, and I would highly recommend this as a destination.

Turning to Birds by Lili Taylor

I am not big on celebrity writing as a rule, but I enjoyed this, partly because I think all things bird have a way with me, and partly because it contains a nice collection of observations and wisdom that it behooves us all to pay attention to. She starts off by making the point that as an actor of several decades length she knows how to look and how to listen. She’s been trained to use these skills to give outstanding, grounded performances that move her audience. Here she writes about how she’s applied these and other actorly skills to learning to know the birds around her, whether she’s on the job in New Mexico, a newbie at a large birding festival, or simply walking in her neighborhood in Brooklyn. But that’s not all. Like any good essayist, Taylor effortlessly connects the personal to the universal, in this case going from bird observation to major conservation issues. Birds are both the feature and the bug in this case--they are worthy in and of themselves, and they are also a barometer of what is happening in the world around us. This is well worth your time to both read and think about. The author has also used her notoriety for good--to promote increased awareness of the changing environment and how that is affecting birds--and since we share the same environments, ourselves.

Kung Fu Panda 4 (2024)

The most shocking thing about this movie is that it has been 8 years since a Kung Fu Panda has come out--it is both hard to believe it has been that long and equally challenging to think that it still has a sustained audience. This is a solid but unremarkable follow up, not sustaining the magic of the first one, but it is certainly recognizable and uses many of the tropes that worked in the past along with heavy hitting actores coming back to voice the characters even after such a long delay. Here is the basic set up. It is sometime after the defeat of General Kai, where Po – now well established as the Dragon Warrior – become a local celebrity. He even helps his fathers – adopted goose dad Mr. Ping and biological panda dad Li – open a new restaurant in the Valley of Peace. But Po’s master Shifu chimes in with some ancient history--he claims that Po’s time as the Dragon Warrior is coming to an end and he must choose a successor, as he is to advance to the highest stage in all of kung fu: Spiritual Leader. Po, enjoying his status and fearing change, is reluctant to name a new Dragon Warrior and equally hesitant about taking on the new role. This leades to some mistakes being made, another epic battle between good and evil, and a possible new team member to boot. This is deversionary at best--not sorry to have wathced--it is leaving Netflix soon after all--but not exactly recommending it. I will say I so like this series better than the How To Train Your Dragon franchise, so there is that.

Soldiers and Kings by Jason de Leon

If you don't know this book, you really should. For one thing, it won the National Book Award in the category on Non-Fiction. The real overriding and compelling reason is that it tells the story on what is happening in Mexico and Central America in a way that is important to hear, to listen to, and to understand. Now that the United States is establishing concentration camps within our borders, and allowing heavily armed men who wear balaclavas and no identification to pull people off the streets without showing paperwork or case and shoving them into unmarked vehicles, we are now the bad guys. We need to really get our collective minds wrapped around that. This book is an incredible feat of anthropology and human connection. In it, De León chronicles the near-decade he spent getting to know a group of Honduran human smugglers, those hired by migrants to help them cross the border (not to be confused with human traffickers, who take people against their will). Unlike with most books about the migrant crisis, which of course focus on the migrants, De León’s generous, tender focus on the smugglers he befriended shows us a side of the equation rarely considered and often dismissed. These people are not (all) rich, cruel crime lords. They are often fleeing situations just as impossible and dangerous as the people who hire them, and they too have dreams and families and desperate hope. I cannot even fathom the dangers the author faced and the emotional toll this work took on him, as many of the people he came to know well were killed over the course of his field work. This is gritty and important.

Stoney Creek Inn, Pasadena, Maryland

My SIL and BIL have a place just a couple blocks from here--the restaurant sits at the mouth of Stoney Creek, which is a brackish water creek that eventually joins the Chesapeake Bay, and truely, there is no reason to go furhter to eat. They are known for their crab and oysters, which thrive in brackish water and might well come from right outside the restaurant, but their fish and shrimp dishes are excellent. My personal favorites are the shrimp po-boy, which is serves on a perfect roll, and go well with a side salad and fries. My other choice would be the shrimp salad, which is served atop fresh greens that are flavorful and the choices of dressings is above average. The cherry on top is that the prices are reasonable, it is a favorite spot for locals, and the service is quick and friendly. Added bonus is that they have an extensive dessert menu.

