Oh Canada!

Happy Canada Day! It seems especially important to state the obvious, that I respect Canada's sovereignty. It is a great big beautiful country that is all it's own, and nothing like the United States. While it wasn't always so, they embrace their French past, and bilingual signs are seen coast to coast. You do not see that in the United States, not even in the seven states that were part of Mexico until 1848. We get why you are boycotting us. I would too. I am on a commerce diet altogether, in fact. My personal spending on goods is down. My confidence in the economy is at an all time low. The Guardian reported that 64% of Canadians now hold unfavourable views of the US, and nearly 40% say they hold very unfavourable views of their neighbour, up from 15% who felt that way last year. Sixty-four percent of Canadians now hold unfavourable views of the US, and nearly 40% say they hold very unfavourable views of their neighbour, up from 15% who felt that way last year. Only one-third of Canadians (34%) think positively of their southern neighbour today, compared with 54% last year. Canadian wariness towards the US is also reflected in new travel data from Statistics Canada, which found return trips by air fell nearly 25% in May 2025 compared with the same month in 2024. Canadian-resident return trips by automobile dropped by nearly 40% – the fifth consecutive month of year-over-year declines. It is amazing how quickly your brand can be damaged when you try mess with sovereignty. So celebrate your day, and according to the Pew Research Center, 74% of Americans have a favorable view of you.

Buenos Aires: The Biography of a City by James Gardner

I discovered this book when I was doing some last minute preparation for a trip that I did not plan, so knew very little about the places we were going as a result. I had been to Buenos Aires over two decades before, on a trip with my parents, who neither speak Spanish nor were much interested in Latin American history, which is to say that I did not plan that trip either, and therefore did not get as much out of it as I might have. I did not read the book until I had gotten back, but the city was quite fascinating to visit and I came home wanting to know more--this book is a great antidote to that desire, because it takes you step by step through the long history of a resilient city. Buenos Aires was settled early in the Spanish colonization of the New World and like a number of South American cities, it played a secondary role to Potosi, the Bolivian mountain city out of which enough silver came to build a bridge from there to Spain. The story of how it began and then changed over time is pretty fascinating and also unique--the history of South America is one that I am less familiar with, and this is a good story well told.

The Mesmerist by Caroline Woods

My spouse got this book out of the library as an e-book and it came up in his search of murder mysteries. It does chronicle a murder, but it is by no means a book that I would put in that genre--it is more like historical fiction. He thought I would like it more than he, but in the end, it went the other way around. The book centers on a place that really did exist. Founded by a group of elite Quaker women, the Bethany Home for Unwed Mothers opened its doors in 1876 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Amidst the glitz of the Gilded Age Twin Cities, the Bethany Home provided unmarried and outcast women and mothers with food, shelter, work, and a second chance at life. This book tells the story of three women within the walls of the Bethany Home in 1894: the real-life Bethany Home treasurer Abby Mendenhall, the naive and lovestruck resident May, and the mysterious and mesmerizing new resident Faith. As these women each fight to overcome the hardships dealt to them, they must also learn to survive perhaps the gravest danger of all: what is right in front of our eyes. Underlying their individual struggles there is a gruesome, bone-chilling, and immensely puzzling murder that overlays all that happens in the book.

Marching Band (2024)

I did not watch a lot of great movies on my long haul trips so far this year, but this is the winner. French film-maker Emmanuel Courcol has a nice touch with this dramedy. Benjamin Lavernhe plays Thibaut, a distinguished and sensitive orchestra conductor who collapses mid-rehearsal in Paris and is told he has leukaemia and needs a bone marrow transplant donor. Thibaut is adopted and this means tracking down his biological brother out in the boondocks: factory worker Jimmy, played by the formidable Pierre Lottin, whose gift for deadpan comedy really only gets free rein at the very beginning of the film. Thibaut has the tricky task of asking someone who is a total stranger if he wouldn’t mind donating his bone marrow. But this fraught situation reveals – a little programmatically, perhaps – that Jimmy has a real musical talent, like him, plays trombone in the raucous factory band and nurses a passion for jazz on vinyl. Thibault sees in Jimmy a vision of what his own life could have been without his adoptive mother’s comfortable middle-class background, and sees Jimmy and himself through the lens of class, politics and society, and not the supposed destiny of pure talent. It is a great story well told, and it has the subtext of what the affirmative action of class provledge affords those who are born into it.

Food For Thought by Alton Brown

I liked this but I did not love it. That also sums up my feelings about Good Eats, which was a show that my family--five men--liked more than I did. I think the science of cooking was a great hook for them and it did almost nothing for me, although I did not find him annoying, which is not a given for this sort of show. Same can also be said about this book, which really is a collection of ruminations and expositions on a wide range of topics mixed in that mostly adds up to a bit of a memoir. There is a fair amount about what it was like to be him as a child, growing up in the South and largely without a father, how he really struggled in a traditional classroom and he repeatedly tells us this, that he barely got out of high school, but never seems to realize that the way he learns is not the way others learn, and that is where public education failed him. He strikes me as a kinesthetic learner--maybe he has since figured it out. There are a few details about his current life, and the story about what they did during COVID and what he learned about his wife and himself is charmingly told. Then in between there is the part about how he came to be known by all of us, how he more or less stumbled in to what he is now widely known for. This is a better book once I reflect on it, because the story telling is non-linear, but at the end you do emerge with a sense of things about him. If you like food memoirs, this isn't really that, but it is food adjacent and enjoyable with that lens.

Crizia, Buenos Aires, Argentina

We had some spectacular food on a recent trip to Argentina, and this was my favorite meal. While Argentinian beef is world reknowned, it really isn't my thing, and what you might forget in all the hype about the parilla grill, the gaucho, and the grasslands is that it has hundreds of miles of coastline. This restaurant is all about things that come out of the water. Owner-chef Gabriel Oggero works with small-scale independent producers, fishermen and farmers in order to source the very best seasonal ingredients (the restaurant also has its own rooftop city garden). Oysters are a particular speciality and fish-lovers will delight in a menu which is completely focused on seafood and shellfish.

