Can houses get COVID-19? They must because our home is collapsing around us. Well, not the house per se, but all the gadgets and equipment that keep us functioning. Everything we own is contracting a virus at a rate that would have Dr. Fauci retreat to his ‘safe room’ and never come out. I recently wrote about our month-long, expensive dryer fiasco (What do you…
The Tuscan Sun shines on in a new Frances Mayes book
Fans of Under The Tuscan Sun* by Frances Mayes will absolutely love her new fictional novel published last year. Reading Women in Sunlight is like taking a quick trip to Tuscany. The author treats us to the sights, sounds, and tastes of Italy without fighting airport lineups or the inconvenience and expense of stuffing our creaky bodies into a cramped airplane seat for seven hours to…
My days as a trophy wife could be over
My descent into ordinariness started with my manicure, or lack of it. Lockdown has made me extremely lazy. It’s an insidious process. Not having to get dressed for public appearances several times a week has created an entire generation of women who are awakening to the joys of freedom from regular and expensive mani-pedi treatments; freedom from constricting waistbands, makeup, and freedom from bras, particularly…
American Dirt exposes timely and shocking insights into the plight of migrants
Jeanine Cummins, author of the best-selling novel American Dirt has been roundly criticized for writing a book about a politically sensitive subject she wasn’t born into. The cultural appropriation accusation is frequently hurled at authors and it’s a nasty term. American Dirt is the story of a Mexican woman and her eight-year-old son who are fleeing the wrath of a cartel in Mexico by trying to illegally cross…
What do you do when your dryer is condemned to landfill?
LG Appliances has some ‘splainin’ to do. I can overlook the fact that the ice dispenser on my LG fridge always jams and the door to the ice storage bin tends to pop open at will and bangs around until I manage to slam the faulty closure until it holds. Those issues are mere annoyances compared to my latest major appliance complaint. When we moved…
The Glass Hotel spins the Bernie Madoff story into some unputdownable fiction
This is one of those times I’m tempted to start my book review with a simple, “Wow! That was great!” I’m giving you the spoiler alert right upfront. The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel is a current best-seller but it is hard to qualify by genre. It’s a bit mystery, a bit historical fiction and a bit ephemeral in spirit. It’s particularly satisfying for me…