What Will This Reincarnated Blog Be?

Settling back into blogging has been a good thing. It is such a good way to chronicle parts of one's days. I felt that one reason I had the "bloggie blues" for so many months was that it was primarily a quilting blog. Well, when you've basically stopped quilting, what is there to blog about??? So I decided to change my banner to include cooking and reading--the two things I do most--and just living the retirement life in general. There! That ought to give me a few more topics.

Reading has been a lifelong passion. Novels, historic nonfiction, cookbooks, education reform studies, food politics, celebrity biographies--anything that catches my fancy is fair game. Well, let me tell you, when I received a Kindle for my birthday about a year ago, the whole reading thing was kicked up several notches!!!

Being able to hold hundreds and hundreds of books inside this one little ole' device and tuck it in my purse for reading on the go and download new books ANYWHERE--well, hello, this was just made for me. The only downside is the cost. However, my public library is "in talks" with Amazon to allow free downloads. The books will stay on the Kindle for a short time, then disappear. Counting down the days till this happens!

Another wonderful thing I discovered a few years ago is goodreads.com. It is a great place to store titles of books I've read. I have been known to buy a book I have already read DOH! Now, I can either check goodreads or my Kindle home list and make sure not to do that!!! Only wish I had had these options 50 years ago LOL. Goodreads shows that I have logged in 138 books since I started using it. Hmmm....that's a lot of housework that didn't get done.

Blogger seems to only want to load up 5 images at a time--some things never change! Here are a few recent books I have enjoyed:

Ruth Reichl is one of my favorite authors. I have read everyone of her books I could find.

She was a former food critic for NY Times and editor of now-defunct Gourmet magazine among other things. She has a magical way of weaving in food, cooking and restaurants with family history. Her stories of her mother's cooking disasters are worth the read alone.

Tina Fey--love her! So much fun to find out how she got to where she is today. There is so much more to her than a Sarah Palin impersonation--although she does do that brilliantly. Her comedic writing skills are so great--both on TV and in books.

This book should be required reading for all educators and law-makers. It very ably points out the flaws with trying to run an educational system with No Child Left Behind tactics. As a retired teacher, I saw the massive destruction occurring in schools by the endless focus on testing, preparing for testing, misusing the testing, crushed spirits due to over-testing and poor use of test results. Testing is not education.

This book was a little hard to read but worth sticking with. The narrator is a five-year-old boy who has been held in captivity all his life in a shed with his mother who was kidnapped as a teenager. It is a story of ingenuity in the face of seemingly impossible odds and mothering in the worst of circumstances. I honestly could not put it down.

And, oh my, speaking of books I could not put down, this is it! Sarah's Key takes place in both 1942 and the present. It is an unfolding mystery during the horrific times when Paris police helped round up Jews for the Nazis to send them off to death camps. While it is so painful to think about that inhumane time in history, it is so important to know about it to try to prevent it from happening again. Again, a story of indomitable spirit and hope.