I live in a very land-locked place, so having a dozen small plates of this kind is amazing to me, and then there is the presentation--there is an emphasis on natural things, with stones and wood featuring prominently as the vehicle for each dish, and then the ceramic plates and bowls are impressively gorgeous as well. The attention to detail is special, and I would definitely return here should we be in Buenos Aires in the future. As a bonus, it was a few minute walk from our hotel, where I would also return.

Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan

I have been completely absorbed in getting all my badges for teh Goodreads challenges, and this fulfilled one of them. A satire and an indulgent romance tale, this is the first book in a trilogy penned by Kevin Kwan, starting in 2013-so this is a throwback, but also has the advantage that if you get into it, you can read the whole thing, you do not have to wait for the next two books to come out. I would usually advocate reading the book before seeing the movie, which is not what happened in this case--luckily I liked the movie, despite it's somewhat off putting title, and saw it long enough ago that I did not remember it clearly enough to be off put by the inconsistencies between the two. The book takes an in-depth look into the immense wealth, lavish lifestyles, culture, family expectations and innuendo that swirls around the rich families of Asia. With a specific focus on the heir of one of Singapore’s most well regarded families, Nicholas Young, the author considers the problems that arise when a son of old money in Asia, brings his Chinese American professor girlfriend back home. The complications of this potential ill match in the marriage stakes is set against another grand high society wedding. The upcoming nuptials of Colin, a close friend of Nicholas Young, provides Kevin Kwan with the room to explore the jetting setting life of the elite set of Singapore and surrounds. A story of wealth, love, family, honor, duty and culture, this book could either makes you stop and think for a moment what it would be like to live in this absurd world of affluence or it could make you grateful for your own flawed family.

Champions (2025)

This is a very enjoyable and entirely predictable romantic comedy. I watched this while I was traveling, and one plane landing while I still had about a quarter of the movie to go. While I was switching planes and waiting to board, I played out what I thought would likely happen and while I was not 100% correct, I nailed about 92% of it. That, in my mind, is what makes a successful movie in this genre--that you know exactly what will happen and you can't wait to watch it unfold. This is also a very likable sports comedy – what I did not know until I read a review of the movie is that it is a remake of the 2018 Spanish film Campeones (inspired by the real-life story of the Aderes basketball team in Burjassot) that delivers belly laughs and heartfelt charm in equal measure. Woody Harrelson plays Marcus Marakovich, an irascible assistant coach working in minor league basketball whose life unravels when he fights with his superior Phil (Ernie Hudson) on court and then drunkenly rear-ends a cop car on the road. To avoid prison, Marcus accepts 90 days’ community service coaching “adults with intellectual disabilities”. He is not what you would call enthusiastic about this, in fact he is rude and narrow minded, but as you might predict, they win his heart, and it is just a fun movie to watch.

I Leave It Up To You by Jinwoo Chong

I am usually not one for the gimmicky story line, but I have to say that I did enjoy this book--I did not read his first book, but it was apparently in the sci-fi genre, and this one gets extra points for breaking out of that mold as well. Jack Jr. wakes up from a coma after almost two years. He missed COVID altogether. He slept through it, which is maybe what a lot of people wished they could do. Prior to all this he had turned his back on his family and their Japanese restaurant run by his Korean family in Fort Lee, New Jersey. He had not seen them for quite some time when he had the accident that left him unconscious, but in the end they were the ones that stuck by him. While he was out, everyone else gradually evaporated, including his fiancé, and what he was left with was his family and their restaurant. So, reluctant as he had been to stay on, he returns, and it turns out that you can go home and lo and behold, he has quite the talent as a sushi chef with a knife. So much so that when his nephew makes videos of him preparing food he becomes a TikTok sensation. At the end of the day, this is a crowd pleaser. It kind of veers into YA territory in that respect, because usually when things are going too well for the characters, in an adult fiction piece of work you would expect a wrench in the works, but for the most part things progress smoothly and positively for the characters. It turns out we also want the best for Jack Jr. and his post-coma, post-COVID life as he picks up the pieces of what he left behind and re-examines how he lives, so a lot can be forgiven.

A New Deal For Quilts by Janneken Smucker

I stumbled upon this book as I try and read a lot of books about modern quilting in general (which is not what defines this book nor the quilts shown within) and quilting in general--this I would categorize as the History of Quilts. I did not know this, but might have surmised it if I had thought about it for half a minute, but during the Great Depression there was a large resurgence in quilting--quilts were used not just for bed, but because so many people became homeless during that time, they were used to delineate makeshift dwelling, and served as door and window cover for people living in broke down sheds and abandoned buildings. The photos in the book are as telling as the narrative, and are largely taken by government workers. They show quilts made by women and the women making them in some instances--there are black women and white women. There are poor women and middle class women. There are women living outside and those living inside. It was a time of making do with what you had, but some of these quilts were just exquisitely designed and pieced out of things that they had and things that they repurposed. They were an ode to scrap piecing, and fit beautifully into the throw nothing away philosophy of modern quilting.

The Road From Belhaven by Margot Livesey

This is a quiet book, set in Victorian Scotland, where the author returns to the life of her mother, who led a hard scrabble life replete with unappealing choices, the gift of second sight, and who died young. Lizzie can see see events that have yet to happen, but she cannot change them and she knows well enough that sharing her gift with others will lead to trouble. It is a time of superstition, and seeing the future is equated with the devil rather than as a gift from God. She makes quite a few mistakes, including the one where she believes the man she loves that he will marry her, only to find herself abandoned once she falls pregnant. The rest of the book flows from the subsequent choices that she makes as a result of this error in judgement, and what she does to survive, hide her secret, and find her way back to her child. In a time when America is populated by a large group of people who want to go back to a time when women have no reproductive choices in order to better control them makes this story more poignant. The patriarchy is alive and well, and while that used to annoy me, it now makes me very angry, and thus harder to relax and enjoy this story, which is well written and atmospheric.

