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Valentine’s Day post on a heartbreaking novel
I was only a few chapters into The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter when I knew it would break my heart. I just didn’t know how.
The book was building towards something. But what? What horrible thing will happen?
And to who?
I knew it wasn’t going to end well. But I kept reading. Continue reading
The book I didn’t finish
Nearly a year ago I announced my goal to read 40 books out of my own bookcases.
Thankfully I put no time limit on this goal because today I am admitting today I’ve read exactly five. That’s right – five books in the past 10 months.
I loved Book #1.
I loved Book #2.
My bookcases and my 40 years
Dr. Suess and the power of a gift
The Atlantic: My new favorite magazine
Tips and tricks for drinking in Ulysses
I drafted this to present at the annual Bloomsday celebration…
“stands a drink now and then. But in a leapyear once in four” (140).

Emma and my love of the Norton Critical Edition
The library cookbook I didn’t want to return
Using this admittedly precarious selection method, I recently ended up with a cookbook titled Skinny Italian.
This cookbook, which actually reads more like a book with some recipes thrown in, promotes the “cornerstones” of Italian cooking, many of which I have already implemented into my routines with little effort:
Other tidbits of interest:
Still on my to-do list:
All of the recipes I’ve implemented into my routine have been husband and kid approved. It’s truly one of the most useful “cookbooks” I’ve ever owned.
Salute!
Rebecca and its perennials
As one who until recently was still reading for coursework, I find myself instinctually identifying possibly “paper topics” when I read a good book.
Mr. de Winter describes the effects of the estate’s vegetation: “His sister who was a hard, rather practical person, used to complain that there were too many scents at Manderley, they made her drunk. He did not care. It was the only form of intoxication that appealed to him. His earliest recollection was of great branches of lilac, standing in white jars, and they filled the house with a wistful, poignant smell.”
More dramatic than the roses are Manderley’s 50-foot high “blood red” rhododendrons. The narrator is shocked by these “monsters, rearing to the sky, massed like a battalion, too beautiful…,too powerful, they were not plants at all.”
The flowers, therefore, serve as additional characters in the novel.
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