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Going There by Katie Couric.
I never would have guessed that I would enjoy this book so much.
Katie's writing style is like she is in the room talking to you, telling you her story.
I am enjoying the World History / Current events that she describes throughout her Journalism Career.
I am enjoying her personal family history and crying with her through love lost.

The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern
Introverted bookworm and videogame enthusiast finds a mysterious book at his university library that sends him on an adventure that includes masquerade balls, a secret underground library, finding love, and the nature of fate and time.
I like this book not only because it's a love letter to all things literary, but because it kept me guessing about what was going to happen next, and in the end left me a lot to think about.

I just finished Bury Your Dead by Louise Penny. She is one of my all time favorite mystery writers. Sort of a modern Agatha Christie. :-) Since it is in the middle of the series I won't tell you about this particular plot. The stories are all centered on Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Quebec Provincial Police (Surete du Quebec). He's described as looking more like a college professor than a police inspector. If you like audio books these are wonderfully read. I highly recommend these books in either form! There is a TV show coming out (soon I hope) staring Alfred Molina as Gamache.

I just finished The Magnolia Palace by Fiona Davis and while it wasn't The Lions of Fifth Avenue, it was a good historical fiction about the girl, Angelica, who was the model for many of the sculptures around NYC which were done at the turn of the last century. She lost her mother to the Spanish flu and was promptly embroiled in multiple scandals. I love to read fictional accounts of real people and this one didn't disappoint.

I am currently listening to Ghosted by Rosie Walsh which is about a recently divorced ex-pat who meets and falls in love with the "one" in seven days. He goes on vacation and she stops hearing from him. So far, I am loving the relatability of the main character and her struggle with what has happened to her.

I am also listening to Sitting Pretty by Rebekah Taussig which is a memoir about the life of the author as a woman with a disability. She is a delightful and witty writer who is making me think about how I view disability. Highly recommend.

My brain hasn't wanted to focus on anything too heavy this past year and one of my friends introduced me to the community of Willow Creek Maryland and their annual Ren Faire.

Well Met is by Jen Deluca and starts the series off with the typical new girl becoming part of the community. Then follows with her friends and family with the Ren Faire as the secondary character.

I just finished Bringing Down the Duke by Evie Dunmore. Set in the 1870s Annabelle Archer is one of the first female students at Oxford on a scholarship from the Women's Suffrage Movement. With the scholarship she is required to help the suffragists and in doing so encounters the Duke of Montgomery who is one of the Queen's closest advisors.

I really enjoyed it! Annabelle is super smart and her group of friends is lovely. I am already on hold for the second book.

I just finished "Cloud Cuckoo Land" by Anthony Doerr. It skips around between different characters and times so it's not for everyone. I almost gave up 100 pages in but I'm glad I didn't.
Now I am almost finished with "Unrequited Infatuations" which is an autobiography by Stevie Van Zandt. He is actually a very good writer.

Recently finished Harry's Trees by Jon Cohen. Book discussion groups inspire (coerce?) one to read books they might not otherwise pick up. This one is a bit of a sleeper but I could not put it down. The overriding theme is grief and how one processes grief but it's told as a fairy tale. The characters are quite interesting, and well-developed and there is a town librarian who single-handly keeping the town library open. And I bet you'll view trees in a different way. Highly recommend.

I just finished a book called Dark Archives by Megan Rosenbloom which explores the world of Anthropodermic bibliopegy. I will let you google what that means. It follows a librarian going to many prestigious libraries and testing to see if the books are real or fake. Either way each chapter is a story about a particular book or books in the collection. I highly recommend. My new book is Salem's Lot by Stephen King, and so far so good on the creepiness factor.

I recently finished listening to the Spanish Flu Epidemic and It's Influence on History (Jaime Breitnauer). I liked how this book provided peoples' experiences world-wide, not just in the U.S. and/or Europe, but also in Africa, Asia, South America, Middle East, etc. Totally unexpectedly, there was a distant family connection in the book. A brief section talked about a young William Sardo from Washington, DC. Since schools were shut down, he was sitting in his family's easy chair drinking milk while coffins from the family business where piled up around him. I was pretty sure from the name and location we were somehow related, so I texted my mom to confirm. She said they weren't direct ancestors, but we are related (probably some type of cousin) and she had seen ads for their DC funeral home in her genealogy research. On a funny related note (ok, pun intended), she then shared a 1918 article from the Des Moines Register about my great grandfather being arrested for violating the city council's flu regulations! He was a vaudeville theater owner and refused to operate at 50% capacity during the 1918 pandemic.

I am enjoying the book some read recently for a book club, called "Black Girls must Die Exhausted". I am enjoying this book, it seems like a "coming of age" story, but not sure, since I'm not finished. It is refreshing after reading some heavy thriller types by Daniel Silva and David Baldacci books just before this. Some of these sound intriguing, I will find them for myself at some point.

My latest reads are The Guest Book for the Edmond book club and The Midnight Library for a book talk today.

I tend to read more fiction than nonfiction, but I was a huge admirer of Tim Samaras for a long time and like everyone, absolutely horrified and deeply saddened by the tragedy that cut short his life, along with that of his son and 7 others during the El Reno tornado in 2013. Tim Samaras meant so much to so many people and he really revolutionized so much that we now know about tornadoes; his impact cannot be overstated. This is heavy reading, to be sure, but 20% of the way through this book so far, and I am in awe of the incredible and reverent writing. I will update when I finish this for sure, but so far, I feel like this book deeply honors Tim and his life. I've also been learning a lot about weather and science and the nature of storm chasing. I am truly in awe of how well-written this book is so far and though I haven't finished it yet, I can honestly say I would read anything this author writes.