My neighbor handed me this book

The Correspondent ~ by Virginia Evans, 2025, epistolary fiction, 304 pages

This is the life story of Sybil Van Antwerp, a prickly, retired lawyer in her 70s, through her letters and emails to friends, family, and even famous authors like Joan Didion and Ann Patchett.  The book explores themes of aging, regret, forgiveness, and connection as Sybil confronts her past, including the loss of a child and her adoption, through her correspondence.  It's praised for its realistic and memorable character, its celebration of the written word, and its poignant look at a life unfolding through communication.

When Betty handed me this book, she motioned "zipping her mouth closed," saying she wasn't going to tell me her opinion.  However, she had texted to ask if I wanted this book.  She doesn't usually do that unless she enjoyed reading it.  If you've read it, you can tell me whether it's good or bad, if you like.  I'll still read it either way.

Week in Review

• For Monday Musing, I mused about a book that will probably take me forever to read, HERE.
• On Twosday, I wrote about the words SWiss and SWeet, HERE.
• I wrote about the number of steps in my Wednesday's workout, HERE, after walking to the grocery store.
• On Saturday, I learned that my daughter's father-in-law died, so I looked up all the times I've blogged about dying, HERE.  I didn't think to ask how old he was.

is hosted by Deb at Readerbuzz.

Food and a shopping list

Today was a good day, so I was able to walk to the grocery store to buy what I needed, including stuff from the deli counter, like cole slaw and ham salad.  Another plus is that I got in 4,000 steps by simply going to the store.  I also walked in the halls in my building this afternoon and evening.  That means I have more than doubled that number (8,303 steps), and it's not even bedtime yet.

Today's healthy lunch

When I ate lunch today, I noticed a word connection.  I was still hungry after eating a Swiss cheese sandwich (no, I didn't melt it), and I noticed leftover sweet potato yams in the fridge.  You know me.  Yes, I noticed SWiss and SWeet in the names of those foods.

While looking for an illustration for my blog post, I found this:  "Swiss cheese is widely considered one of the healthiest cheese options."  That is when I realized that today is TWOsday, so here are two things I ate for my healthy lunch today.

What are you reading?

I am sure I will still be reading 11/22/63 by Stephen King for many more days.  It is about John Fitzgerald Kennedy and his wife both surviving an "attempted" assassination in Dallas in 1963 because someone went back in time to change history as we know it.  I am still reading, so I do not yet know how the author makes it happen.  (Read what I have already posted about the thick 880-page book HERE.)

It's time to get active!

Click on this Active April calendar from Action for Happiness to enlarge it.

My way of being active is to keep walking, walking, walking.  I walk in the hallways of my senior living facility if the weather outside is too hot, too cold, too wet, too icy, too much for an old lady.  Hey, that's pretty much what the calendar above says for April 12th:  "Move as much as possible, even if you're stuck inside."  I'm sure we can all find a way, if we are really motivated.

This is something that makes me happy.  It's one of the trees flowering along our Crown Center fence.  Isn't it beautiful?  And I was able to walk outside yesterday to take this picture.

Week in Review

• For Monday Musing, I wrote about a BIG book, HERE.  (Friday's book is even bigger.)
• On Twosday, I wrote about historical fiction, HERE.
• Wednesday's Words were not what they seem to be, HERE.
• My Thursday Thoughts, HERE, were about April foolishness.
• Book Beginnings on Friday was for a book about a different result on 11/22/63,  which we know as the day JFK was assassinated, HERE.
• On Saturday, I wrote about fun and joy, HERE.
  
  

is hosted by Deb at Readerbuzz.

Fun and joy

Get organized?  Impossible, so let's move on to the next item.  Hmm, have fun sounds good, but what shall I do to have fun today?  There is always reading, for a "bookie" like me.  Or walking somewhere interesting, before we have any more bad weather.  That means weather that is not too cold or too muggy or too icy or too wet.  Here are some more ideas for having fun:

• 
  Think of three things I'm grateful for (thinking, thinking, thinking).
• Find joy in music today:  listen and maybe sing along.
• Take a photo of something that brings me joy.
• Say positive things in my conversations with others.
• Appreciate the beauty of nature and the trees "springing" into bloom along our parking lot.  Here are some of them.

When I run into my friends, I'll try to remember to ask them what they feel grateful for today.  The "fun-est" thing so far was ordering a children's book for my next library delivery in the middle of this month.  The library in our subdivision makes monthly deliveries to the elderly people in my senior-living facility.  Not all of us have cars or drive anymore, so this is a great way to get books, especially since only a few hundred books are available in our tiny library, which is made up of donated books from some of us living here, as well as donations from good folks in the community.

Beginning ~ with "JFK ESCAPES ASSASSINATION."