The Fire Inside (2025)

This is a biopic or dacudrama about Claressa “T-Rex” Shields, who is an American professional boxer and mixed martial artist from Flint, Michigan who is widely regarded as one of the greatest female boxers ever. She was born in 1995 and became a double Olympic gold medallist (2012 and 2016), the first time when she was just 17 years old and coached by a man who basically volunteered his time to teach her to box. She is the first boxer, male or female, to hold all four major world titles across two weight classes simultaneously. The movie does a nice job of telling all of her story, which is a severely impoversihed childhood, an unstable living situation and a coach who changed her life, maybe even saved it. The story of her rise to success is told in the way of all great sports sotries, where you basically know the outcome but still enjoy watching it unfold. The back end of the movie is what happens after she wins, which is nothing at all. She is expecting to be showered with riches and she is all but ignored. The reality of life after the Olympics is equally well told.

The United States Governed by Six Hundred Thousand Despots by John Swanson Jacobs

The story behind this publication is in some ways cooler than the book itself and perfect for Juneteenth. Schroeder, who wrote the biography of the author that is included in this publication, is a literary historian, and he knew the story of Harriet Jacobs, the abolitionist who famously wrote about her life and abuse while enslaved, her secret relationship with a white politician and her escape to freedom in the 1800s. Schroeder searched a database of historical documents for details on Harriet's son. He wasn't getting far, so he tried another search term focused on Harriet's brother, Johnathan S. Jacobs. That is how he stumbled upon an autobiography by John Swanson Jacobs, first published in Australia in 1855 and largely lost to time - until now. Six hundred thousand despots is a reference to the number of slave owners in the U.S. at the time. John Swanson Jacobs was born in 1815 in Edenton, N.C., and he was born a sixth-generation slave. Today, he's a footnote in the life of his older sister, Harriet Jacobs, who is the best-known Black female author of the 19th century. He was an abolitionist in the U.S. and U.K. He was a gold miner in California and Australia. He was a sailor on four oceans and four continents. And he was an expat for nearly all of his free life. He had become a gold miner after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act in 1850. He left the U.S. for California, and then for Australia, which was going through its own gold rush at the same time as America's gold rush. And he eventually struck it rich or at least did well in the Australian gold rush. And that gave him a rare moment of time off from the kind of labor that dominated most of his life to go to Sydney and to finish the life story that he had begun practicing in the 1840s as an abolitionist in William Lloyd Garrison's Boston and Frederick Douglass' Rochester. This is a recreation of his autobiography, and then a biography of what we know about him now with the help of time.

Mishiguene Restaurate, Buenos Aires, Argentina

This was our first dinner in Argentina and it was a very good start to an excellent food trip. We arrived at opening time--8:30 at night--and were the only ones in the place. I do struggle with that in general, and combat it by having a late lunch instead of dinner, and that has been a good strategy as I age, having the heaviest, and sometimes the only, meal of the day a bit earlier, so that by the time I am settling down to sleep the meal is well on it's way in the digestive cycle. The thing about cultures that start dinner so late is that no one is going to bed before midnight and often not until the wee hours of the morning, and that is just not how we roll. Unless there is a 6 hour time difference and then it it perfect. We can essentially stay on our time, less jet lag in both directions. Argentina is both an overnight flight to get there and a minimal time difference, so let's just say I was not at my best. The food is both Ashkenazy and Sephardic cuisine that revives the flavours of traditional Jewish food from a contemporary perspective. These revive Jerusalem-trained chef Tomás Kalika’s childhood recollections and his quest for food that imprints an immigrant population on the history of a place--these are his words and high goals. One of Mishiguene’s signature dishes is Pastrón, a beef prime rib cured for ten days with salt, herbs and spices, which is then smoked over wood embers for four hours, and steam-cooked for a further fourteen--it was the only dish that did not wow us--everything else was great.

Raising Hare by Chloe Dalton

This is a peaceful book, one that focuses within rather than without. On the one hand it is a memoir of a time and of a relationship that seems like it might fit better in a children's picture book than in a grown up reflection. It is so beautiful that I felt transported by it. The setting is the English countryside, the time is COVID, and the relationship is between a woman and a hare. Things are in lock down and people are not seeing much of each other. Enter the leveret, a baby hare, which is both a magical interloper and harbinger of transformation. The author finds the creature lying on a country track outside her home, seemingly abandoned. From the outset, she is conflicted about whether to rescue the hare and take her into her home or let nature take it's course. She relents, though she places certain restrictions on their relationship: she does not name the animal, tries not to touch it, and does not, except briefly, confine it (it can leave the house through a specially constructed flap). Over the course of the book they develop a remarkable relationship with its own language; not, of course, a human language, but one of gestures, movements and exhalations (hares, we learn, emit soft, puff-like sounds). Dalton has a zoologist’s eye for detail combined with a poet’s sensitivity to descriptive language; she conjures the beauty, the allure and variation of the hare’s sounds, mouth, eyes and fur, which changes with the seasons and marks the passage of time. Her language is shot with such intense tenderness and emotion--she cares deeply about what happens and as a result, so do we. This is a breath of fresh air in a chaotic time.

Tea Growing in Munnar, Kerala, India

After sweating at lower altitudes in Tamil Naru, the hills of Munnar were a welcome alternative. The hills abound with tea here. Tea or Chai is the most widely drunk beverage in the whole world. The tea plant, Camellia Sansis, is a cultivated variety of a tree that has its origins in an area between India and China. There are three main varieties of the tea plant: China, Assam, and Cambodia and a number of hybrids between the varieties. The China variety grows as high as nine feet (2.75 metres). It is a hardy plant able to withstand cold winters and has an economic life of at least 100 years. The Assam variety, a single stem tree ranging from 20 to 60 feet (6 to 18 metres) in height. Regular pruning keeps its height to a more manageable 4 to 5 feet tall. It has an economic life of 40 years with regular pruning and plucking. When grown at an altitude near that of Darjeeling (Assam) or Munnar (Kerala), it produces tea with fascinating flavours , sought after around the globe. The Cambodia variety, a single stem tree growing to about 16 feet in height, is not cultivated but has been naturally crossed with other varieties. Tea growing in this region was started by colonialists, starting in the mid-19th century.

