Another book by my favorite author

Hollow Bones ~ by Jodi Picoult, 2026, literary fiction, 464 pages

On September 11, 2001, when Molly Fitzgerald was only two months old, her mother went to an appointment at the World Trade Center and never came home.  Her father and the stepmother who raised her couldn't have loved her more, but she still grew up with a healthy dread of disasters.  Now an adult, she runs the Rhode Island Department for Emergency Preparedness, mapping out ways to save lives during storms, epidemics, and airplane crashes.  She and her husband, Jesse — a police polygraph expert with his own history of crisis — have found a love that is a solace in a dangerous world.  But then the unexpected upends their new marriage, leading them both to question everything they thought they knew.  Moving between past and present, Hollow Bones is an epic story of the lies we tell ourselves as we write the narratives of our lives, the plans we design to protect ourselves at the worst moments, and the ties that bind mothers and daughters.

Musing about quotes

On Thursday, I wrote about Isabel Allede's book The Soul of a Woman, HERE.  I'm still musing about the words I bookmarked:

Page 102

In the past, adulthood arrived at twenty, middle age at forty, and old age at fifty.  Today adolescence lasts until past thirty or forty, maturity comes around sixty, and old age starts at eighty.  This is the baby boomers' achievement.

Page 107

I would like to have Sophia Loren's full breasts and long legs, but if given a choice, I prefer the gifts of several good witches I know:  purpose, compassion, and good humor.  (*Note:  I especially like compassion being in the list.)

 Page 111

The key to contentment is forgiveness of others and of ourselves.

 Page 123

Grace is in a residence for older people because she needs assistance; she is by far the youngest person there.  The help she gets is not much, just five minutes in the morning to dress her, five minutes in the evening to put her to bed, and two showers a week.  For her, the greatest pleasure is that shower.  She says that every drop of water on her skin is a blessing; she enjoys the soap and shampoo foam in her hair.  I often think of Grace when I shower; I don't want to take that privilege for granted.

Page 130

This is what women want:  to be safe, to be valued, to live in peace, to have their own resources, to be connected, to have control over their bodies and lives, and above all, to be loved.

 Pages 164-165

There's a difference between immigrants and refugees.  The former decide to move somewhere else to improve their lives.  They are usually young and healthy (the elderly stay behind), they try to adapt as soon as possible, they look to the future, and they want to plant roots in the new place.  The latter are running for their lives; they are escaping military conflict, persecution, crime, and extreme poverty.  Refugees are desperate, they have had to leave behind everything that is familiar to them and seek asylum in another country where they are likely to confront hostility.  Helf of the seventy million refugees in 2018 were women and children, a figure that has been increasing yearly.

Pages 167-168 

In less developed regions, mothers typically spend their income on the family, while men spend on themselves, either for entertainment or for something that gives them status, like a cellphone or a bike.

Page 208

We have a lot of work to do ... First of all, we need to end the patriarchy, an ancient institution that exalts masculine values (and flaws) and represses the famale half of humanity.  We have to question everything, from religion and laws to science and cultural mores.  We are going to get really angry, so angry that our fury will smash the foundations that support this civilization.  Docility, praisedd as a feminine virtue, is our worst enemy; it has never served us well, it is only convenient for men.

Stephen Hawking's ideas fascinate me

On the Origin of Time: Stephen Hawking's Final Theory ~ by Thomas Hertog, 2023, cosmology, xxiv + 313 pages

Perhaps the biggest question Stephen Hawking tried to answer in his extraordinary life was how the universe could have created condi-tions so perfectly hospitable to life.  In order to solve this mystery, Hawking studied the big bang origin of the universe, but his early work ran into a crisis when the math predicted many big bangs pro-ducing a multiverse — countless different universes, most of which would be far too bizarre to ​harbor life.

Holed up in the theoretical physics department at Cambridge, Stephen Hawking and his friend and collaborator Thomas Hertog worked on this problem for twenty years, developing a new theory of the cosmos that could account for the emergence of life.  Peering into the extreme quantum physics of cosmic holograms and ven-turing far back in time to our deepest roots, they were startled to find a deeper level of evolution in which the physical laws them-selves transform and simplify until particles, forces, and even time itself fades away.  This discovery led them to a revolutionary idea:  The laws of physics are not set in stone but are born and co-evolve as the universe they govern takes shape.  As Hawking’s final days drew near, the two collaborators published their theory, which proposed a radical new Darwinian perspective on the origins of our universe.