Careless People by Sarah Wynne-Williams

I read a review for this memoir of a New Zealander's time at Facebook that characterized it as darkly funny and genuinely shocking to be a fairly good one sentence summation. It comes long after the revelations of Frances Haugen, and I have read it in the wake of the 2.0 version of the Revenge Presidency, and still it unsettles me to to the point that I am not sure where we are heading and what the end of the road holds. This is an insider account of Facebook, which she says was run by status-hungry and self-absorbed leaders, who chafed at the burdens of responsibility and became ever feckless as Facebook became a vector for disinformation campaigns and cozied up to authoritarian regimes. Including the one that was seeking re-election in the United States at the time--all of which has come to fruition in an astoundingly inhumane, areligious, and profit driven manner. The bottom line, the summation of all that is wrong with the tech bros was a conversation that she had with Zuckerberg about the United States president that he most admires is Andrew Jackson. Jackson is more nuanced as a person than is oft remembered, but the bottom line is that he is responsible for the Trail of Tears. Unforgivable imposition of human suffering and Zuckerberg admires him, despite that or because of it, it matters not in the end. We are all screwed.

My Oxford Year (2025)

This movie is based on a YA novel of the same title--I say this because it will appropriately set your expectations. The YA that I read at least has a bit of romance and some amount of sadness bordering on tragic at times. They are decidedly not straight ahead romances, and this certainly fits that bill. Anna De La Vega is a woman who has mapped out a very successful life for herself where she is financially successful, and to date, she has followed through on that plan. She graduated from college and has a job at Goldman-Sachs, which she has deferred for a yearin order to follow a dream. She is going to spend a year studying literature in Oxford before the more serious and fiction-less part of her life begins. She has a checklist of things to do while she is there, and as soon as she has hauled her bags up to her room, she starts out crossing things off. In the chipped she chooses for the British classic fish and chips she meets Jamie Davenport, who she doesn't think much of other than that he quoted a line from the book she is reading. She does him a bad turn there, only to discover that he is her tutor and she is going to have to work with him. Luckily he is passionate about the same Victorian literature that she loves, and they fall into a bit of a love affair as well--apparently the restrictions on dating your teacher are laxer there, at least in this version of Oxford. I'll end by saying the scenes of England in general and Oxford in particular are very alluring, and this is a good poster movie for encouraging someone to study abroad--look at it all! Overall I enjoyed it, despite some very well worn tropes contained within.

The Sweet Life In Paris by David Lebovitz

I am glad that I read this memoir after a recent trip to France that included a several day stop in Paris. I am not a big fan of big cities, and in France my absolute favorite thing to do is to drive around and visit small medieval villages that have great restaurants and enjoy the food and culture. That said, I loved Paris on this recent trip and could finally see why others feel that way. This is a memoir that is already somewhat dated by an author who writes excellent cookbooks (I highly recommend them if you are seeking to cook French food--he was a pastry chef at Chez Panisse for a decade, so his desserts are top notch but his savory food is good too--there are quite a few embedded here that you could try out, but while Dorie Greenspan is my go to American writing about French food, if you want to widen your net, this is a good place to go--or if you are going old school, Julia Child is another option). He moves to Paris, and while he hasn't quite settled there, he doesn't want to go back to San Francisco. Even though he loves and misses Mexican food and BBQ, the tug of Paris has its grip on him. This is a book about his everyday life there, and I really loved were all the anecdotes about daily life in Paris–complete with all its complications, contradictions, and even annoyances. One reviewer complained that the book is not really about a sweet life at all; Lebovitz makes living in Paris look like hard work--which I suspect it is both foreign and difficult but clearly when all is said and done, worth it.

El Doncel, Sigüenza, Spain

We drove back to Madrid the long way, skirting the Pyrenees (beautiful) and stopped at El Doncel in Sigüenza for lunch. It is a peaceful town and the lunch was spectacular. We had the short form tasting menu, and no breakfast (which I recommend for this style of dining!!). The restaurant was lovely from a physical plant stand point, and the wait staff was especially attentive in an unannoying manner.

This is an inland location, and as such the menu was more of a balance between food from the land and the sea. I did not care for the cod, which was served in a sauce made from the balance bladder from the fish, and it was too strongly flavored for me, and it stuck to my tongue for just a bit too long. Otherwise this was another spectacular meal, and paired with some Spanish wine it was impressive, especially when you consider how underpopulate the town was. We arrived a bit early so got a chance to spend some time outside prior to the restaurant opened up, and the towns people we encountered were quite helpful and friendly.

Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

This is a long time coming, this book--it has been over a decade since the last book, and this is a book about dreams not turning out as planned. The interconnected stories of three Nigerian women, Chiamaka, Zikora and Omelogor , who are leaving their youth behind and for various reasons are reflecting on how their lives have not turned out the way they thought they would with respect to men, marriage, and motherhood, and while that is true, it is not the disaster that their families and their culture would assess that to be. Then there is Kadiatou, Chimaka's Guinian housekeeper, who shares their disappointments but is more harmed by them and more vulnerable socio-economically. This part of the story is a bit harder to fit into the puzzle but is based on Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s alleged rape of a Guinean hotel worker in 2011. In the aftermath, Kadiatou only panics all the more at the newfound vulnerability in her manager’s eyes, faced with news of the assault, and the resultant dissection of her life in the press. There is no glamourization of America here--far from it--and the real issues that immigrant women of color face is lyrically if not optimistically portrayed.