Beginning

I have never been what you'd call a cryig man.  My ex-wife said that my "nonexistent emotional gradient" was the main reason she was leaving me (as if the guy she met in her AA meetings was beside the point).

11/22/63 ~ by Stephen King, 2012, historical fantasy, 880 pages

On November 22, 1963, three shots rang out in Dallas, President Kennedy died, and the world changed.  What if you could change it back?  In this brilliantly conceived tour de force, Stephen King — who has absorbed the social, political, and popular culture of his generation more imaginatively and thoroughly than any other writer — takes readers on an incredible journey into the past and the possibility of altering it.

It begins with Jake Epping, a thirty-five-year-old English teacher in Lisbon Falls, Maine, whose life is upended when his friend Al, who owns the local diner, divulges a secret:  his storeroom is a portal to the past, a particular day in 1958.  And the dying Al enlists Jake to take over the mission that has become his obsession — to prevent the Kennedy assassination.

So begins Jake’s new life as George Amberson, in the world of Ike and JFK and Elvis, of big American cars and sock hops and cigarette smoke everywhere and to the small town of Jodie, Texas, where Jake falls dangerously in love.  Every turn leads eventually to a troubled loner named Lee Harvey Oswald and to Dallas, where the past becomes heart-stoppingly suspenseful, and where history might not be history anymore.  Time-travel has never been so believable.  Or so terrifying.

My thoughts so far

I have never, ever tried to read a book this long before, but the idea intrigued me.  The front cover inside the front cover (yes, read that again) has a different headline that the one above.  It says:  "JFK ESCAPES ASSASSINATION."  So I brought it home and have read several chapters so far.

Gilion at Rose City Reader hosts

Book Beginnings on Fridays.

Being foolish

We're into April now.  Yesterday, the first day of the month, is widely known as April Fool's Day, when children play pranks on each other.  I remember doing it as a school girl.  One year, when I attended summer camp, a fun event was for each of us to dress up to represent something about the month we were born.  I no longer remember what anyone else did, but I do recall dressing as an April Fool.  What I remember is wearing my jeans and shirt turned wrong-side out, so that the tags were on the outside.  By acting "foolish," I won the contest.

These words are not what they seem to be

Abbreviation ~ is 12 letters long.

Monosyllable ~ is definitely not.

Non-hyphenated ~ has a hyphen in it.

Thesaurus~ does not itself have a synonym.

So these are not at all what they seem to be,

and I think that's funny.  I have started the list.

Can you think of some other examples to share?

Historical fiction

The Women ~ by T. Coraghessan Boyle, 2009, literary fiction, 464 pages

Is it easy to live with a genius?

Frank Lloyd Wright’s life was one long, howling struggle against the bonds of convention, whether aesthetic, social, moral, or romantic.  He never did what was expected, and he never let anything get in the way of his larger-than-life appetites and visions.  Wright’s triumphs and defeats were always tied to the women he loved:

1. Olgivanna Milanoff, an imperious Montenegrin beauty who was a student of the Russian mystic Gurdjieff and was known by Wright’s apprentices as “the Dragon Lady”;
2. Maude Miriam Noel, a passionate Southern belle with a mean temper and a fondness for morphine;
3. the spirited Mamah Borthwick Cheney, tragically murdered at Wright’s Wisconsin estate, Taliesin, in 1914; 
4. and his young first wife, Kitty Tobin, with whom he had six children.

T.C. Boyle deftly captures these very different women and, in doing so, creates a gripping drama about marriage, the bargains men and women make, and the privileges and pitfalls of genius and fame.

But do you know who Frank Lloyd Wright was?  He was born on June 8, 1867, and died on April 9, 1959.  He was an American architect who designed more than 1,000 structures over a period of 70 years. Wright played a key role in the architectural movements of the twentieth century, influencing other architects worldwide.  He believed in designing in harmony with humanity and the environment, and his philosophy was exemplified in Fallingwater (1935), which some see as the best American architecture ever.  This photo shows Fallingwater.

If you want a BIG book, here it is

Things We Never Got Over (Book 1 of 3 in the Knockemout series) ~ by Lucy Score, 2022, romantic comedy, 570 pages

Naomi wasn’t just running away from her wedding.  She was riding to the rescue of her estranged twin to Knockemout, Virginia, a rough-around-the-edges town where disputes are settled the old-fashioned way … with fists and beer.  Usually in that order.

Too bad for Naomi her evil twin hasn’t changed at all.  After helping herself to Naomi’s car and cash, Tina leaves her with something unexpected.  The niece Naomi didn’t know she had.  Now she’s stuck in town with no car, no job, no plan, and no home with an 11-year-old going on thirty to take care of.

