Happy Fourth of July my American friends! We went to our local fireworks show on Friday night and are going to grill and spend the night in our tent tonight in our backyard! I imagine we’ll be up until very late hearing fireworks go off 🙂 I read one non-Paris book Homeschool Hacks by Linsey Knerl and thought it was well done for the beginning homeschool family.
I’ve been enjoying my memories of Paris and reading books set there this week. Here’s a recap (follow me on IG for everyday thoughts).
Still taking recommendations for anything French this month and make sure you visit Thyme For Tea to see what other bloggers are choosing to write about this month!
Pere Lachaise Cemetery
When we visited France in 2010 we went to visit friends who had moved to Lyon two years earlier. We stayed with them for 5 days and then went to Paris for 5 days. We had our days for Paris roughly planned (our friends met us up there for a few days too), but asked for recommendations because our train was going to get us there earlier than we thought. Our friends knew us well and we ended up in one of the coolest places, Pere Lachaise Cemetery.
It’s a 110 acre garden cemetery that opened in 1804. We didn’t have nearly enough time to spend there but appreciated our time, even managing to find a few famous people by just following the crowds. You can see our photos of the burial sites of Jim Morrison and Collette. Now I always recommend it for Paris traveling friends.
This ties into Anna in the French Kiss because these students who were attending the American School in Paris went there. Anna from Atlanta was sent to the boarding school for her senior year because her famous novelist dad (who very much brought Nicholas Sparks to mind) wanted her to have the best.
Anna finds friends, French cinema, and love for the city while also falling in love herself. I listened to this one and loved the narration by Kim Mai Guest. This was a fun, light teen novel., even if I did get frustrated with the girl!
Eiffel Tower
Sitting outside with my coffee thinking of Paris. The photo is from our trip 11 years ago.
I don’t know about you, but I get too many magazines. They get thrown in a box and I read them when I have time. Yesterday we had a pool date at a friend’s house and I grabbed 4 magazines to take. This was the one on the bottom. It’s from June 2020 😂. It was fated that I just now find it.
I read Paris Nocturne by Patrick Modiano and translated by Phoebe Weston-Evans. This was a confusing and strange little book, only 148 pages. A teenage boy is hit by a car in the streets of Paris and is injured badly enough to be in the hospital for a bit. When he’s sent home, a man from the accident makes him sign a paper and hands him a wad of money.
The narrator, some 40 years later, tells what happens next, but he also throws in scenes, thoughts, and dreams from his childhood and just before the accident. I’m ambivalent about this one, but was happy to read a book by a Nobel laureate.
Started a 1500 piece puzzle with the most important part!
That’s me with the Seine and the Eiffel Tower (you may need glasses to see it) behind me.
I like months where I try to refine my reading list, so I was happy to be reminded of Thyme for Tea’s Paris in July. I looked through my to-be-read stacks, placed a bunch of books on hold at the library (some I’m still waiting for), bought a few Paris puzzles, and bought some French wine. I’m all in! I’ll be including pictures of our Paris trip 11 years ago, some postcards I’ve received and who knows what else I’ll find around here!
In my head this was going to look like the Eiffel Tower. Clearly, it needs some refinement, but that can’t be helped now 🙂
My current stack of possible reading .
My first choice was the one in the middle, To Capture What We Cannot Keep by Beatrice Colin. Beginning in 1887 as the Eiffel Tower was being erected, it’s a love story. Although fiction, one main character is loosely based on a real person Emile Nouguier, one of the engineers working on the tower. Cait, a widow from Scotland, is in the city as a companion to a wealthy (and annoying) brother and sister. Emile would be a great catch for the sister, but it’s Emile and Cait who share sparks. The two were from very different social classes and at the time that made it impossible to see a future together. I liked the description of the city and the building of the tower, both of which were as much a part of the story as anything else. I can’t say I loved the book, but did at least love the last chapter set a few years into the future, as it gave the hope and light that the rest of the book was missing.
If you have a book or movie to recommend for this month, let me know 🙂
I’m adding 13 books to my June count, finishing up the month with 44 books and 3 bookish movies.
Since this is also the md-year point, let’s do an update on my two challenges. The Book a Day Challenge has been easier than expected. As you’ve noticed, I’ve read a lot of kids books and that’s helped, but I’ve also watched a lot less bookish movies than I thought I would. I’ve read 217 books and watched 7 movies. This challenge, that I update daily on IG, is a fun challenge that I’m loving.