We Do Not Part by Han Kang

This is the second book that I have read by this Nobel Prize winning author, the first being The Vegetarian. This book shares some story telling features with that book, which is a deft combination of poetry and pain that reads with an almost dream like quality. It is a horrifying story that is not so horrifying to read--it is almost matter of fact in tone. The story is that after an accident, Kyungha is asked by her friend Inseon to travel to her home on Jeju Island to save her pet bird Ama from starvation. Kyungha agrees--she doesn't have something that she has to do instead, and she heads off immediately. She travels through a snowstorm, as the power grid fails and the transport system shuts down, her mind always on the flickering edge of a migraine. So extreme is the journey that, as she arrives at Inseon’s house, she seems to cross into a different reality, a world of shadows and of ghosts so real that Kyungha does not know if she herself is alive or has she died and entered a state between life and death.

Chris Manchini--Just Finish It

Chris Manchini of Rose City Originals spoke to my quilt guild and there was a lot to be learned from him. First, it is nie to see someone who is not a cookie cutter quilter. He is a man, there is that, but he is also a pattern maker who does large format quilting, which is not the norm. He has been sewing almost all his life, but he came to quilting about a decade ago, and pretty quickly found that things that he wanted to make did not have readily available patterns. When you look at what he has created, you can see why he had to figure it out--there is a higher than usual percentage of skulls than you see in traditional (or even non-traditional) quilts. Then there is how he lays out the patterns--he uses a Lego assembly approach, which is modular assembly paired with a lot of graphics to help you keep it organized. So while this is not in my usual wheelhouse, I was very happy to hear him talk about his art and his process. Then there was his take home message, which is "just finish it". He says that the pile of unfinished projects that most all quilters have languishing in hidden corners of our crafting spaces carry a psychological burden, and so when we finish them, we lighten our load. He hypothesizes that in order to do that we have to overcome some obstacle, and that often that involves feeling like the project has a flaw and that we need to ignore it and move on and that we will be rewarded in two ways--that it will be done, which is a huge plus, but that also once done, the flaw that we saw is diminished, that the finished project is greater than the sum of it's parts and we cannot see that until it is done. I am inspired by this, and hope to follow through on his advice.

Great Big Beautiful Life by Emily Henry

When reading light literature, I am on team murder mystery first and foremost, but the growing number of authors who write more modern themed romance novels has had some appeal for me--and one of my kids likes them too (none of them are mystery fans). Emily Henry is my favorite author in this genre, and there is the added bonus that not only are her female characters not looking for someone to take care of them, they are often authors themselves. That said, I did not love this book--the set up is quite contrived, the motivations of the characters is suspect, and at no point did I change my mind about any of it. Here are the basics: follows Alice Scott, a journalist waiting for her big break, with a relentlessly optimistic view of the world, and Hayden Anderson, a Pulitzer Prize–winning writer whose stony disposition is the complete opposite. They find themselves pitted against each other in the small town of Little Crescent Island, where Margaret Ives, a notorious heiress who disappeared altogether years ago and hailed from one of the most notorious families of the twentieth century, has decided to share her life story after decades of silence. But only one of them will get to write her biography. They are trying out for the role and of course find each other just as fascinating as the woman they are auditioning for. There are some twists and turns along the way, but it fell a bit flat for me. I will, of course, read her next book and am glad I read this one, but it was not a favorite for me in her otherwise enjoyable oeuvre.

The Peacock Door, Heritage Hotel, Madurai, India

We stayed at some beautiful hotels while we were in Southern India, and the Heritage Hotel in Madurai is one of them. It had this spectacular carved door in the lobby. n the late 1700s, when the Royal family of mayurs, moved to a large palace near Baripada, in the present day Mayurbhanj district of Orissa, they demolished the fort that they had occupied for over 75 years, to prevent its misuse by invaders. "Mayur Dwaar" the Peacock Door, which stood as the imposing entrance to the fort, was carried with them to their new palace and stored as a symbol of the might and heritage of the Mayur dynasty. With the unification, through marriage, of the Mayur and Bhanja dynasties, to form the Kingdom of Mayurbhanj in Northern Orissa, and their subsequent shift to the Present Mayurbhanj palace, the "Mayur Dwaar" lost its prominence and found its way to an Armenian trader in Calcutta, where it remained. The family migrated to USA in 1945 and left the "Mayur Dwaar" and other antiques, in the care of Mr. S.R. Bose, the last magager of the Armenian Firm. The Present owners procured it from Mr. Bose, with consent from the Armenian family. The door is elaborately carved, with the Mayur (Peacock) motif visually dominant. Though it has a strong Rajasthani influence, and is a typical fort door of that era, its uniqueness lies in the exquisite details of the outer frame, and the head work, with the 2 alcoves originally used for lamps. The wood seems to have been specially treated, and has withstood the ravages of time remarkably well.

Behind You Is The Sea by Susan Muaddi Darraj

This is in some ways not at all unusual and in other ways it is unique. The book follows three interconnected Palestinian immigrant families in Baltimore. Palestinian immigrants have been in the spotlight of late, and yet there are very few books in English that portray them. This is an exception--and not one that glosses over or sugar coats the details that are unsavory, especially when it comes to violence against women and women seeking their own paths that diverge from those of their male relatives and their cultural norms. Its characters come to life, transcending politics, breaking through preconceptions and stereotypes, speaking clearly and lucidly about their experiences, some of which are relatable and some which are not. The book is filled with stories of immigrant parents who can’t make sense of their American children, but there are also shimmering moments of revelation and reconciliation. The novel’s title, “Behind You Is the Sea,” comes from a battleground speech attributed to the Islamic conqueror Tariq ibn Ziyad. Facing the enemy, ibn Ziyad is said to have set his soldiers’ boats on fire, making retreat impossible, asking for bravery in the face of almost insurmountable odds: For these characters the battleground shifts — between parents and children, men and women, tradition and self-invention. Most importantly, it breaks through the stereotypes that reduce Arabs and Arab Americans to clichés, creating a false division between us and "them", which is especially valuable in the current political climate.