There’s a reason Knox doesn’t do complications or high-maintenance women, especially not the romantic ones.  But since Naomi’s life imploded right in front of him, the least he can do is help her out of her jam.  And just as soon as she stops getting into new trouble he can leave her alone and get back to his peaceful, solitary life.  At least, that’s the plan until the trouble turns to real danger.

. . . and to another book that was recently

added to our Crown Center library collection.

Another book donated to our library for residents

Unfreedom of the Press ~ by Mark R. Levin, 2019, history of journalism, 272 pages

Levin shows how those entrusted with news reporting today are destroying freedom of the press from within:  “not government oppression or suppression,” he writes, but self-censorship, group-think, bias by omission, and passing off opinion, propaganda, pseudo-events, and outright lies as news.

With the depth of historical background for which his books are renowned, Levin takes the reader on a journey through the early American patriot press, which proudly promoted the principles set forth in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, followed by the early decades of the Republic during which newspapers around the young country were open and transparent about their fierce allegiance to one political party or the other.

It was only at the start of the Progressive Era and the twentieth century that the supposed “objectivity of the press” first surfaced, leaving us where we are today:  with a partisan party-press overwhelmingly aligned with a political ideology but hypocritically engaged in a massive untruth as to its real nature.

Week in Review

• For Monday Musing, I had noticed "Divorce: The End of an Error" and wrote about it HERE.
• On Twosday, I wrote about a book and the title I would give a memoir, HERE.
• On Thursday, I wrote about the Crown Center's new bus, HERE.
• Friday's book beginning was about a suspense thriller, HERE.
• I got chocolate on my shirt yesterday and wrote about how to get it out of fabric in my Saturday post, HERE.  Did it work?  Yes, it did!

is hosted by Deb at Readerbuzz.

Saturday stuff

I ate soft chocolate earlier, and some of it fell on my shirt.  So I looked up how to get it out without making it set permanently, and I'm hoping, hoping, hoping.

Key Steps to Remove Chocolate Stains:

1. Remove Excess:  Gently scrape off solidified chocolate with a dull knife or spoon.
2. Rinse Cold:  Run cold water through the back of the stain to prevent it from setting deeper into the fibers.
3. Pre-treat:  Apply a heavy-duty liquid detergent (like Tide) or dish soap (like Dawn) directly to the stain.
4. Soak:  Let the garment sit for at least 15–30 minutes to break down the grease.
5. Wash:  Launder the item as usual in cold water.
6. Check Before Drying:  Ensure the stain is completely gone before putting it in the dryer, as heat can permanently set any remaining stain.

I'm about to do a load of laundry in cold water.  When it's done, then I'll know whether this is a happy Saturday or not.

  (Added later:  Yes, it worked. )

Beginning ~ with an offer

Beginning

I was standing at the bar in the Green Parrot, waiting for a guy named Carlos from Miami who'd called my cell a few days ago and said he might have a job for me.

The Cuban Affair ~ by Nelson DeMille, 2017, suspense thriller, 530 pages

Nelson DeMille is a #1 New York Times bestselling author.  His new novel features U.S. Army combat veteran Daniel Graham MacCormick — Mac for short — who seems to have a pretty good life.  At age thirty-five he’s living in Key West, owner of a forty-two-foot charter fishing boat, The Maine (named for his home state).  Mac served five years in the Army as an infantry officer with two tours in Afghani-stan.  He returned with the Silver Star, two Purple Hearts, scars that don’t tan, and a boat with a big bank loan.  If the truth be told, Mac’s finances are more than a little shaky.

Mac is in the famous Green Parrot Bar in Key West, contemplating his life, and waiting for Carlos, a hotshot Miami lawyer heavily involved with anti-Castro groups.  Carlos wants to hire Mac and The Maine for a ten-day fishing tourna-ment to Cuba at the standard rate, but Mac suspects there is more to this and turns it down.  The price then goes up to two million dollars, and Mac agrees to hear the deal, and meet Carlos’s clients — a beautiful woman named Sara Ortega and a mysterious older Cuban exile named Eduardo Valazquez.

Mac learns there is sixty million American dollars hidden in Cuba by Sara’s grandfather when he fled Castro’s revolution.  With the “Cuban Thaw” under-way between Havana and Washington, they all know it’s only a matter of time before someone finds the stash.  Mac knows if he accepts this job, he’ll walk away rich — or not at all.

Gilion at Rose City Reader hosts

Book Beginnings on Fridays.

A new bus for the Crown Center

When I first saw this bus today, Tim (who manages the property) was walking toward me with some people who don't live here or work here.  I saw him later with other employees and asked, "Do we have a new Crown Center bus?"  Yes, we do!  The old one was maroon and white (my high school colors), but this bus is blue and white.  Tim asked me, "Are you going to write about it?"  Hmm, that thought had not yet occured to me, but most people know I'm a blogger and it does sound like a good idea to tell the whole world about new stuff.  So here's our new blue-and-white Crown Center bus.