My other challenge was my lose 50 by 50 challenge. Let’s just say that it’s not going well, and for my own mental health all I’m going to say is that I’m a work in progress 🙂
Here are the books I read since last week…
The Husbands by Chandler Baker. Published 2021, 352 pages
Nora was on a fast track to senior partner with a 4 year old daughter and a baby on the way. She was stressed and needed more help and understanding from her husband. When she is welcomed into a close knit suburban community full of accomplished women with doting husbands she begins to imagine a new type of marriage.
I liked the idea of this, but it took me a while to get into it. Once I did I enjoyed the modern spin on the Stepford Wives concept. How far are you willing to go for a perfect marriage?
There are 3 chapters and lots of photos. The chapters (lighting, seeing, creating) are just as much about how to see than they are about how to take the photo. It’s a lovely book I’m happy to have in my house to look at anytime I want (I’m looking at you Cleveland winter!).
I read Answers for the 4A Epidemic: Healing for Kids with Autism, ADHD, Asthma, and Allergies. Cannizzaro is an MD who makes the very solid case for kids who have any of these diagnoses to have an integrative doctor onboard. I couldn’t agree more.
He does a great job of explaining the often complicated processes of out of sync bodies and what we, as parents, can do to help. He was great at explaining the breakdown, with some places to start with diet, if interested. Obviously, not for every kid, but diet makes a big difference here.
Creekfinding by Jacqueline Briggs Martin and Claudia McGehee. Published 2017 pages, 36 pages.
I loved the illustrations and the true story about a man who buys property and resurrects a creek that had been filled in. The man? Michael Osterholm who is currently on President Biden’s Covid Advisory Council.
Dark Was the Night by Gary Golio and EB Lewis. Published 2020, 32 pages.
Dark Was the Night: Blind Willie Johnson’s Journey to the Stars was such a treat. Johnson, who went blind as a child, played in street corners in Texas. Now his music is flying on Voyager I outside our galaxy on the Golden Record.
Small Room, Big Dreams: The Journey of Julian and Joaquin Castro is a great new book about the twins and how they have always been involved in wanting to make life better for people.
Nacho’s Nachos by Sandra Nickel and Oliver Dominguez. Published 2020, 32 pages.
Nacho’s Nachos: The Story Behind the World’s Favorite Snack takes place in Mexico, but it was included in my search because in 1940 Mamie Finan came from just over the border to The Victory Club and inspired Ignacio Anaya (Nacho for short) to create the first delicious snack that bears his name.
Diary of Sarah Gillespie has entries from the teen’s diary growing up on a 100 acre farm in the 1880’s. There was added definitions, clarification, and photos.
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When I set my book a day goal at the beginning of the year I knew I had to add in some days that would fit in with family life, so I decided to okay movies based on books (preferably ones I read or planned to read). We’re closing in on the halfway point of the year and this week I watched movies 6 & 7. Hopefully, I’ll get a comparison of one of them done next week.
For July, I’ve signed up for Thyme for Tea’s Paris in July event. I hope to add as much reading and movie watching set in Paris as I possibly can. I’ll even see if I can find some pics from our France trip 10 years ago.
This week I watched 2 movies, read 2 non-fiction, 1 fiction, 1 kids nonfiction, 1 picture book fiction, 1 picture book nonfiction. Here they are listed in the order I liked them best. I’ve already read and reviewed Indestructible: The Hidden Gift of Trauma by Krista Nerestant here.
The Hate U Give, 2018, based on the novel by Angie Thomas, 2017
Starr (played by Amandla Stenberg) has a loving family and lives in a neighborhood riddled with violence. At ten she watched her best friend get gunned down and she’s about to witness the same thing, only this time it’s a policeman who does the shooting.
It was a great book and a good movie, written before George Floyd changed the protest landscape. This one is worth reading and watching. I loved watching Russell Hornsby as Mav the most.
The movie starred Jane Fonda and Robert Redford as two lonely neighbors who tried something scandalous to get through the nights. It was pretty faithful to the book until close to the end and I thought the changes they made actually made more sense! It’s a quiet movie and nice to see a story featuring older folks.
The celebrated author and illustrator Ashley Bryan, came into possession of a bill of sale, where slaves were listed (not by name) alongside cattle and crop. He imagined the lives of each of these 11 slaves and what their hopes and dreams may have looked like. A powerful picture book.
I finally read The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. I need to take some time to process. As many of you know Gage is on the spectrum, so my feelings are mixed. I recognized so many Gage behaviors, but am not sure the author was doing justice to the main character, 15 year old Christopher. It was nice to have autism front and center, but I hope all who read it understand that it’s fiction and not representative.