The Way We Speak (2025)

I watched this movie on a long haul flight, and it is unusual in that it explores public and private struggles in a way that made me, at least, uncomfortable. There are three main characters in this. The setting is a debate at a conference. THe first is a middle-aged writer named Simon Harrington who is finally starting to have a breakthrough is brought in to have a series of debates over three days with another rationalist, his longtime best friend and colleague George Rossi. When Rossi bows out due to health problems, Simon ends up squaring off against a last-minute replacement, Sarah Clawson, a young Christian essayist whose latest book has sold over a million copies. The third is Claire, Simon's wife, who is a well respected doctor and researcher, and also dying of cancer. Simon is struggling both professionally and personally. He has always finished second, and he had been hoping to shine on this stage--both for himself, but also as it might be the last time his wife will see him compete in this way. He relies heavily on her, but rather than grapple with losing her, he is focusing on the debate. His new opponent is no more likable than he is and worse yet, she fights dirty. Claire is the adult in room, and it all comes to a dramatic end.

Uncommon Measure by Natalie Hodges

This is an unusual memoir that has taken me a while to write about, which means that I have been thinking a lot about just what to write. I got it because it was the electronic version of The Community Reads, meaning that my library had unlimited e-books to take out and while it is pretty rare for me to love these books, I usually at least like them and they are always something that I wouldn't have discovered on my own--this book fits that bill. The author was a concert violinist who stopped working as a professional musician because she developed performance anxiety. In the quest to make sense of her life as a musician and the experiences she was having, she has examined it through the twin portals of neuroscience and quantum physics. Rather than dwelling on the purely emotional aspect of dealing with crushingly high personal expectations, she steps outside of herself and looks at how music informs our experience of time, and whether she as musicians was living in time, or whether time lives within her. She doesn't ignore the anxiety and where it comes from for her, and exactly how her anxiety manifests. It would start typically by fixating obsessively on a particular passage that never seemed to go exactly as she wanted, so much so that the actual performance would become temporally distorted. In addition to the temporal dichotomy performers are familiar with – the coexistence of ‘real’ time ‘out there’ and the music’s internal temporal flow – she would experience a sense of accelerating uncontrollably towards the ‘doomed place’, and then at the point of arrival would feel as if time had stopped. I couldn't relate to much of what she was describing about her experience, but it is pretty mesmerizing to read, nonetheless.

Crumb Quilts by Emily Bailey

The subtitle of this book is: : Scrap Quilting the Zero Waste Way. There is a growing movement within quilting to use ALL of the fabric when quilting. It is perfectly acceptable to make a quilt that inherently generates some waste, but the next step is not to compost it or throw away the left overs, but rather to use them to make something else. I have always done this is a casual way. Some fabric that I used almost 10 years ago in one of the first quilts that I made when I returned to quilting after a many year hiatus following my diagnosis of ovarian cancer used some Guatemalan fabric that I bought in the 1980's that was well used when I got it. I used some of the leftovers in a baby quilt a few years after that, and I just added some of it to a Block Of THe Month Quilt that I made last year with the Minneapolis Modern Quilt Guild. So not opposed, is what I am saying, but also not particularly systematic either.

This is my favorite quilt from the book and it demonstrates something that I have not done, which is organize my scraps by color and value, and then essentially piece together a back ground to use for making quilt blocks. I really like the star as a design feature, and these slightly wonky stars very much appeal to me--but the pieced backgrounds are an added plus. This is all in the interest of wasting nothing, or as little as possible, and while I came from a family that valued this (Depression Era parents), the fact that textile production uses so much water is another reason not to waste it.

Kaveri River, Tiruchchirappalli, India

On our trip to Southern India we learned a little bit about the Tamil rituals around death. The death ceremony is marked by cremation which is now done in a crematorium. Somewhere between 10-16 days later, people may perform rituals at the Amma Mandapam Bathing Ghats in Tiruchirappalli, India, or immerse the ashes of the deceased in the Kaveri River in Srirangapatna (this is a sacred river, the Ganges of the south and the second longest river in India): Amma Mandapam Bathing Ghats

This is a place where Hindus can perform rituals for their ancestors. The ghats are located on the Kaveri River and include: An open hall where prayer items can be purchased Three small temples Ritual performing lines Bathing ghats for men and women Barbers for ritual shavings The eldest son and a priest perform the ritual. Then, one year later it is done again.

Turkuaz Kitchen by Betül Tunç

There is a bit of a trad wife vibe going on here, with the author talking about the joy of cooking everything from scratch for her husband and son--so if you are super sensitive about not supporting that, there might be too much of it here. The author is from Turkey and apparently has a social media presence and following (lost on my for the most part, but may be how she got this book contract). After coming to the U.S. , Betül began creating vintage-style videos on Instagram, garnering an audience that grew rapidly with each personal post she shared. My on line cookbook group cooked out of it for a month, and that is how I came to find it. It is beautifully put together and photographed, and well written. She shares seventy-five recipes for sweet and savory doughs and the dishes to make with them. With inspiration from traditional Turkish recipes, as well as recipes she discovered in her travels, Turkuaz Kitchen is a treasure trove of recipes for: *Basic Doughs: such as bagels, pita, ciabatta, and pizza dough *Enriched Doughs: such as croissants, cardamom buns, buttermilk dinner rolls, and burger buns *Quick Breads and Short Doughs: such as pie and tart dough, scones, biscuits, and biscotti *Unleavened Doughs: such as pastas, noodles, and dumplings *Doughs from Turkey: such as Turkish style phyllo, Turkish Pistachio Baklava, Spinach Triangle Borek, and Grandma's Lavash--these come with savory accompaniments, not just the dough.

Restó SCA, Buenos Aires, Argentina

We had an evening flight out of Buenos Aires when we were on our way to Salta in Northwestern Argentina, and spent the day walking the streets, ending up at the Holocaust Museum. It is a beautifully done museum in a city that is known for becoming home to survivors as well as Nazis after WWII. This truly lovely restaurant is right across the street and was an excellent antidote to a sobering museum. The restaurant is in a building in Recoleta where it shares occupancy with the headquarters of the Sociedad Central de Arquitectos (SCA), founded in 1886 and one of the country’s oldest professional associations. Located at the end of the building’s former carriage entrance, the restaurant has a subdued bistro-style feel with just a few tables and a bar that is home to an enticing display of cheeses. Previous incumbents here have included renowned chefs such as María Barrutia and Guido Tassi, although it is now the turn of María Magdalena Piaggio, a chef who has an in-depth knowledge of French cuisine and whose fresh Mediterranean and international recipes are based around Argentinian ingredients. We tried the standout dishes she is known for, namely stuffed quail and the ricotta gnocchi, but my favorite was a tortilla de patata with a piece of hot smoked salmon atop it and a small microgreen salad on the side. I would recommend this for lunch, and there are few restaurants of this quality that offer an upscale lunch, which is my favorite when dinner doewsn't start until eight at night.