On the Origin of Time offers a striking new vision of the universe’s birth that will profoundly transform the way we think about our place in the order of the cosmos and may ultimately prove to be Hawking’s greatest legacy.

Week in Review

• On Monday, I mused about a book recommended by an old friend, HERE.
• My Thursday Thoughts, HERE, were about Isabel Allende's memoir.
• Friday's Book Beginning was from Book #18 in the Maisie Dobbs Series, HERE.
• Caturday's post was about curiosity, HERE.

Hosted by Deb at Readerbuzz

"Curiosity killed the cat"

When I was trying to look at the pills Bonnie was dividing into days of the week, she said to me, "Curiosity killed the cat."  And she tried to make me get away.  I just wanted to see what those little things were.  They were in those little plastic bottles.  I'm sure I would have figured out what they were, if she hadn't stopped me from tasting a few of them.  But, no, she kept pushing me away and finally put me in the other room.  I am sure you will agree with me that I just wanted to know what they were.  What's the harm in that, huh?

Beginning ~ at a funeral

Beginning (Chapter 1)

Maisie Dobbs glanced around, taking account of the congregation gathered in Chelstone's ancient parish church.  She was sure not one more person could be squeezed into the edifice.  Every single pew was packed with villagers and visitors who had traveled from far and wide to pay their respects to the deceased.

The Comfort of Ghosts (Book #18 in the Maisie Dobbs Series) ~ by Jacqueline Winspear, 2024, historical mystery, 360 pages

London, 1945:  Four adolescent orphans with a dark wartime history are squatting in a vacant Belgravia mansion — the owners having fled London under heavy Luftwaffe bombing.  Psychologist and Investigator Maisie Dobbs visits the mansion on behalf of the owners and discovers that a demobilized soldier, gravely ill and reeling from his experiences overseas, has taken shelter with the group.

Maisie’s quest to bring comfort to the youngsters and the ailing soldier brings to light a decades-old mystery concerning Maisie’s first husband, James Compton, who was killed while piloting an experimental fighter aircraft.  As Maisie unravels the threads of her dead husband’s life, she is forced to examine her own painful past and question beliefs she has always accepted as true.

The award-winning Maisie Dobbs series has garnered hundreds of thousands of followers, readers drawn to a woman who is of her time, yet familiar in ours — and who inspires with her resilience and capacity for endurance.  This final assignment of her own choosing not only opens a new future for Maisie and her family, but serves as a  fascinating portrayal of the challenges facing the people of Britain at the close of the Second World War.

Thursday Thoughts

The Soul of a Woman ~ by Isabel Allende, 2021, memoir, 192 pages, 10/10

"When I say that I was a feminist in kindergarten, I am not exaggerating," Isabel Allende begins this book.  As a child, she watched her mother, abandoned by her husband, prvide for her three small children witout "resources or voice."  Isabel became a fierce and defiant little girl, determined to fight for the life her mother couldn't have.

As a young woman coming of age in the late 1960s, she rode the second wave of feminism.  Among a tribe of like-minded female journalists, Allende for the first time felt comfortable in her own skin, as they wrote "with a knife between our teeth" about women's issues.  She has seen what the movement has accomplished in the course of her lifetime.  And over the course of three passionate marriages, she has learned how to grow as a woman while having a partner, when to step away, and the rewards of embracing one's sexuality.

So what feeds the soul of feminists -- and all women -- today?  To be safe, to be valued, to live in peace, to have their own resources, to be connected, to have control over their bodies and lives, and above all, to be loved.  On all these fronts, there is much work yet to be done, and this book, Allende hopes, will "light the torches of our daughters and granddaughters with mine.  They will have to live for us, as we lived for our mothers, and carry on with the work still left to be finished."

Recommended by a friend I've known over 70 years

Theo of Golden ~ by Allen Levi, 2025, literary fiction, 400 pages

One spring morning, a stranger named Theo arrives in the small Southern city of Golden.  He doesn’t explain much about where he came from or why he’s there — but when he visits the local coffeehouse, where pencil portraits of the people of Golden hang on the walls, he begins purchasing them, one at a time, and giving each portrait to the person depicted.  In exchange, he asks only for the person’s story.  

And so portrait by portrait, person by person, secrets are revealed, regrets are shared, and ordinary lives are profoundly altered.  This is a story of giving and receiving, of seeing and being seen,  Theo of Golden is an unforgettable novel about the power of generosity, the importance of connection, and the miracles that happen quietly when we choose kindness and wonder.