Told in the first person, Christopher lives with his father after his mother died and goes to a special school with an aide during the day. When a neighbor’s dog is murdered Christopher decides to find the killer. What he finds is much more than that, of course.
The good stuff- ➕everything your kid would want to know about how to become a knight is in here. ➕each spread of the 90 pages book is a different topic. ❤️ the instructions on making your own coat of arms. ❤️ the quiz on which order you should seek out based on your personality (I got Order of the Round Table)
The stuff I didn’t love 🤪 there was a lot to take in visually and the first few pages were confusing. It got better as the book went on. 😩 also there were some violently drawn cartoons that I could have done without even though I know knights are violent.
Gage didn’t want to read this straight through, but he did enjoy exploring the pages a few at time. I did read it straight through and liked all of the details. I feel so much smarter 😁
Johnson wrote this song in 1900 to celebrate Abraham Lincoln’s birthday and it has become known as the African American national anthem. Collier put beautiful artwork to the words.
Note: There is a second edition with additional chapters.
I met David Petrovic when he came to talk at Gage’s school a few years ago. He’s local, he has Aspergers, and he’s thriving. I just read a recent article that he’s now earned a Master’s Degree, is working as a middle school teacher, and living in his own.. This journey toward success is painstakingly detailed in this book by his mother and David from the time he was a baby through his second year of college.
Sandy breaks up the years and tells of each of his challenges, what interventions they used, and what insight she gained. Then David took his turn giving his perspective.
This isn’t a how-to or even a true memoir, but instead a true look at what goes into the day to day of helping a person living on the spectrum shine. Some of it was repetitive, but it was inspirational. Both mom and son worked tirelessly and optimistically so that David could live his best life. Hats off to both of them.
Welcome to Krista Nerestant’s journey from the other side of the globe-the islands of the Philippines-to the United States of America. Indestructible is where she shares the hidden gifts of trauma that have empowered her to not only survive but also thrive in a life most would have given up on. Krista was a traumatized overachiever bound by the cultural and societal limitations of her home country. But coming out as a spiritual medium exposed the many resources she had in her arsenal, inspiring her to embark on a healing journey. In Indestructible, she shares how she learned to extract life-healing lessons while overcoming a violent past, with the hope of inspiring and teaching survivors to approach personal wounds as a gateway to unleashing their self-actualization. Her story will stimulate you mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually-but most of all, it will lead you to start your own journey of self-discovery and uncover your very own hidden gifts of trauma.
192 pages, Paperback
I forget why I initially agreed to read this book, but there must have been something in the pitch that appealed to me, because this is not my usual read. Whatever it was that drew me to it was right on point. Krista’s memoir of overcoming horrific abuse at the hands of her father in the Philippines, only to come to America as a teen and experience other kinds of trauma is one that pulls at the heartstrings. She explores the spiritual journey of the human spirit, no matter what it is that is holding us back. She gives hope for a better day, a better year, a better life because everything you need is within your grasp.
Her story is fascinating. Through her stories of childhood and experiences as an adult she shares how compassion and forgiveness are what you need to forge ahead and make a better life for yourself. It was a memoir with self-care strategies to make a more fulfilling life. She is a medium and a life coach and you can find her here.
I’ve read 8 books since the last update; 2 romantic suspense, 2 kids non-fiction, 2 non-fiction picture books, 1 fiction and and 1 thriller. Drumroll for the winner… it’s the thriller! This has been a thriller/mystery heavy month for me. The good thing about this week’s reading is that there isn’t a stinker in the bunch. They’re all great or at least solid reads.
Listed in the order I liked best with a few sentences of thoughts and description. If you want the daily updates with more details you can follow me on Instagram.
This one is about those girls who are the only survivors of a mass murder, final girls. Quincy was partying at Pine Cottage with her friends when the unthinkable happens. Quincy managed to escape with only 3 stab wounds, a Xanax prescription, and a need for a perfectly controlled life. One day, another final girl shows up in her life and suddenly her perfect life turns inside out.
Lucy is a physic who is learning the extent of her skills. She has a loving and unruly family, best friends for life, a collection of animals, and a live-in boyfriend whom she’s madly in love with. The mystery was good, relatable, and complicated.
I’m sorry to see the end of the series with this fifth and final book.
This is great southern fiction set in the 1970’s. Ora Lee is an old woman setting the story straight about what really happened back in the day. Racism, rape, and murder kept the story moving, but it’s Ora, a good Christian woman with nothing but love in her heart, realizing her own prejudices that are the moral of the story.
I thought the audio performance was perfection and highly recommend it.