The Secret Lives of Color by Kassia St. Claire

I really like color--I was drawn to quilting because of my love of fabric, but color is a big part of where I go as a quilter, but in reality I know very little about it. This year I took a class with Tara Faughnan at QuiltCon, and it really got me thinking about color and how little I really understand or know about it. This book is a part of my quest to better understand color, and hopefully not get too crazy on the the way that I lose my sense of what I love about it. I got this out of the library, but when I got about halfway through it, I bought a (used) copy of it. The book begins with an introduction on how we see and what colors actually are. The science behind the different interactions of dyes and pigments with light is actually very cool, as well as how this information is processed by the cellular machinery in our eyes and brain. This is followed with a small discussion on the history and language of color, which raises some interesting points such as the ancient Greeks not actually having a word for ‘blue’ and the implications of how the absence or presence of these descriptive words in a language shaped the perceptions of colors and the world at the time. The bulk of the book is devoted to discussing the members of 10 different color families. In a charming piece of design, the margin of each page is colored to match the subject, so don’t worry if you’re not confident differentiating your orchils from your heliotropes. Each family of colors is separated by two blank pages, showing a gradient composed of all the upcoming members in all their glory. The layout is a stroke of genius and each color only has one or two pages of accompanying text, making it a perfect book to pick up when you only have a few minutes--the stories that she tells about each color are very informative and entertaining, and the whole time I was reading it I was contemplating color and color choices that I make. This is a fun and approachable way to see and think about color.

Lost Wax Bronze Casting, Tiruchchirappalli, India

We watched a demonstration of lost wax casting of bronze figures in a shop behind the temple in Tiruchirappalli. Dokra (also spelt Dhokra) is an Indian Heritage Craft known for casting of non-ferrous metals (mainly Brass and Bell Metal). It originated in India over 4,000 years ago. Lost-wax casting technique used in producing Dokra artefacts is one of the oldest enduring metalwork methods on Earth. Dokra is a skilled craft form producing objet d’art. Dokra artisans create small, delicate artefacts, such as figurines (human, animal or divine), jewelry, lucky charms and utensils. One of the earliest known lost-wax artefacts is the ‘Dancing Girl o’Mohenjo-Daro’. The lost-wax casting technique is eponymic to Dokra Damar tribes, the main traditional metalsmiths which initially resided in Bankura-Dariapur belt in West Bengal, parts of Odisha, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh. Despite different locations and difference in language this tribe extends from Jharkhand to West Bengal and Odisha. The members of the tribe, over the centuries, have moved to southern and western parts of the country, thus presently covering large parts of the country.

Key features of Dokra art because of which there is increasing demand for these products. • The oldest surviving metalcraft process – the lost-wax casting technique. • The historical and cultural significance of this art form related to temple art. This workshop is within line of sight of the temple. Lost-wax technique – A wax model of the desired object is painstakingly crafted in beeswax. The wax model is then covered in a clay shell, and the clay shell is baked. The wax melts and runs out of the clay shell, leaving a hollow space. The clay shell is then filled with molten metal, and the metal cools and hardens to form the final object.

When I Sing, Mountains Dance by Irene Solà

This is an award winning Catalan author and an award winning book, which is a series of short, sometimes very short, interlinked storied with one family at the center of them, but also including the perspective of nature and things within nature as characters of sorts in the book. In saying this, I am struck that there may be a lot about the author's meaning and message that did not come through to me. The underlying or unifying theme is grief, and that does come through clearly. The book is set among the villages, forests and rivers of the Pyrenees, the book builds a layered history of the area while focusing primarily on one family. Domènec leaves his wife, Sió, and two children, Mia and Hilari. The Spanish Civil War is a part of the destruction in the novel as well, but it does not seem to be central. The stories depict the natural world as a complex system of relationships that shapes human lives. Within that system, everything is important, the mushroom as much as the man. When we step back and allow the bigger picture to take shape, we adopt a more expansive view. At least I think that is the advise.

I'm Still Here (2024)

I finally saw the last of the 2025 Best Picture nominations, and this was fantastic. It is also based on a real story, and the film recreates the settings and the time. It is 1970 in Rio de Janeiro, where Eunice and Rubens live with their five children by Leblon Beach. With white sand as soft as pillows and blue seas as clear as the sky, the idyllic locale should be a soft landing for the Paiva family. An architect and former congressman, Rubens has only recently returned to the country after a six-year self-exile due to the 1964 coup d’état. For the family, however, the dictatorship is never far from the foreground. Military helicopters fly over the beach, and trucks carrying additional troops occupy the streets. Television news stations cover the release of the German and Swiss ambassadors from anti-government factional custody. Rubens also takes secret phone calls in his office, coordinating pickups and drop-offs of packages. The collapse occurs when Rubens is taken for questioning by plain-clothed army officials, a catastrophe that takes the film to darker places and engenders many unanswerable questions. And while it’s not a spoiler to say Eunice and her children will never see Rubens again, those hopeless queries aren’t necessarily what the movie is about. Rather, this poignant film concerns the response to having neither a definitive answer nor final closure. Eventually, Eunice and Eliana will be taken in for questioning, psychologically tortured, and then released. Eunice will pick up the pieces and dig, becoming politically active in the process. We will follow her struggle through the decades—her career as a professor and supporter of Indigenous rights—leaping to São Paulo in 1996 before settling in 2014. She made a life after that was both all her own and honored the legacy of her husband.