Our Little Secret (2025)

This is a solid if unexceptional romantic comedy that does exactly what it is supposed to, and it does it pretty well. It is set in the holiday season and it is family friendly, so it could be something to watch with the relatives if your family traditions veer away from sports and into movie viewing. Here's how it goes. Avery, a successful business consultant with her own firm who is meetiAs luck would have it, Avery and Logan, who had been best friends since they were kids before dating throughout their teens and twenties, and people thinking they had what it takes to go the long haul. That came to a screaching halt ten years earlier, the same year Avery’s mother passed away, because Avery was choosing grad school far away over making her relationship with Logan, and they haven't had contact since, even though their family's live near each other. Now, these two have to get through a four-day holiday weekend with Cam and Cassie’s ultra-snooty parents, Erica and Leonard. The result is a perfectly executed marriage-remarriage style screwball comedy, with new relationship twists and decidedly wacky situations thrown at Avery and Logan every ten minutes. It all turns out more or less the way you might hope it would, with some added whip cream and cherry on top along the way.

Madame Fourcade's Secret War by Lynn Olson

I heard about this book on the Parnassus Bookstore Friday video series, "It's New To You"--which if you haven't checked it out, you should. There is so much to know about authors and books, and this bookstore is a treasure, to be sure, and every week they highlight a handful of books, so even a voluminous reader like myself can be overwhelmed with the choices. This one highlights the work of women during WWII. The book is about one person, but there is some attention to what happened after France surrendered to Germany, in terms of having no organized resistance to begin with and how it organically grew ad what the barriers were, all of which I did not know and had not thought about. Marie-Madeleine Fourcade, married, mother of two, slender, blond and barely in her 30s. Over the course of World War II, Fourcade built a network of agents across occupied France. They collected intelligence on the movements of German U-boats, on supply shipments sailing in and out of key ports, on which of the bridges into Paris were mined. They were frequently captured by Nazis (in Fourcade’s case, twice) and, in some cases, escaped (again, Fourcade’s record: 2-0). The book does have a bit too much of "this happened and then this happened" rather than straight ahead telling the story, but it is a book that highlights a forgotten woman of history, who while spying, also had a third child in 1943, and was altogether forgotten by history--but survived to see France restored.

City Sampler: 100 Modern Quilt Blocks by Tula Pink

I got this book as a present almost about the time that it came out. I looked at it and thought Wow, there are a lot of tiny pieces of fabric in each of these 100 blocks--hard pass. Fast forward to the present when I have been in a Modern Quilt Guild for 18 months, and I know more about scraps and the process of making textiles and the very commendable trend of using ALL your fabric, mix that with one of my friends who quilts is now making her second one of these (she is over 75% done with it in fact) and voila, I am thinking why haven't I made one of these. The book is essentially mostly the blocks--with pictural directions for sewing and written instructions for cutting (I am on my 4th block and I have already made a mistake in cutting, so this is not going to be a breeze), and then various designs for assembly to finish it out. You can make this with scraps and that is my intention--my sewing table, which doubles as my dining room table seating 14, is a total mess, but this is well done and I think it will be fun once I get the hang of it. I also love that something so long buried can be resurrected again.

The Deam Hotel by Laila Lalami

I really liked this. It is a combination of what the extreme of AI might be as well as pushing the limits on what is going on with ICE in the United States--that heavily armed men are covering their faces, not wearing badges and snatching people off the street without any accountability and disappearing them. The later is happening and the former is a what if scenario. Sara Hussein seems unexceptional: she’s a museum archivist, married and mother to young twins. She once had an argument with her husband Elias after he impulsively part-exchanged the family Toyota for a Volvo. Sara sees herself as a person who “couldn’t possibly be considered a member of the lawbreaking classes”, until the moment at the airport when an officer informs her that her “risk score” is too high, and sends her to Madison, a California women’s retention center. This isn’t punishment but risk management, for anybody considered likely to commit a crime. Every citizen has a risk score, extrapolated via algorithm from personal cloud data, from surveillance networks, and from the Dreamsaver – a widely used skull implant that delivers more restful sleep. The small print of Dreamsaver Inc grants the company rights to share the user’s dreams with the government. The author owes a lot to it being 2025 in America, where this all seems quite possible. The Secretary of Health and Human Services wants to eliminate vaccinations, obliterate health research, and put a tracking device on everyone, so it is just a hop, skip, and a jump to locking up people for their thoughts.