I always love reading about bold, passionate women who didn’t/ haven’t let expectations (or even sexist rules) stop them in pursuit of their dreams. A few of the women I’d heard of, like Sacajawea and Nelly Bly, but the most I hadn’t. I loved learning about these 13 women from around the world!
I love this series. I love the choices of people and the illustrations. Zaha Hadid was the first woman and the first Muslim to be awarded the Pritzker Prize, architecture’s highest honor.
A cult-like, ritualistic murder brings together Amy from the Florida state police and Hunter from the FBI. Hunter, having escaped a cult as a child, has first hand knowledge of the people who have taken over a small Florida town, abusing religion for power (sound familiar?). The ending has me thinking that we’ll be seeing more of this crime fighting duo.
I found the story of American Beach, a beach for all people to come together during the time of segregation an enlightening read. It mentioned that elsewhere a rope in the ocean divided the whites and blacks. It made me incredibly sad that the ugliness of racism could try to ruin something as magnificent as the ocean.
MaVynee’s grandfather purchased the beach and after mother got sick she went home and tried to save the land from development. She became known as the Beach Lady and managed to save the tallest sand dune in Florida. One person CAN make a difference.
Of all the books of this series that we’ve read this has been my least favorite so far. It’s all about cars! 😂. This has to be one of my least favorite topics so getting to the end felt like an accomplishment and it’s only 105 pages.
What have you read lately that I should add to my list?
This might be the first book/movie comparison I’ve done where I say that I liked them both even though they were markedly different in the details. SKIP AHEAD TO THE PLOT PARAGRAPH IF YOU DON”T WANT SPOILERS!
The images of NYC in the movie were stunning and really set the vibe. In the book that vibe was set by the music they listened to and talked about.
In the book Natasha and her family were being deported THAT DAY, but in the movie it was the next morning.
The movie was completely missing the very important character of Irene and also much of the lawyer personal drama.
The reason for their deportation was different. In the movie it was a random raid by ICE, but in the book it was because her father was caught drunk driving.
The movie skipped Natasha and Daniel’s first meeting.
The ending was different and reflected the tone of each. In the movie it was 5 years later and in the book, 10 years.
PLOT/STORY High schooler Natasha and her family are being deported back to Jamaica. Daniel is set to have a college interview that his Korean/American parents are counting on to get him into an Ivy League school so that he can become a doctor. Natasha the pragmatist and Daniel the dreamer meet and spent the day together, falling in love. The book had more magic, more fairy dust and more of the real family relationships. Thumbs up- book
THE VISUAL The movie used NYC to its fullest advantage with the cinematography. The city has never looked better or more modern. Thumbs up – movie
CHARACTERS VS. ACTORS I liked the young characters in the book in all of their sometimes poor decision making glory. In the movie they both felt so much older. Charles Melton was ten years older than Daniel and although his acting was good, the age gap alone was noticeable. Yara Shahidi was closer to the right age. The acting and sparks were solid, but still… Thumbs up – book
THE ENDING As I discussed in the spoilers and a little in the plot, the book had that magical glow that continued all the way to the end. The movie, while I understand the choices that were made, was missing some of that. One ending relied on fate and one had Natasha taking fate into her own hands. Thumbs up- book
And the winner is… the book! I appreciated the movie and the choices it made too, but the book appealed more to the romantic in me.
I’ve been reading, 190 books so far this year. For these first 11 days in June I watched one movie based on a book I read in February (The Sun Is Also A Star) and read 17 books, 8 of them picture books by or about the celebrated illustrator Jerry Pinkney. I also read 4 fiction/thrillers, 1 play, 1 chapbook about aliens, 1 non-fiction, 1 YA fiction, and 1 kids fiction. I’ve really needed the fiction escape it seems!
The first 5 on this list (I’m counting all of the Pinkney books as a whole) I would heartily recommend.
Anna is agoraphobic, which began after a trauma the year before. She’s separated her family, has one therapist/frend, and access lots of alcohol and medication. She also has a camera and likes to keep an eye on her neighborhood. When new neighbors arrive at her doorstep, Anna’s carefully crafted (sad) life begins to unravel.
A fast-paced thriller perfect for summer. I really liked it. She’s an old movie buff, which I loved, and I need to go back and make a list of all the movies she mentioned so I can watch them (without a bottle of wine and pills).
Two women on opposite coasts are both in dangerous situations. They switch identities and flights and hope to evade the men sure to come looking for them. But one of the flights crashes.
Two compelling women with two compelling stories. I liked the back and forth and the switch between then and now. I was even surprised at the end (but probably shouldn’t have been).