Good Dirt by Charmaine Wilkerson

In the interest of full disclosure, I loved Black Cake, the author's first book, so much that it would be hard to compete with that in this, her second book. That said, this has a lot of the appealing story telling that the first book did, and well as an emphasis on traditions of the past and their link to the present, but for me the story was not as well constructed, and the ending was both abrupt and unsatisfying. Would I read her next book? Absolutely, and I do recommend this one as well. The book begins in 2000 as we witness the tragic home invasion of the Freeman house in Massachusetts where not only their cherished family heirloom (a jar thrown by an enslaved potter in the 1800s) is broken but ten-year-old Ebony’s brother Baz is shot and killed at the young age of fifteen. There is a lot of unwanted publicity around it and when, 20 years later, Ebbie is stood up at the altar by Henry it all resurfaces and she ducks out of the country to get away from it all. The past follows her though--the profound loss of her brother, the significance of the pottery jar that has been in her family since the mid-nineteenth century and Henry, who turns up at her rented cottage in France. The weaving of the story together is one that I like, with the significance of generational trauma playing a role in the present being something I enjoy in a book, and that I see in my professional life. Check this one out, and if you haven't read Black Cake, read this first.

Thanjavur Art Gallery, Thanjavur, India

Thanjavur Art Gallery, located in the Thanjavur Palace has an exquisite collection of ancient sculptures and coins. It is officially called the “Raja Raja Chola Art Gallery” and locally known as “Thanjavur Kalaikoodam”. These bronze sculptures of Hindu Gods and Goddesses range from 9th century A.D to 19th century A.D. Some very unique deities and saints can be seen. Early Indian lifestyle, their clothing, ornaments and even hairdo are carved in these statues. I really enjoyed the sculpture on display here.

Artifacts are placed in a hall which used to be the Kings’ royal court (Durbar Hall). The walls and the ceiling of Durbar hall are ornamented with paintings and statuettes. Even the pillars and arches are decorated with fascinating scenes from Hindu epics like Ramayana and Mahabharata. The highlight of the art gallery is the collection of stone sculptors and bronze idols that belong to the Chola period, Vijayanagara period and later periods. There is so much to see here that it is easy to get overwhelmed!

Dream State by Eric Puchner

I really enjoyed reading this book--and did so on a trip into the northwest corner of Argentina to explore the high altitude wineries there. It is spectacular and varied terrain, with the Andes as a back drop, and the perfect sort of dream state to read this book, set in Montana and spans a half century, much of it into the future. The novel opens in the days before a wedding in 2004. Cece, the bride, has arrived a few weeks early at an empty summer home owned by the parents of her fiancé, an irrepressible, universally adored doctor named Charlie Margolis. The guests on either coast aren’t thrilled about having to travel so far, but Cece has loved this homestead for years. For her, the old house is an embodiment of the family she’s about to join, who are "everything she’d always wanted.” That is the story she told herself, but when she is ferried around by Garrett, Charlie's prickly and reclusive best man, who has absolutely nothing and even that he does not want to talk about, Cece finds that she cannot stop thinking about him. So on the one hand, it is a story often told, where the wedding is called off and the bride runs away with the best man--on the other hand, it is quite different, because it is about how that choice, impulsively made, plays out over the next few decades. The choice of going in to the future is one I don't quite understand. Other than the degrading environment, the future is not much talked about--other than that we still seem to be a democracy which in 2025 seems like an open question. May it be true.

Here (2025)

This is a terrible movie and you should not be lured in by the fact that it has a competent director, Robert Zemeckis, who has directed enjoyable films and Tom Hanks in a lead acting role. Even if you are on a long haul flight you will be disappointed. The film, based on the 2014 graphic novel by Richard McGuire, is to plunk the camera down in one place to illustrate all of the events that have occurred in that very spot throughout history, using frames-within-the-frame to transition from one point in time to the next. Now, I loved the David Mason book, Northwoods, which did something like this, but the content of this is boring, and at no point does it improve. At first, it is open land that gives us glimpses of everything from the dinosaurs perishing to Native Americans living their lives to the home of Benjamin Franklin’s estranged son. As the 20th century arrives, the location becomes a duplex’s living room, and we begin observing the lives of some of those living within its walls. Apparently the director (unbeknownst to me--I learned this afterwards from a reviewer who, if possible, liked the movie less than I did) trying to evoke memories of “Forrest Gump” by reuniting the key members of that film’s creative team—the package also includes screenwriter Eric Roth, composer Alan Silvestri, and cinematographer Don Burgess—in the hopes of getting something of equal appeal. What he doesn’t have, however, are two things that made that film work—a compelling narrative and a darkly humorous undertone that helped prevent it from being overwhelmed by sentimentality.

Theft by Abdulrazak Gurnah

The novel takes place in Tanzania, in the '90s, in a moment of rapid change. The government had recently changed its foreign exchange laws, and so tourists are flocking to Zanzibar – its island just off the coast of East Africa. The author has said that the big money of tourism brought with it new hotels, new people, NGOs. But the influx of tourists also brought corruption as well--beaches and restaurants exclusively for tourists – no locals allowed. There are three characters around which the novel is constructed, each of them of approximately equal importance to the narrative. The story begins with Raya, a beautiful teenage girl married off to a contractor in his 40s who is intolerably violent to her. When their son, Karim, is 3, Raya says enough and moves back to her parents’ house. Gossips be damned, she must protect her son. She soon discovers a life of her own, finds a rich new partner and abandons Karim to the care of her mother. Karim grows up and the story centers on him, the educated and arrogant man he has become, his young wife, Fauzia, who suffers from epilepsy, and Badar, a young servant who was dropped off at Raya's house when he was 13-years old and whom the other two treat almost like a younger sibling. They all come from different worlds, and yet they have something in common. Rightfully or wrongfully, they all feel unwanted by their parents in some way. It is a slow paced story that takes some getting used to, but patience is rewarded in the end.

Brihadeshwara Temple Thanjavur India

This is a top five temple, in a trip replete with spectacular ancient temples. I would recommend a slower pace than we accomplished, but the content of the trip, the places we went, were all recommended, not a clunker amongst them. One of the largest temples in India, the Brihadeeswara Temple, also known as Peruvudaiyar Kovil, is located in Thanjavur. Dedicated to Lord Shiva, represented as a huge ‘Lingam’, the temple was built around 1010 AD by the Chola king Rajaraja Chola I. The temple continued the Hindu temple traditions of South India by adopting architectural and decorative elements, but its scale significantly exceeded the temples constructed before the 11th century. The Chola era architects and artisans innovated the expertise to scale up and build, particularly with heavy stone and to accomplish the 63.4 metres (208 ft) high towering vimana.