In The Shadow Of The Cypress (2024)

There has been a trend in nominees the Best Short Animated Film category for the Academy Awards that there is both less child oriented in content and they tend to run a lot longer than what Disney and Pixar produce, and this 2025 winner is an excellent example of that seeming trend. It is a vivid depiction of what PTSD is like to experience for the sufferer as well as what they are like to live with. The film begins with a Persian man, who is shown struggling with mental health issues. His daughter tries to intervene and comfort him, but without much luck. The man reflects on his past through vivid dreams and memories. His ship was damaged during the war and is in need of serious repair, adding to his stress. While he is experiencing this mental breakdown, a whale washes up on the shore near their home. They are without the resources to free the heavy marine mammal, but the daughter tries to comfort it by splashing water on it as it lays in the sun, and then spreads wet towels across its back to keep it cool. The father sees her efforts as hopeless, and offers little assistance. Later, however, he is struck with an idea – one that would sacrifice his ship but could free the whale. The film touches on many topics, including the environment, war, women's issues, and, most importantly, the dynamic between the father and daughter.

This Is Happiness by Niall Williams

I had two recommendations to read this book, one from Ann Patchett on her weekly videos from her bookstore, Parnassus Books, and the other was from a woman who I have shared reading loves with for 30 years, and so the double whammy rose this to the top of my books to read, that and the fact that I could not renew it--possibly stemming from one of the other of my two sources. It is set in rural Ireland at the time that a town is getting electricity. It is being added to the grid, and while there are a lot of things about that to be excited about, not everyone agrees that it is a good thing. They do have a point, those nay sayers. There are things that will change forever and there will not be an option to change that. The process of progress is the subtext here, what is lost and what is gained, and the inevitability of it, but the concomitant sadness about what changes and goes away. I did not love this book the way that my friend and Ann Patchett did, but it made me think a lot, and that, after all, is part of why I read, and in thinking I realized that it is a different sort of book, one that I do not seek out so much as be thankful that I read it.

The Little Sparrow Murders by Seishi Yokomizo

Sometimes I am good when it comes to picking out books and sometimes I am just plain lucky, and in this case it is the later rather than the former. I have been using a web site with murder mysteries pictured that are published each month in order to keep abreast of authors that I read routinely, but also to read authors that I do not know or have not read, but who have published more than one one book. The sad truth is that while I am getting older, so are the authors that I have been reading, along with my spouse, for the entirety of our relationship, and so I need to find new things to read. I really like the website, because it turns out I really need the pictures as well as the title to pay attention--I am constantly discovering that I am very visual and without it I have trouble paying attention, and it seems to be worse not better as I get older. So I am grateful it exists and that I found it, but the downside is that there is no information about the books beyond author, title and the cover--with a reference to the detective and which number in the series this is. So the good news is that I really liked this, and it is one of a series of books by the same author. He is long gone now, having published his first murder mystery in 1921, and this one is from the early 1950's. He was the first to write in this genre in Japan, and he has over 70 published novels, only 6 of them translated into English. The complexity of the mystery as well as the characters is right up my alley and I will read the rest of them, but I am most grateful to have discovered this author, and to know a little bit more about writing from Japan.

Society of Lies by Lauren Ling Brown

I have a myriad of lists that I work off of for "What To Read Next" and one of my resources is Reese Witherspoon's book club. The selections often have a slightly lighter tone and are almost all well written. Most importantly, I like them and often would not have found my way to the book another way. Not every book is a home run for me, and this one was a miss. It is well written, suspenseful, and I read tons of murder mysteries so the fact that a couple of people die is not a turn off for me, but it put me on edge in a way that I don't enjoy--I struggled to pick it up, and while it had a lot of good literary qualities, I was relieved when it was over. The story follows Maya, a Princeton alum returning to campus for her 10-year reunion and her younger sister Naomi’s graduation. But what should be a joyous weekend quickly turns tragic when Naomi is found dead. The police rule it an accident, but Maya suspects foul play. As she digs deeper into her sister’s final months, Maya uncovers a tangled web of lies stretching back to her own time at Princeton. The supper clubs and secret societies at Princeton play a role (I recently read Leigh Bardugo's book that featured the Yale equivalent and neither Ivy comes off well fictionally speaking) as does the influence that money has on what happens on campus. I would heartily recommend this if a suspenseful book is your jam, that you like it when the tension rises and the complicated relationships that can happen when you keep your college friends well into adulthood. The mystery part of it is less spectacularly done, but not too bad either.