Month: December 2019

The challenge above is to read an author beginning with each letter of the alphabet during the year 2020. Last year’s Alphabet Soup Challenge was to read a title beginning with each letter of the alphabet in 2019. The second is the one I just finished up (a month ahead of schedule, not bragging, just saying), and posted Part One earlier on PWR.

Here is a list of titles beginning with the letter “M”

Man Without a Shadow by Joyce Carol Oates. Oates, one of my favorite authors since undergrad days, is perhaps one of the most versatile writers of the century, and in this one, she did not disappoint.

Nnutshell by Ian Iwen. Along with Oates’ novel above, this one is a contender for my favorite read of 2019. It tells the tale of Hamlet, set in contemporary London, from the point of the young Prince in…

I love a gorgeous Christmas tree — if it’s still planted in the yard — surrounded with tiny outdoor lights in soft colors that don’t blink.

Every year, millions of trees are cut down to adorn our homes for a few weeks, and then thrown to the curb awaiting trash pickup. 

We probably kill more fir trees between Thanksgiving and Christmas than a bolt of lightning hitting a drought plagued mountainside.

But there is another source of Christmas fearcheer only someone who is owned by a cat or dog understands.

This is the time of year when you find that the neatly wrapped presents have morphed into piles of paper littering the floor — with the tree piled on top.

In honor of the reasons why I don’t have a Christmas tree, I bring you this:  

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And here are two other reasons I don’t have a…

Don’t feel like taking a ribbonribbing today.

This might be part of the problem:

…but it’s 3 in the morning and I can’t have any…of anything… 

Most of the time, I’m listening to Christmas music on You-know-who Tube. It’s quite relaxing.

Do you know what it’s like to be listening to soft music and awaken at 2 in the morning to some guy with a shrill voice asking, “Is your sewer line backed up?”

Unfortunately,  my sewer line hasn’t been working correctly for years.

But that’s overshare on steroids.

As opposed to Christmas on quaaludes.

I just love 1980’s sayings.  They’re awesome!

My Baid (My, But Alas I Digress).

Unfortunately, I’ve descended into pun territory this year.  It was only an hour ago that I wrote this on Facebook: 

What do you call a gnome living in the city? 
A metro-gnome. 
Is that not muse-sick to your ears?

Today…

I received this book as a gift from a cousin/book buddy after she had read and enjoyed it. I read it some time back, but I’m just getting around to reviewing it since I have been so tied up with Cybils books lately. The Washington Post describes it as an “epic story” and it is one where the place/setting seems to be an important “character in the book.” Alaska–The Great Alone with its broad expanses of treacherous ice and snow and tiny towns hanging on for dear life to the icy crags of the mountains takes place in 1974. The Albright family, Cora, the mother: Ernt;  the father; and Leni, who at the opening is only thirteen and is their only child is “living off the grid.” In my mind’s eye I saw them as hippies, challenging a “place of incomparable beauty ands danger.” Ernt moves his family to a…