I picked up John Boyne’s young adult historical and breezed right through it. He has the rare talent of writing unlikeable characters and still putting together a compelling story. A Ladder of Years is my favorite, but others will remember The Boy in the Striped Pajamas best.
In this short (260 pages) book, 7 year old Pierrot loses both parents, his best friend, and his home city of Paris as he sent to an orphanage. His aunt finds him and brings him to Berghof, where she is head housekeeper. Of course, this is also Hitler’s home in the Bavarian Alps. Hitler takes a special interest in the boy and Pierrot’s fate is sealed.
Can he recover from the things he did while so young? A good book about how any child’s future is shaped by their circumstances as well as their spirit. A tragic story but not one without hope.
I loved this one! A teen who had no support, a man who needed her for a kidnapping scheme, death, stolen babies, changed identities and a lifetime of guilt. What’s not to love? And I really love the cover ❤️
Philadelphia born artist Pinkney has won numerous awards for his illustrations of children’s books, novels, magazines, and even a series of postage stamps starting in 1977. He’s still sharing his passion with the world at 81.
The Talking Eggs was my favorite. A sister is abused by her mother and sister, but is rewarded with her pure heart. It was a little more detailed than the other retellings of this Creole folktale and I loved it.
My other favorite was the classic John Henry, also different than other versions I’ve read, but I’m always up for a story about the legendary man. The song I learned as a kid still goes through my mind every time. Anyone else?
They’re all good. A Place To Land: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Speech That Inspired a Nation is his most recent work (2019) and the first time he used collage. And The Lion and the Mouse (2009) is a wordless book that tells one of Aesop’s fables. And I always love reading the African tales about that wily Spider 🕷
I Survived The Joplin Tornado, 2011 was our before bed book for the week. I thought it was scarier than the last one we read about the Chicago Fire. At the end of a few of the chapters I wasn’t sure he’d make it – then I reminded myself the book I series is called I Survived 😆
The writing is simple and the books have a few pictures for interest and that makes them something Gage enjoys. So, for that I am grateful. Finding books that he is interested in reading continues to be a bit of a struggle and this series is a safe bet.
Tornadoes scare me. Have you ever experienced one firsthand?
I both listened a read and much preferred the audio. I liked that it was different, but I can’t say I loved the book.
Harriet, 79, is a recent widow with a shaky relationship with her kids. Her marriage was meh and she’s stuck in a rut. Enter the Alaskan cruise her late husband had won and his visits from beyond the grave and you have the start of an interesting story. I just didn’t care for the this-is-your-life way the story moved from one time to the next.
Strange Land from Poet’s Haven Digest, 2017 is a chapbook given to me by a friend at the library who just happen to write the very first poem, #greenlivesmatter. There were poems and stories all with a different take on our alien friends and their feelings on us Earthlings. Made more interesting by the government’s recent acknowledgment of UFOs 👽 It was a fun, fast read perfect for the unofficial start of summer.
I was hoping that this would provide insight into the classic movie, which I don’t like at all. Unfortunately, I ended up disliking the characters even more 😂
Blanche comes to live with her sister Stella and Stella’s husband Stanley. The three of them bump into and around each other in a small apartment until damage is done. Unlikeable characters in a sad tragedy of a story. But, hey, it’s a classic for a reason, so what do I know?
The book, while tongue in cheek, isn’t quite funny enough for satire. It does its best to lower expectations at work, at home, in relationships, but, unfortunately, I couldn’t let go of my hope for more.
What’s been your favorite June read so far? Anything I need add to my reading list? Extra points if it’s on the shorter side 🙂
It’s been a month since my last update, but it’s been a busy month.
Highlights of the week
We finished homeschooling on May 28th and I don’t know who was more excited, Gage or his teacher 😉 We are going to do it one more year, and that means that we started 5th grade this week. No rest for the weary! We’re only doing 2.5 hours a day, so it’s really the best of both worlds. In July we’ll do 1 hour a day, and back to 2.5 in August, before the full day (5 hours). This schedule will allow more full weeks off during the year (summer included) while still giving us way more school hours than required (900).
We had friends over for Memorial Day. We made it an outdoor get together and it was much needed after the last year. They have a pool so Gage is especially looking forward to more time together. They look so serious here playing chess but they spent most of the day playing badminton, and I took no pictures of that. I was too busy chatting with friends and it was glorious 🙂Yesterday we put carts outside the library for the first time in an attempt to have a small book sale for the kids coming to sign up for the library’s summer reading program. This picture was set up, there were more carts later. I’m hoping to do this more often since some parents still prefer outside to inside, especially since the mask mandate was dropped this week.
Stacy's Books 