Two thoughts for TWOsday

I have a tiny booklet for grades 4-8 (dated 2001) that has "journal topics."  Page 199 says, "Write the title and back cover description for the autobiography you hope to write some day."

I have already blogged that if I ever write a memoir, I'll call it Bits of Bonnie.  Click HERE to read more about it.  As for what to say on the back cover, I'll have to give that some thought.  But I can give you "one bit" as an enticement:  I have always enjoyed words:  playing with words, learning new words, writing blog posts about words and ideas, writing poetry (my first national publication was a short poem about a baby playing with her feet up in the air).  Maybe I should pull out my thick "Bits of Bonnie" notebook (shown above) and read stories that I have collected over the years.

Come Pour the Wine ~ by Cynthia Freeman, 1980, Jewish fiction, 517 pages

Cynthia Freeman portrays an insightful and moving story of Janet Stevens, a teenager from Kansas who comes to New York in search of fame and fortune.  The pursuit of her dream leads her into marriage, motherhood, a heart-rending separation, and then divorce.  At the age of forty five, she meets a man who not only gives her a renewed sense of her Jewish heritage, but also offers her the chance for total fulfillment as a woman.

A reviewer on Amazon gave this book five stars and wrote:  "Girl with Jewish background marries a man she falls for like a ton of bricks.  They go through life with a silent problem hovering over their life until one day it's out in the open.  How she and Bill go forward with life is the whole story."

I found this book in our little Crown Center library and brought it home last night to read.

.

AI Overview tells me about this phrase

"Divorce: The End of an Error" is a popular, witty phrase frequently

used on greeting cards, party banners, and custom cakes to celebrate,

with humor, a fresh start after a marriage ends. It frames the dissolution

of a marriage not merely as a loss, but as the conclusion of

a mistake, often marking a transition into a new chapter.

The suspense is killing me! (Take that with a grain of salt.)

Storm Prey (Book 20 of 36 in the series) ~ by John Sandford, 2010, suspense thriller, 416 pages

There's a storm brewing.  Very early (4:45 a.m.) on a bitterly cold Minnesota morning, three big men burst through the door of a hospital pharmacy, duct-tape the hands, feet, mouth, and eyes of two pharmacy workers, and clean the place out.  But then things swiftly go bad, one of the workers dies, and the robbers hustle out to their truck and find themselves for just one second face-to-face with a blond woman in the garage.  She is Weather Karkinnen, surgeon, wife of an investigator named Lucas Davenport.

Did she see enough?  Can she identify them?  Gnawing it over later, it seems to them there is only one thing they can do:  Find out who she is, and eliminate the only possible witness.

On Amazon, 69% of reviewers give five stars to this Lucas Davenport thriller from the #1 New York Times-bestselling author.  This is one of the "millions" of books stacked all over my apartment (see HERE) that have been donated to the Crown Center library, probably by a resident.

Week in Review

• On Tuesday, I remembered old friends celebrating St. Patrick's Day together, HERE.
• My word for Wednesday was quiddity, HERE.
• Friday was the first day of spring, HERE.
• Saturday's subject was eating black-eyed peas and hummus, HERE.

is hosted by Deb at Readerbuzz.

Black-eyed peas

Do you like black-eyed peas?  I do, but I haven't eaten any lately.  I was just thinking about their nutrition value, so I looked it up.  The illustration below shows that they are full of vitamins, proteins, minerals, and fiber.  They are also good for heart health.  So people would eat them on New Year's Day for luck.

Eating black-eyed peas (with cornbread, in my family) on New Year's Day was supposed to make us rich or something.  I have now missed New Year's Day by several weeks at this point, but I should go look to see if I have a can of them in my kitchen cabinet because my mouth is watering.

But first, let me tell you why I was thinking about black-eyed peas in the first place.  I was casually scrolling on my phone and came across this:  "The black-eyed peas can sing us a tune, but the chick peas can only hummus one."  I know I have hummus in the fridge, if I don't find the other.

Spring and happiness go together, don't they?

March 20th is the first day of spring in my part of the world, the time of year when night and day are of equal length.  Today is also the International Day of Happiness.  How can you celebrate?  Maybe call a friend to chat, or even better, get together.  People all over the world will be celebrating this day.  It's a time to cultivate happiness and connection.

Looking for a happy illustration, I found these three characters.  They are doing some sort of happy dance, aren't they?  Can you name all three?  (Names below.)

Today's happy dance is brought to us

by Lucy, Snoopy, and Sally.  We miss

you, Charlie Brown, Linus, Woodstock,

and Schroeder with your piano.  (Oh, wait,

do I hear a happy tune in the background?)