This is a telling of the building of this temple in ancient Tamil. The text wraps around the building, with no punctuation (we are told), as a chronicle of how they moved the massive granite blocks and built this temple.

The Choice by Edith Eva Eger

The author was a young teenager in Hungary when WWII began. It has been said that the best chance of survival for a European Jew in Nazi occupied Europe lived in Hungary--the extermination came later there than to other countries, but the best chance wasn't very good. The front end of this memoir is a first hand account of what it was like to be there. She and her sister, who had been rivals before being interned at Auschwitz, clung to each other after Mengele personally evaluated them on arrival and sent their mother to the gas chamber and allowed them to live. The second half of the book is about her PTSD and how she struggled over the years to cope with it, sometimes well and often times not very well at all. She ended up, well into middle age, deciding to train as a therapist and to help others claw their way to better mental health, to overcome the immeasurable trauma that they had experienced and live fuller lives. She published this when she was in her 90's and she is still alive at 97--one of the oldest Jewish survivors of Nazi Germany.

You're Cordially Invited (2025)

I watched this romantic comedy on a long haul flight home recently. It features Reece Witherspoon as a high-powered, equally high maintenance TV executive who is acting as the wedding planner for her niece’s wedding as well as Will Ferrell, whose only daughter is getting married at the sight of he and his deceased wife’s wedding. Both parties have an emotional attachment to the remote wedding venue and they are mistakenly double booked. It is a situation that has comedic potential—in this case it is not fully realized. The two veteran actors involved do a reasonable job with the material that they have, But everyone involved is a pretty decent person, which ironically makes the tension less funny and more cringe-worthy, and that in and of itself the stumbling block. All in all, this is just okay—I was happy to watch it, but wouldn’t recommend it to others.

How To Read A Book by Monica Wood

This was recommended to me by a friend who read it with her book group. This is a great book to read and discuss with a group. It is a book about redemption, forgiveness, and starting over. It is also about creating the family you need when the family you have is for whatever reason just not working out. Harriet is a retired English teacher who leads a book club in a women’s prison near Portland, Maine. Violet is an inmate at the prison who meets Harriet in the book group, but is also about to be released. She was convicted of manslaughter after she went on a bit of a bender with her high school boyfriend and kills a woman with her car. Her family disowns her for the shame brought on them and her mother dies--of a medical condition, but Violet's family blame her for this as well. They are not about to participate in forgiveness. After she is released, Violet moves into an apartment close to Harriet’s house, and even more improbably, it also turns out that Harriet’s friend Frank was married to the woman Violet killed in a drunk driving car accident. The book is about how the three of them form a family of sorts, how they manage to find not just support but the ability to heal through their friendship, and how each of their families are a hindrance to healing. Despite the weight of the material here, it is a light and hopeful book that is quite enjoyable.

Silk Weaving, Kumbakonam, India.

In the 17th century India had 20% of the world’s population and accounted for 25% of the manufacturing, which was almost entirely related to textiles. Today the silk market is so huge in Kumbakonam that approximately 5000 families are employed by the Silk Weaving Industry in Kumbakonam. The Thirubuvanam Silk Handloom Weavers is the biggest society in Tamil Nadu, delivering conventional silk sarees with unadulterated Zari. The region is well known for silk weaving from the time of Great Chola rulers. This home shop dyes and spins silk, then loads the silk onto shuttles for hand weaving. There is some hand manipulation of the blue/gren transition design, and use of Jacquard weaving templates for the blue/gold edge. Could have watched this for quite some time… And yes, I bought one.

Part of Your World by Abby Jimenez

One of my kids is a bit of a modern romance novel reader and he got me a little bit hooked on the Emily Henry style books. Those are the gold standard for me, but the Abby Jimenez books are pretty good. Then came Project 2025, barreling through America at lightning speed and destroying everything decent in its path with a head of state who cannot tell the truth even for a minute of the day. They lying, the cruelty and the graft are so staggering. So in contrast to that are these formulaic novels which have competent women, men who respect them and do not try to control them, and voila, it is a pleasant, if brief break from the white racist misogynists who want to break everything. Although in this case, not completely. Alexis has broken up with her boyfriend who is a decade older than her and wanted her weak and under his control. She finally breaks up with him because he cheats on her--but she does not get clean away, because her father is cut from the same cloth. A chance meeting with Daniel can change all that--he is everything her father looks down on--or is he? Alexis is trapped in a maze that she sees no exit from until all of a sudden, she does--wildly unrealistic in many ways but entirely likable. I will take a break but eventually read the second book in this series. The thing about these sorts of books is that people are a bit two dimensional and you have to be up for a bit of that when you read them.

It's Morel Season!

In truth, the season peaked a couple weeks ago, but I am still dreaming of mushrooms and the dishes that are made that highlight them. It has been a bumper year for morels in the corner of Iowa that I live in, and we enjoyed a dinner recently with mushrooms that were foraged from a friend's property. He got about 3 pounds of them, and we made a pasta sauce with these components: Mushrooms!! 1 Onion diced (substitute chives if you want to highlight seasonal ingredients) 2-3 cloves of garlic, minced (we also have green garlic right now, and that could certainly be used Saute in olive oil and butter until the onions soften, then add the mushrooms and cook until the stems are soft. Add a cup of cream and cook down until the suace thickens a bit. Season to taste. You can squeeze in some lemon, or splash in some white wine to add some brightness. Cook 1-2 pounds of pasta, and save some of the pasta water. We used linguine, and I do like a long thin pasta for this sauce. Serve with parmesan--we grated some we had brought back from Modena, but that was just icing on the cake, any good parmesan will do. It will probably cost an arm and a leg soon because of senseless tariffs, but that is what we must suffer for electing someone who lost all his family money and is now set on losing everyone elses. We are combating that by using what we have, and foraging for some of our food--which is not a bad strategy in general.